Ramadevi Village Development Organisation (RVDO), a grass root based voluntary group engaged in holistic development of tribal community in general and women in particulars started in the year 1986. The inspiration of an untiring retired lady Ms. Sachibala Panda from Kasturaba Gandhi Trust who came with a token retirement amount was central to the formation of such an action-oriented women’s group. The organization in specific upholds the guiding principles of late Maa Ramadevi who relentlessly strived for the emancipation and empowerment of women, the victims of dominant class structure. Since its inception led by a group of enthusiastic young women, a community centric development approach has been adopted as factor to promote the ideal framework of community self-reliance, of course their independency to meet basic needs.
The organization slowly grew in strength and size in course of its action. The initiative on this way has helped the organization to operate over an area of 34 villages including locations coming under vast forest covers of Keonjhar district. Basically, the people of hand-picked villages who face the repercussion of ever-increasing forest destruction and complete marginalization have been motivated to come under a platform to combat the growing concern of their survival. Obviously, the women folk who are most vulnerable to the situation have been sensitized to from Mahila Mandal not only simply to prevent deforestation but also to resolve all common problems. As the organization strongly believes in community-based approach and people’s participation in every developmental work, first of all a community rapport building measure was taken at the beginning. With the formation of Gram sabha and Mahila Mandal, community people come for village meting in timely intervals. Participation of village people in discussing issues and deciding a plan of action is morally focused to build up more rational power of the community. Thus, the plan of action delineated in the project totally reflect the equivalence to micro level planning exercises carried out in village.
The most appropriate mechanism is done in the villages of Telkoi Block in Keonjhar District with active people’s organization of Gram Sabha and Mahila Mandals have come up who have evinced their well recognizable performance in planning and implementation of village level plans. Each village is having 2 parallel bodies of Gram Sabha and Mahila Mandal for villagers and women respectively. Mahila Mandal has a different entity of its own to bring in more women capriciousness in multi-dimensional programme of regular village setting, generation of community funds, income generation through utilization of local resources, etc. A credible achievement is all of the women organizers of organization stay in working villages and especially they look after child education, organization of women in village perspective, basically the attachment of staff to the community brings more community affinity to the realm of village level activities. Organisation enjoys a wide acceptance as it emerges a true mouthpiece of community. Besides, the Government and Corporate sponsored project added to the life and livelihood support to the people in different ways.