The Village Education Resource Center

The Village Education Resource Center (VERC) emerged in 1977 as a project of Save the Children-USA with funding from UNICEF. It was indigenized as a Non Government Organization (NGO) in 1981. VERC was designed to fill the void of in-country capacity building support to government and related community and rural development agencies. Its initial activities included communication, education, training material development, imparting training, conduct participatory action research, technology development and promotion.

VERC’s field level program process evolved out of its need for an environment to apply its innovations in participatory development. VERC also undertook capacity building activities of therural poor, beginning with women’s literacy, children’s creativity development, health and sanitation and human potentiality enhancement. Right from the beginning, it was however obvious that VERC’s main forte was its training services. Its commitment to quality materials, content and trainers quickly led to its recognition as a leading organization to complement/supplement the development sector. Its variety of development education, management, sectoral and skill training courses have reached almost around 1000,000 people to date with proportionate multiple effects.

Vision : A self-reliant society based on justice, equity and sustainability, where every human being has the equal opportunity to maximize their potentials.

Mission : Establish and promote a dynamic and participatory sustainable process towards human development by empowering the people especially the disadvantaged through exploring, generating and mobilizing resources to improve their quality of life.

Strategies

  1. Develop and institutionalize alternatives in the field of people’s participatory development approach, methods and tools.
  2. Enhancing capacity of development actors as effective facilitator of people’s participatory development process
  3. Implement innovative programmes directly for linking and institutionalizing experiential learning.
  4. Explore utilize promote and facilitate people’s capacity for innovativeness and undertaking different development initiatives.
  5. Identify, explore and mobilize local, public and private resources including human potentials for optimum output and overall development of the country.

In all its work, VERC is committed to the principle of “self-actualization” a process of raising people’s consciousness to a level at which they can realize their potentials and are motivated to reorder their lives.

Areas of field level intervention

  1. Livelihood Development
  2. Water, Sanitation, Hygiene Promotion, Arsenic Mitigation and Technology Development
  3. Education for adults and children
  4. Preventive and Clinical support on maternal and child health care
  5. Environmental Protection considering adaptation to climate change
  6. Disaster Preparedness and Management
  7. ntegrating Disability Issues in Community Development

Programme Support Services

  1. Capacity Building through Training & Communication development
  2. Research, Monitoring, Evaluation & Documentation

About eighty percent of VERC services are aimed at the interest of the poor, women and children. In many of its human development efforts, VERC success has been encouraging, though along with its share of ups VERC has had to endure its share of downs as well. It is in the face of adversity that VERC has learnt many of its most valuable lessons. VERC follows a long-term strategic framework with scope of reviewing it in five year intervals by which VERC hopes to maximize sustainability of its development efforts.

The Management The principal management bodies are:


  1. A General Council consisting of 22 members (20 individuals and 2 institutions) from among the development workers, university teachers and officials from various types of organizations.
  2. A Board of Directors consisting of 7 elected members from the General Council and the Executive Office.

An Executive Director with the help of program and professional staff with long experience in the field of rural development supervise the organization and its range of sector programs.