 A HELPING HAND Director of T.H.O.M.A.S. with Father Gregory. Hi, my name is Father Gregory and I am the Assistant Director of Caritas India, which is the baby of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India. As it is a development agency we focus primarily on funding projects throughout our country, training people so that they can empower each other. We are not generally an operational organisation; our main aim is to fund projects. Nevertheless, when an emergency or a national disaster occurs we automatically go into operational mode. This could be seen with the recent cyclones and earthquake that has effected our nation. Caritas India is tied up with other branches of Caritas throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Caritas is an international co-ordinated agency with its head office in Rome. Caritas was founded in India in 1962. It was founded as Catholic Charities Agency but in 1971 the name was changed to Caritas India. When we were first founded we were concentrating mainly on the welfare of the poor, but as years have progressed we have come to realise that although this is still important, we need to do something mor e, we need to empower the people so that they are able to liberate themselves from the situations they are in. Our main office is here in the centre of Delhi. Here all policy-making decisions are made. However, we have come to realise that we need to give more power to the regions and already we are beginning a de-centralisation programme , so that the various regions throughout the country where Caritas operates can make decisions at local level. Already in Bengal, Karnataka and Tamilnadu we have created a de-centralised structure. Each region has a regional manager and the aim is that by 2004 all of our regions will have become de-centralised. We have twelve regions in all and each of these has a regional officer, with the de-centralised regions (only 3 at present) having a regional manager also. |
