VSSS

Vijayapuram Social Service Society (VSSS) is the official organ of the Diocese of Vijayapuram for socio-economic and educational development interventions.  It was established and registered as S.No.36/61 under Travancore Cochin Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies Act of 1955 in the year 1961.  The operational area of the Society consists of highlands, undulating midlands and the low lands in the State of Kerala.  The organization is working for the integral development of the poor and the marginalized people in the operational area for the last 47 years.  The organization offered itself in organizing the rural poor to work for sustainable development of the entire community.  The programme was started with the wholehearted support received from MISEREOR Germany

We are currently in the age of “Participation”.  For the past few years VSSS has continuously sought and experimented with alternative solutions to the poverty that is endemic in our target population.  This search has resulted in periodic emergence of new strategies that have greatly influenced our thinking and practice.  The major strategies that predominated and received widespread support were “Community Development”, “Integrated Rural Development” But our search continued for more relevant strategies.  The present strategy we follow is “Participation” as a major new force in development thinking.  We always promote inclusion of human resources in development efforts.  We have also promoted Participation as more linked to tackling the structural causes of people’s poverty rather than as yet another input into development project.  People are poor because they are excluded and have little influence upon forces, which affect their livelihoods.  Participation therefore, is viewed as a process whereby such people seek to have some influence and to gain access to the resources, which would help them sustain and improve their living standards.   This process has helped us to give our attention to those who had never appeared on our files. 

As an organization VSSS is now firmly established among the people as a catalyst for change.  Its knowledge base, economic resources and personnel resources are deployed in the process of people-centred development.