Job Descriptions

Project Director

The Project Director is directly appointed by the ADATS Governing Body. His/her responsibilities are:

To appoint Staff, train, orient and place them in various Taluks and/or thematic fields.
To ensure that the activities undertaken in various Taluks are within the philosophical and strategic framework of the intervention strategy, implementation technology and time frame matrix evolved by ADATS.
To conduct weekly Situation Meetings and provide an overall programme direction.
To write project applications, activity and progress reports, and coordinate the annual Effects Monitoring exercise.
To represent ADATS on all matters regarding various projects and programmes to funding partners, finalise budgets and sign bilateral agreements with them on behalf of and binding on ADATS.
To coordinate digitization efforts and maintain the ADATS/Coolie Sangha intranet.
To visit villages and attend special Coolie Sangha Meetings.

Asst Project Director

The Asst Project Director is directly appointed by the ADATS Governing Body. His/her responsibilities are:

To ensure that all economic and target oriented projects remain subservient to the goals and processes of Coolie Sangha building.
To ensure that internally evolved management systems for the implementation of various economic projects and target oriented activities are appropriately developed and introduced.
To ensure that these systems are within the framework of the 2 Organisations policy, promote the twin principles of grassroots planning and coolie participation, and that they are furthered into an efficient planning monitoring & evaluation system that the Member Coolie families can themselves manage after the withdrawal of ADATS.
To compare the actual achievements of economic projects against projected targets, study variations, and develop indicators so that the Staff can themselves assess the impact of all material and non material activities.

Finance Director

The Finance Director is directly appointed by the ADATS Governing Body. His/her responsibilities are:

To make budget realisations transparent and understandable to all the Staff and Member Coolie families, encourage discussions and invite suggestions for the better handling of finances.
To introduce systems and procedures based on the principle of total and exception-less transparency in order to enhance accountability.
To safeguard the financial and inventory interests by introducing appropriate check and control mechanisms.
To exercise effective control on all bank accounts, including village level CSU and CCF accounts and train women Cheque Signatories selected by their respective CSUs/Mahila Meetings.
To ensure a smooth cash flow.
To examine budget realisations and call for comments on variations.
To scrutinise and verify the authenticity of the final books of accounts before they are submitted for audit by the Chartered Accountant; to receive and act upon comments, reports and recommendations made by such Chartered Accountants.
To recruit, train and place Desk Workers at various Taluk headquarters.
To have a final say in the handling of the discretionary budget for the health coverage of Staff and their immediate family members.

Field Assistants

Field Assistants are appointed by the Project Director, one for each Taluk.

Field Assistants focus on various thematic concerns in Coolie Sangha building like gender, participatory democracy, geopolitical coverage, decentralisation, withdrawal, communal harmony, income and employment generation, etc.
The primary responsibility of Field Assistants is to ensure that authentic and independent Taluk Coolie Sangha are built up. They work to integrate the CSUs being formed at each Taluk into the respective Taluk Coolie Sangha.
They have field and executive (excluding finance) responsibilities for implementing programme within approved plans and budgets. They enhance established systems and practices by introducing new experiences and insights. They continually visit the programme villages and establish a direct rapport with Member Coolie families.
Area Field Workers and Mahila Trainers directly report to their respective Field Assistants. But the Desk Workers, who handle day to day finances, do not (they work under the direction of the Finance Director).
Field Assistants introduce the practice of grassroots planning to make village level budgets for all economic and service oriented projects.
They contribute to the writing and finalising of project applications, 6 monthly activity reports and annual progress reports. Such applications and reports continually redefine the details of work and responsibilities that they commit themselves to.
Field Assistants negotiate with development agencies, banks and government offices to enhance the programme and recommend that the Coolie Sangha enters into arrangements and agreements with them for the implementation of anti-poverty schemes.
Field Assistants attend the weekly Area Staff Meetings and make special efforts to enhance the conceptual clarity and analytical skills of village Staff. They encourage the village Staff to collectively define their own job descriptions, set their own targets, and monitor their own performances.
Field Assistants ensure that Staff attitudes and other conditions (including Sangha Funds collected by the Member Coolie families) are congenial for ADATS withdrawal from the Taluk and the handing over of assets and responsibilities to the Taluk Coolie Sangha branches of the Coolie Sangha within 9 years of involvement in an Area of about 25-30 villages.

Area Field Workers

Committed Coolie youth who are well versed with ADATS and the Coolie Sangha by virtue of having first worked in their own villages as VLWs and then somewhere else as Community Workers are selected by the Coolie Sangha to work as Area Field Workers. Area Field Workers are appointed to work in an Area of 25-30 village CSUs and report to their respective Field Assistant.

Their being both, Staff members of ADATS as well as Member Coolies of the Coolie Sangha places Area Field Workers in a delicate position requiring them to play a balanced and mature role in the ADATS organogram.

After spending the mornings at the offices to deal with Coolies who visit the Taluk headquarters, Area Field Workers leave at 1 pm, every single afternoon, to compulsorily attend all the Cluster Meets of their Area and as many CSU Meetings as possible.

Area Field Workers need an intimate knowledge of village situations, CSU functionaries, and individual Member Coolie families. They ensure that there is no caste or communal discrimination in the CSUs, and that there is a positive discrimination in favour of Coolie women.

Area Field Workers are Process Owners of 5 crucial activity processes:

Income Declaration to Tax Paid Membership
including annual declaration of family income, payment of Sangha Tax, renewal of membership, and updating of family data.
Baseline Making to Implementation Results
including the making of bi-annual Customer Demands & Satisfaction (CD&S) surveys in each and every village, liaising with government offices, assisting Member Coolie families to access civic and anti-poverty benefits from the government (without involving touts and agents, mediating to settle inter-CSU and intra-CSU squabbles, and monitoring implementation.
Land Holding surveys to DLDP Works
including surveying holdings, assessing works needed, generating Dry Land Development (DLDP) plans, actual execution of DLDP works, bringing in technical advice when needed, monitoring DLDP works.
Loan Requests to CCF Rotation
including the processing of requests, timely release, utilisation and repayment of interest-free loans taken by Member Coolie families from their respective Coolie Credit Funds (CCFs).
Strategic Plan to Total Acceptance
including grassroots exercises to contribute to Problem Tree and Objectives Tree making, translating and sharing LogFrames in all the villages, conducting meetings of Secondary Stakeholders, conducting annual Effects Monitoring exercises.

Area Field Workers ensure that procedural requirements designed to keep these activities subservient to larger socio-political goals are not compromised. Area Field Workers are directly responsible to ensure that qualities of representation (as opposed to leadership) are developed in the CSUs and that everything is conducive for the withdrawal of Community Workers after 3 years and VLWs after 6 years.

Mahila Trainers

Mahila Trainers are woman Field Workers with special and additional responsibility to train and help Coolie women set up the Mahila Meetings and handle the decentralised budgets. In popular parlance, the term “Area Field Worker” often includes the Mahila Trainer as well. However, previous work experience at ADATS is not insisted upon when selecting Mahila Trainers.

The job of the Mahila Trainer is an unenviable one with a full calendar. All the below listed tasks are not carried out by them single handed. Each and every one of the Field Staff pitch in to do routine and mundane jobs like, for example, the monthly distribution of basic medicines. But there are some things like the conducting of women’s training that only they can do. Every Monday, the Mahila Trainers share experiences in the Situation Meetings. But they also separately meet to develop themselves into a team within ADATS.

Mahila Trainers accompany the Area Field Workers as equals, attending all the Cluster and CSU Meetings, and are fully involved in the preliminary stages of Coolie Sangha building. They ensure that congenial conditions are built for the total and unreserved participation of women.
When the 5th round of Women’s ALP classes are conducted it is the Mahila Trainers who have to motivate women to avail this opportunity in all the villages to not just attain literacy skills, but also further strengthen their position.
The actual work of Mahila Trainers starts with a gruelling schedule when the Mahila Meetings select their VHWs. After helping them in this task, Mahila Trainers conduct 3 day training session for the largely illiterate and neo-literate VHWs and arrange for their practical exposure at hospitals and clinics. They then involve themselves in the details of putting the health activity in order, continually liaising with referral hospitals and doctors, and bargaining for best possible prices and terms from medicine suppliers.
Once the Mahila Meetings become a regular feature in all the CSUs, the Mahila Trainers visit them on a very regular every evening basis in order to sort out nitty-gritty problems and obstacles that come up when Coolie women start to meet separately and assert their identity.
Then the Mahila Trainers organise continuous rounds of participatory training sessions, each of 3 days duration, for batches of 5 Coolie women from 5 villages each. These are highly emotive and personalised affairs where the women are coaxed to come out with their own experiences in an attempt to place the position of Coolie women within their own families and in village society to understand concepts like the labour contribution of women, feminisation of poverty, sexual exploitation and the rest. The Mahila Trainers try their best to ensure that such sessions are held for each village at least once a year. This means that at least 1 such session is held every week, the whole year round, at each of the 5 Taluks.
At the end of the 1st such 3 day session, the Mahila Trainers arrange for the 5 villages who attended to get their first Vokkaku Sanchi Duddu grants of Rs 1,000 per Mahila Meeting. Later, these grants for the women to run their petty credit funds are enhanced according to current membership and need. Apart from the Mahila Trainers and women Extension Workers, no one else ever interferes with matters connected to the utilisation of these funds.
Mahila Trainers arrange for the 50-60 VHWs in their villages to be sent on exposure trips to hospitals and other places. These visits have to be very properly arranged to ensure that maximum benefits are derived in terms of both, exposure as well as developing useful contacts.

Extension Workers

Extension Workers are appointed at each Taluk for the implementation of target oriented projects like the Children's Programme. Extension Workers co-ordinate their work with the Area Field Workers and report to the Asst Project Director.

Extension Workers ensure that established procedures and systems are introduced in the Taluk in order to ensure that achieving targets does not become an end in itself while, at the same time, quality is not sacrificed using participation as an excuse.

Extension Workers ensure that Member Coolie families derive the maximum non-material advantage from economic projects, and that Coolie Sangha functionaries are able to run activities like the CCF by themselves in the shortest time possible.

Extension Workers use the services of Subject Matter Specialists to enhance the technical quality of project implementation.

Subject Matter Specialists

Subject Matter Specialists in Community Health, Legal Advise/Representation, Veterinary services, Agriculture, etc. are contracted to perform specific tasks like training and the giving of specialised advice. These contracts are worked out by the Project Director.

Case Workers

Case Workers are ADATS Staff who work in the Children's Programme and pay special attention to individual children in the Balakendras. Case Workers are part of the Area Team that looks after 25-30 village CSUs.

They visit the Balakendras on an every-evening basis. They attend monthly training sessions with their respective Balakendra Teachers and support them to implement daily supplementary education activities in the villages. Along with the Balakendra Teachers, they apply pressure to ensure that CSU Members are elected into the School Betterment Committees and that they monitor day-to-day performance of Government Schools. They help organise Cluster Sports events and Taluk Children's Day programmes.

Case Workers conduct annual Effects Monitoring exercises to measure progress and make mid-term corrections in the general direction of the (largely) self-financed child related activities of the Coolie Sangha.

Desk Workers

Desk Workers are directly appointed by the Finance Director and stationed at each Taluk headquarters.

New Desk Workers thoroughly familiarise themselves with the accounting and finance management practices at ADATS through intensive in house training at Bagepalli before going to live and work at the Taluk headquarters.