Lokshakti Samajsevi Sanstha

About Us

Lokshakti Samajasevi Sanstha (LSS) {Lokshakti literally means People’s Power Organization} made its beginning in the year 1982 through the educated tribes, schedule castes and general category youths. Lokshakti group started its working without any aided support from other agencies on the various issues like the inequality in society, discrimination, exploitation, government schemes not reaching the people, forest cutting, lack of employment, lack of education, lack of health facilities, lack of sanitation & hygiene, impure drinking water, lack of adequate water, etc. The organization worked among the community on these issues/problems by maintaining the simple inhabiting habitat of the village community.

Thousands of the tribes and Dalit community got associated with this LSS and the development processes started through these people. Our regular working for these four years started bringing the improvements to the people’s lives. This disseminated on the other parts of the country also. Oxfam India Trust, Nagpur came to understand the working of LSS and their representative Mr. Mahesh Mishra started supporting LSS, which helped in expanding our working in larger areas. In the year 1982, LSS neither had its registration nor had any office. Gradually, it was realized to have its registration and the organization got registered on 1st December 1986. The organization got its registered office established in Village Shikari Mahka, Block Chhuriya, District – Rajnandgaon (CG). After that, LSS got registered under the FCRA Act in the year 1987. At present, the president of LSS Mr. Malikram Mahle is a tribe, Mrs. Durga Mandavi – treasurer is also a tribe. Secretary Mr. Raju Samson is from Minority, while the other governing members are tribes, schedule castes and OBCs. In these 35 years there has never been any allegation against the organization - neither in the account nor in the field activities or in the admin. Since LSS was dedicatedly working in the project areas, many of the funding agencies started funding the organization themselves for various projects implementation; some of them are listed below –

1. Oxfam India Trust – Awareness, Mobilization and Rights
2. Brothers to All Men (BAM), France
3. Novib (Netherlands) – Women Empowerment, Local Leadership, Mass Mobilization, Overall Development.
4. Find Your Feet (U.K.) – Self-help Groups, Livelihood, Income Generating Activities, NTFP, etc.
5. PACS (DFID) – Panchayatiraj Empowerment
6. Samarthan – PACS Program Partner
7. Reach India (USAID) - Education
8. UNICEF – Health, Special Pregnant women and Children
9. UNDP – Bio-diversity & Livelihood
10. Water Aid (UK) – Water, Sanitation & Hygiene
11. Charity Water (USA) – Drinking Water
12. CINI – Vitamin A Supplementation
13. AJWS (USA) – forest Act
14. HIVOS (Netherlands) – Forest, Land and Water
15. BMGF (America) – Feacal Sludge Management (Through Water Aid)
16. SIDA (Sweden) – Through Water Aid.
17. Commonwealth Foundation (UK) – Accessing the government schemes to the village community
18. Childline India Foundation – For the Children in Need of Care and Protection (CNCP)

To maintain functioning on the above mentioned projects, the organization worked on the various districts of the state of Chhattisgarh which includes Rajnandgaon, Durg. Dhamtari, Kanker, Ambikapur, Dantewada, etc.

Through the above mentioned projects, LSS had been able to help about 35000 people directly and about 5 lac people indirectly and helped them in their development. More than 500 cores had been leveraged through these projects. The successes achieved by the organization had been mentioned here in different sections. At present, the organization is having its registered office Shikari Mahka, Dongargaon, an administrative office at Durg and the Training Centre established in Mohla, Rajnandgaon (CG).

We are the local NGO here, but it has been observed that many organizations from other states come down by parachute, work for 4-5 years according to their agenda and get airlifted. These institutions neither have contact with people in the area, nor do people participate in planning and activities. Due to this, there is no sustainability in the work done by them and after they leave, the whole work collapses. Where government funds should be leveraged, they use their own funds, due to which the government fund lapses and returned back and the deprived community isn’t able to get its benefit. That is why only the local NGO should be funded so that the funds spent by the funding agency remains sustained for a long period of time, because only the local organization can do the follow-up of their accomplished activities.

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