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Where does COVA work:
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COVA
Hyderabad, India
COVA: An Overview
COVA (Confederation of Voluntary Associations) is a national network of voluntary organizations in India dedicated to the issues of social harmony, peace and justice. The prime focus of COVA is on citizenship rights and on perspective building for harmony and peace in South Asia. Through direct programmes and by networking with other CSOs, COVA organises perspective building activities and programs, carries out campaigns, and conducts research for influencing diverse sections of civil society and the state apparatus to adopt inclusive, secular and egalitarian outlook and policies that would foster rights and secure justice and peace for all. The most important criterion for membership to an organisation in COVA is that it should work across communities.
Initiated in 1994, COVA has since promoted several organizations, trusts and networks across India, designed to bring together different communities to facilitate integrated development and harmonious society through cooperation and joint initiatives.
COVA looks at health, education and such basic amenities as rights of citizens. Working on health rights of citizens, COVA was one of the NGO partners of MCH during the period of IPP VIII, and was able to mobilise and train 1100 Link Volunteers during that period. The Link Volunteer system ensured quality health services to women and children at Urban Health Posts in Hyderabad. It linked the communities with the UHPs effectively, motivated them to utilize public health services to the optimum level and demanded accountability from medical staff. (Drawn from the community itself, the Link Volunteers were identified by an NGO, and trained for four days in a year by the NGOs and Medical Officers. Each Link Volunteer was given charge of 20 houses. She was responsible for the registration of pregnant women and their health care, and the immunization of children in these 20 houses.)
COVA continues to advocate on health and educational rights, and strives for HIV/AIDS mainstreaming in development. It is a partner of SAN (Stop AIDS Now) campaign. It has also developed a workplace policy on HIV/AIDS. It has been collaborating with APSACS in increasing awareness on this issue.
Some such successful strategies include promotion of responsible citizenship, community advocacy, inter-faith dialogue, economic empowerment of women, personality development and livelihood guidance for youth, street theatre, and educational inputs to children and riot control measures and management of natural and man-made disasters. The beneficiaries of the developmental and awareness initiatives more often than not enlist with COVA as peace volunteers.
COVA directly works with the slum communities in the old city of Hyderabad through different programmes catering to women, youth and children. COVA-Kasturba Gandhi Peace Centers now work in Hyderabad, and Jammu & Kashmir to address issues related to women’s rights in these regions and to propagate values of peace and harmonious coexistence.
Peace Alliance Partners (PAP) perspective building programme of COVA seeks to counter overt and covert communal biases within individuals and organizations and trains peace activists on conflict transformation. The National Campaign for Right To Basic Services (RTBS) has been launched to secure from the government the provision of water, sanitation, health, education and housing for all citizens as a constitutional right. The Citizens’ Assertion Campaign goes beyond voter awareness programmes and encourages citizens to set the political agenda for their constituencies - and subsequently for the whole country- that could secure inclusiveness, equality and development for all. .
In alliance with a number of national and international organisations COVA seeks to promote peace and cooperation in the Sub-continent and across the globe, through campaigns like the Indo-Pak Joint Signature Campaign against Terrorism and War that concluded in February 2009.
COVA is an active member of Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), CNDP, VANI and Credibility Alliance, and is represented on the Joint Machinery, Planning Commission, Government of India, and GO-NGO Coordination Committee set up by the Government of Andhra Pradesh amongst many other such national and international bodies.
COVA is in the process of setting up an International Center for Applied Peace Studies (ICAPS) and a Centre for People’s Foreign Policy in SAARC Countries.
COVA, 20-4-10, Charminar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, INDIA. PIN: 500 002 Phone :+91-40- 24572984, Fax : +91-40-24574527,
E-mail : covanetwork@gmail.com ; URL: www.covanetwork.org
Please also visit: www.indopakcampaignagainstwarnterror.org
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Mission Statement
COVA aims to create secular platforms in the form of networks for localised needs of harmony and empowerment involving local people, CBOs, VOs, and institutions, cutting across communities and working on the principle of service to humanity.
COVA endeavours to strengthen its member organisations to ensure harmony and sustainable development, and make them self-reliant and self-sustaining