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| The Mahakalasam |
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| The Mahakalasam is a legally registered Charitable Trust run by the Trustees who are elected by the Kalasam Cluster Groups, holding offices rotationally for limited periods. The Trustees have no automatic rights to the Trust properties, other than reimbursements for prepaid expenses and agreed remunerations for services rendered. Businesses transacted should comply with the Kalasam objectives which are recorded, accounted and audited by a Chartered Accountant. |
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| The Mahakalasam’s functions include opening of their own people’s bank for extending credit facilities to their constituent members for social and welfare activities; for networking with the other financial institutions, government/civic bodies and NGOs for community development programmes; and for providing care and growth to the community children, assisting in their formal/nonformal education and protecting them against social abuses. The Kalasams function independently. Although the Trust Deed of Mahakalsam describes Nanban as a ‘co-founder’ of the Trust, Nanban’s relationship is one of a ‘friend’ to the Kalasam movement. |
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Similar Self Help Groups for the Youth and for the Men of the community have now come up in Madurai under the Kalasam fold.
Nanban's proactive interactions with each levels of the Kalasam hierarchy include: |
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- assist in mobilizing potential new members from the local communities to join the Kalasams
- spread awareness among groups of marginalized families for protection and promotion of the basic Human Rights making Nanban available to the community as a Social Support Network and moral backing, in providing knowledge, contextual information, directly or through appropriate professionals - like lawyers, medical consultants, educationists, economists, entrepreneurs, social lobbyists, bankers, govt./quasi govt. agencies on health and hygiene, civic rights, micro-credit facilities, etc. - which can add values to community-capacity building and decisions making. These help them in taking up desirable developmental initiatives towards full-filling their empowerment aspirations.
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