Kottapuram Integrated Development Society (KIDS) is the official organ for Social Action of Diocese of Kottapuram in order to promote, conduct, facilitate and coordinate developmental and social welfare activities for the poor and the marginalized irrespective of caste, creed or community.
KIDS, which is a registered voluntary organization under the Travancore Cochin, Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies Act of 1955, has its headquarters at Kottapuram in Thrissur District, operating in four revenue districts, namely Thrissur, Ernakulam, Malappuram and Palakad.
Established in the year 1987, within a year, the Society has earned a very good reputation and mass base in this area in terms of organizing and activating the under-privileged and weaker sections of Society for their self-reliant and sustainable development.
The Society has been considerably successful in imparting proper orientation, vision and skills to a good number of these SHG-Kudumbashrees so that they are now the focal points of development initiatives in their target areas. By now 380 such women SHG-Kumbashrees with a membership of 7600, 55 men SHGs with a membership of 1000 men, 150 Children SGHs with more than 4000 members, 5 SHGs for Dis-abled with 80 members and 4 youth SHGs with 60 members with a total of more than 15000 members have been organized and functioning actively in 20 Panchayaths and 3 Municipalities of the operational areas of the Society. The SHG-Kudumbashrees perform as the link agent at the Village level for implementing projects and programmes of the Society. These SHGs are further clustered as Federations.
In its initial phase, the Society was characterized by an intensive effort to conscientize and motivate the marginal groups for self-help development endeavours. In the wake of that awareness campaign, several Women’s Action Groups (Self Help Groups) SHGs emerged and began to actively participate in the development programs of KIDS.
As the vision says, KIDS’ thrust essentially entails an enabling process through which the target population lives a life of their own, in self-reliance with full human dignity and confidence and in complete harmony with nature.
KIDS has developed better standards in the fields of planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, accounting etc. Both Central and State Governments are shown keen interest in associating with KIDS for their various programmes. KIDS is facilitating its programme in such a way to serve the local bodies as well as Community Based Organizations like Kudumbashree. It has made valuable contributions to the decentralized planning process of local bodies through participatory approach.
The perspective of social action have acquired dramatic changes during the last one decade, from a charity approach, KIDS was able to make significant progress towards making its projects and programme more sustainable. The 10 years action plan developed in the year 2000 has helped to achieve these exceptional results.
