Environmental issues have sparked worldwide concern and the conservation of God’s creation is of utmost importance to Christians. With this background, courses are offered in building awareness and training, in simple, but effective practices of conservation of forests and water bodies, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptations.
Healthcare is a concern in India among both the rural and urban poor. Preventive medicine and basic awareness would avert many diseases. In our training, we teach first-aid, health and hygiene, and nutrition. We also teach them to benefit from government health projects related to malaria and TB. This training helps grass root workers to educate and care for the community.
Micro-credit has gained a lot of prominence in community development today. Though it is being written off by many as not being very effective in poverty alleviation, we have found that micro-credit programs are successful if they are implemented with a proper methodology. Institutionalized business approaches in micro-credit that exist for profit-maximizing have to be replaced with a self-governing approach where the poor are given the authority to make their own decisions and run their own program. This has been very successful in India as the government has many programs to partner with the self-help groups that are facilitated among the poor. TENT is advocating this approach and has established working models through the trainees in different parts of India.
TENT is an advocate of participatory planning and action by the rural poor. The poor are empowered to organize themselves into a community-based organization so that they are able to strive towards their own development. The participation of the people helps in the sustainability of the development program and it integrates into an all-round development of communities. The paternalistic approach, where an NGO is the main doer, has not resulted in development of the poor. This only creates dependency in the long term. TENT has initiated the formation of people’s organization in some parts of India
