Chaitanya Educational & Rural Development Society

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Chaitanya Educational and Rural Development Society (CERDS) is registered as society under Indian Societies Registrations Act XXI of 1860 at Ongole, Prakasam District on 05.11.1996 with registration number: 449 / 1996.

CERDS was promoted by a team of rural natives interested in the field of social and rural development services. The organisation was started with a greater Aim of “promoting sustainable self-reliance village communities through changing the attitudes among the public”. To attain this task, right from the inception, organisation is working in a different way following a unique approach i.e., promoting and working with community organisations according to the identified felt-needs of the communities. At present CERDS is working in 25 needy and deserving villages in Prakasam and Guntur Districts of Andhra Pradesh.

Chaithanya Educational and Rural Development Society (CERDS) works with men and women and children to help them identify and resolve their own problems. CERDS approach assists whole communities develop the capacity to overcome the affects of poverty and create a new future. CERDS believe that when the poor themselves are the initiators in resolving the problems of poverty. CERDS use a development process that intimately involves the poor themselves in their own development. CERDS call it the Participatory Community Development Process (PCDP).

Disadvantaged social groups such as scheduled tribes, scheduled castes, fishermen and weavers emerged as the main target population for CERDS. In all these target groups the poorest of the poor, such as the artisans, agricultural labourers, small and marginal farmers, migratory workers and bonded labourers became a natural option for CERDS’s programme intervention. The designing of programmes has been with focus on the most vulnerable category of society i.e. women, children, disabled and farmers.