The SSEP Annual and Project design meetings were held on the 5th and 6th of December 2022 at the St. Jhon Mary Vianney Clergy house, Bulutota, with the participation of 45 project coordinators and field officers. In addition, a few Diocesan Directors from Colombo, Jaffna, Kandy, Kurunegala and Rathnapura were also present during the two-day meeting. Rev. Fr. Luke Nelson, National Director of Caritas Sri Lanka also participated and addressed the gathering. He mentioned about the importance of working together as one Caritas family in advocating and lobbying for the environmental justice and rights.

The National Team from Colombo met all the SSEP regional staff, which included 13 regional coordinators and 26 field officers during these two days. On the first day, the M&E session was conducted. All the regional coordinators presented their first-year SSEP activities and the related evidence to others. This M&E event was an interactive and useful session for the participants with multiple cross-learning opportunities. They shared their experience as a team and learned lessons related to their contextual environmental issues and how each DC tried to address them.

On the second day, a workshop was conducted related to the theory of Participatory Project Design (PPD) in view of the 2nd year project design.  Many group activities were conducted in understanding the technical concepts and how to apply them in real contexts.

End of the day they prepared their problem tree analysis, objective tree analysis, the stakeholder analysis and they drafted their 2nd-year activities related to SSEP.

This workshop was organized under the leadership of Rev. Fr. Luke Nelson, National Director and the SSEP team from Caritas Sri Lanka – SEDEC.