PIDS being a relatively new organization does not have a long history. It was established about six years back, on culmination of BRUWAS (Balochistan Rural Water Supply and Sanitation), a project supported by the Royal Netherlands Government that aimed to improve the water supply and sanitation situation in rural communities of Balochistan. The project remained functional for about seven years – from 1992 to 1999, when the Donor decided to pull off following Pakistan’s nuclear explosion. At this stage, all stakeholders were weary of abandoning the project altogether and felt there should be some way of perpetuating the project benefits for the communities. Mr. Babar Shah Khan, a member of the Technical Team of BRUWAS decided to take up the challenge and establish an organization for this purpose with the help of some other experienced staff members of the project. The Royal Netherlands Embassy via BRUWAS extended cooperation and support for this venture, which is registered under the Society Registration Act in the name of Participatory Integrated Development Society – PIDS. Resultantly some of the project assets were transferred to this newly established organization as seed resources.

            As one would expect, PIDS has remained predominantly focused on water supply and sanitation sector since its inception. The organization was quick to win credibility and stakeholders’ confidence and has been selected for several projects by the Government of Balochistan as well as foreign donor agencies including UNICEF. But all has not been smooth and the organization has had its share of hardships and financial crises, primarily due to donor flight during this period. However, it is amazing to note that PIDS did manage to build some endowment and assets. This speaks a lot about the austerity and pragmatism of the PIDS leadership. For the PIDS’ stakeholders, this small endowment offers a faint glimmer of hope for organizational continuity.

            At the dawn of 2001, PIDS was still exclusively dependent on project funding for it’s functioning. Despite having some capital assets, the entire operations were being managed on project basis with hardly any organizational infrastructure and systems in place. Staff was hired at the start of a new project and routinely laid off on completion. Putting it bluntly, in terms of its management and operations, PIDS was an ‘assortment of projects’ instead of ‘an organization’. Though the leadership had some sense of the direction that it wanted the organization to follow, clarity on the organizational mission and its understanding among all stakeholders were missing. Hence the projects were usually selected on the basis of availability and donor choice rather than organizational priorities.

            This was the time when the PIDS’ leadership realized that the project mode was seriously hampering organizational growth, employees’ morale and sense of belonging and organization’s long-term sustainability, and this needed to be changed.

             The Chief Executive of PIDS and a few staff members had attended some of the NGO Resource Center’s training workshops and thought that NGORC could help and guide PIDS through this change process. Thus a request was made to this effect by the PIDS management to the NGORC. The Centre agreed to provide professional management consultancy support to PIDS under its Organizational Development Programme.

             Under its Organizational Development (OD) support, NGORC helped PIDS in the areas of Organizational Capacity Assessment, Development of Policies, Procedures and Systems, Human Resource Development for both the PIDS’ staff and board members and Strategic Planning. The strategic planning workshops spread over a period of about one year have led to the development of first strategic plan.

             This first strategic plan of PIDS was developed for a five-year time frame covering the period from 2002 to 2006.

             In end of 2004, organization felt the need to review the first strategic plan. Therefore, a staff deputed to review and come up with an ideas on the basis of lesson learned to formulate second strategic plan for the period of five years from 2006 - 2010. As a result of an exercise and guidance received from PIDS Board members, PPAF, UNICEF, NGORC and PCP from time to time, we proudly announced that management of PIDS has able to produced its second Strategic plan.