Our Projects
about prayatn
Prayatn’s vision is a just society in which men and women are equal. We believe that each and every person – irrespective of their sex, age, caste, class and religion – should have a life of freedom and dignity in which they enjoy all their human rights and have the opportunity to fully develop their potentials.
In pursuit of this vision, Prayatn works to enable people facing inequality and injustice to help themselves. We aim to strengthen ties in local communities so that people can work together to bring about positive changes in their lives. We particularly encourage women to participate in this process, as they are the most marginalized, downtrodden and powerless social group in India. Prayatn gives them the opportunity to develop their decision-making skills and leadership capacity so that they can address the issues affecting their lives. Playing the role of catalysts, we help to implement sustainable development processes that will make communities self-sufficient in the long term.
PRAYATN was founded in 1992 to enable people to respond to and change their situation of inequality and injustice. We focus on education and awareness, community involvement and collective action as the driving force of social and economic change. Our work is guided by the philosophy that a community should be viewed as a potential resource, that can be honed with the skills and knowledge that will help them to come out of the situation of deprivation.
Prayatn has worked in charity mode, development mode as well as rights-based mode in past. Through our experience, we learnt that in the country full of diversity, single approach may not be able to provide solutions to complex socio-economic issues. The organization, therefore, started experimenting with mix of approaches that gradually took shape of Model Development Approach. In this, we try to analyze the problem and understand root causes and then develop and demonstrate solution for resolving complex social issues by addressing all the dimensions of the problem simultaneously. To ensure that the model is duly developed, documented and disseminated, we lay high emphasis upon defining the processes of working, planning, implementation and monitoring elaborately in written form, abiding by them in strict manner and reviewing them from time to time. We believe that if process of working is not right, the true change that we aim to achieve will not materialize. Our innovative system of Stakeholder-wise Milestone based planning, implementation and monitoring, under which quarterly milestones of changes for each type of stakeholders are defined in advance and pursued, has proved to be very effective in achieving the desired change in each of the stakeholders in the long run; and hence, ensuring desired impact in the situation.
- Enhancing local capacity to address developmental needs and ensuring appropriate access to entitlements thereby developing community-based systems and mechanisms;
- Engaging with institutions for accountability, thereby developing operational partnership and collaboration to ensure access of partner communities to entitlements;
- Experimenting and developing child and women-centred development processes for broader replication;
- Developing experience-based knowledge management model, thereby working out training programmes for sharing of knowledge with development workers, academician, government departments and development professionals.
Development and Strengthening of CBOs
We enhance local capacity by organizing local communities in the form of community-based institutions having proper vision of development, due awareness and indigenously developed community-based systems and mechanisms to achieve the vision. These institutions include collectives of children, adolescents and adults which are formed at village level and are later networked into federations at cluster, block and district level.
Convergence
We engage with local service providers and democratic institutions like schools, health centers, government officials, elected representatives, etc., through constructive and innovative ways to build their capacity and bridge gap between them and the community so that their services become available to community in qualitative and effective manner and democratic system at grassroots level is strengthened.
Networking & Advocacy
We network with other civil society organizations for mutual sharing of experiences and learning, and collectively engage with policy makers for addressing developmental issues at wider level.
Research & Documentation
We undertake researches and documentation aimed at improving our understanding of situation, learning how to improve the situation and sharing the same with others for wider knowledge development and use.
Prayatn has presence at grassroots level in 5 states – Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand. Across these states we are covering about 14 districts as listed below:
| RAJASTHAN | UTTAR PRADESH | ODISHA |
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