The NGOs of the Year and Runners-Up 2006
Joint Winners
Gram Vikas
In 1979, a group of student volunteers from Chennai founded Gram Vikas, a rural development organisation, to improve the quality of life of the rural poor in Orissa. Today, the organisation serves a population of nearly 200,000 people across 559 villages in 17 districts of Orissa. One of their primary tools “Mantra: Movement and Action Network for Transformation of Rural Area”, helps foster social inclusion of the poor and marginalised.
Primarily, their commitment has been to make available:
- Enabling infrastructure to provide for appropriate living conditions including protected drinking water, sanitation and disaster proof housing and energy systems
- Promoting conducive mechanisms to increase food production, food security and sustainable livelihoods
- Enabling and promoting people’s access to basic education and primary health services
- Strengthening people’s and local self-governance institutions to achieve self-reliance
PRADAN
It is up to educated professionals to work at the grass-root level to help eradicate mass-poverty. This was the belief with which PRADAN was set up in 1983. Their objectives involve expanding livelihood opportunities to the poor and to help develop their skills to organise, negotiate and network. The major programmes of PRADAN presently are promotion of women’s self help group, livelihood programmes based on land and water resources, forest resources, livestock and rural micro enterprises.
Today the group has over 268 professionals who work with over 100,000 families in more than 2600 villages across seven states.
Runners-Up
Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)
In 1984, a group of 31 women Chikanari artisans came together to form SEWA—Lucknow, thus breathing new life into a dying industry and taking back the control of their lives from middlemen. By employing a direct marketing system targeting fair trade social-minded organisations, the Chikanari craftswomen got sufficient work at good wages without exploitation. The trust also ensures social benefits like education and health benefits to their members and their children. A testimony to its success is the fact that today there are more than 5000 women artisans associated with the organisation. SEWA has been able to link women artisans with nationalised banks to create a new cadre of 2240 individual and independent entrepreneurs.
Spastic Society of India
The Spastic Society of India, founded by Mrs. Mithu Alur in 1972, was the first initiative to alert the nation of the needs of children with cerebral palsy. In the year 1973 the society set up the first ever school for children with Cerebral Palsy for providing treatment and education. A teacher training college, a therapist training programme and a skills development unit soon followed. The society went on to set up two national level projects: the National Job Development Centre and The National Centre for Research and Training.
To improve the quality of mobility aids and the needs of the user the society set up the triumph Mobility Aids Centre in Chembur.
And today after 35 years, the society has played a major role in providing resource facilities for people with cerebral palsy in more than 50% of the Indian states and union territories.
