Founded: 1998
Headquarters: Kotra, Rajasthan
Geographical Focus: Rajasthan
Lives Impacted: 232,900+
Organization Overview:
KAS was founded and is run by tribal leaders in Kotra block which is a hilly region at the border of Rajasthan and Gujarat and has a tribal population of 95%, primarily Bhils and Garasiyas. It works to empower migrant labourers, youth, and women by investing in education, livelihoods, forest rights, and health.
Founded: 1986
Headquarters: Gudalur, Tamil Nadu
Geographical Focus: Tamil Nadu
Lives Impacted: 12,000+
Organization Overview:
Action for Community Organisation, Rehabilitation and Development (ACCORD) aims to empower the Paniyas, Bettakurumbas, Mullakurumbas and Kattunayakans tribal communities in the Gudalur valley of the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu through diverse initiatives including promoting savings among the community, facilitating access to government schemes, promoting Just Change an Adivasi led Producer Company selling tea, spices and a range of products. ACCORD’s mission since the 1980s has been to enable the community living in the area to regain their fast-losing identity, to make them self reliant, and to enable them to participate in the mainstream society as equal partners with dignity and pride and not as a disadvantaged community.
Founded: 1981
Headquarters: Kashipur, Odisha
Geographical Focus: Odisha
Lives Impacted: 16,000+
Organization Overview:
Based in drought-prone tribal regions of Odisha, Agragamee aims to bring self-reliance through livelihoods and income generation, education, women & youth leadership and institution building. It works with Scheduled Tribe communities including the Khond, Paraja, and Jhodia tribes in Odisha across 6 aspirational districts. These are some of India’s most chronically poor and remote districts with historic gaps in development.
Founded: 2005
Geographical Focus: Madhya Pradesh
Organization Overview:
The main aim of Aim for Awareness of Society (AAS) is to build community leadership that can help create child-friendly panchayats where every child has access to education and government support. AAS’s interventions are based on 4 pillars – protection (tackling issues like child abuse, child marriage and child labour), prevention (working with parents and supporting individuals in the child’s immediate ecosystem), people’s participation, partnerships (knowledge and resource based partnerships) and propagation (awareness building). Through this pathway of 4 pillars, the organization has been able to impart life skills training, capacity building, and access to education and basic amenities to children. They also aim to build community volunteers who can mobilize youth groups towards volunteering work.
Founded: 2001
Headquarters: Goalpara, Assam
Geographical Focus: Assam and Meghalaya
Lives Impacted: 30,000+
Organization Overview:
Ajagar Social Circle was started to bring about a change in socio-economic status, support low-income communities and increase the livelihood opportunities of the people in north-eastern region. The organization at present is engaged in a range of activities that collectively aim to provide social and economic security to the farming, allied and non-farming community living in the Assam-Meghalaya belt.
Founded: 2016
Headquarters: Thane, Maharashtra
Geographical Focus: Maharashtra
Lives Impacted: 232,500+
Organization Overview:
Anubhuti Trust empowers youth through leadership development and sensitization on issues of gender, caste, class, ethnicity and language. It primarily works with NT-DNT (Nomadic and De-Notified Tribes), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Scheduled Caste (SC) communities in Maharashtra.
Founded: 1996
Headquarters: Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand
Geographical Focus: Uttarakhand
Lives Impacted: 2,500+
Organization Overview:
ARPAN works in Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand at the trijunction of Nepal, Tibet and China Border. This is an earthquake prone, hilly region with most tribal communities displaced from their forest lands. Arpan focuses on women from tribal communities who are at the intersection of ethnicity and gender based oppression. Their key interventions are: land rights for women, livelihoods, education and women and child protection.
Founded: 2014
Headquarters: Bagalkote, Karnataka
Geographical Focus: Karnataka
Lives Impacted: 48,887
Organization Overview:
Ashadeepa was founded and is run by Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in the remote district of Bagalkote in Bangalore. It works to address challenges and empower PWDs and their families; underserved women and children through community-based rehabilitation programs. It aims to provide support to PWDs through all stages of their lives with effective delivery of interventions across education, health and livelihood.
Founded: 2001
Headquarters: Sambalpur, Odisha
Geographical Focus: Odisha
Lives Impacted: 24,500+
Organization Overview:
Bhittibhumi works with Dalit, Other Backward Class (OBC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities, especially Gond, Kisan and Sabar tribes, in the Sambalpur and Bargarh districts of Odisha. They support smallholder farmers and children with accessing entitlements, diversifying agricultural practices, and reconnecting with their social-cultural heritage.
https://bravesoulsfoundation.org/
Founded: 2021
Geographical Focus: Delhi, West Bengal, Chandigarh
Organization Overview:
Brave Souls Foundation’s works with acid attack survivors and their aim is to ultimately ensure that survivors are able to reintegrate within society, are financially independent and capable of leading a self-sufficient life. Brave Souls Foundation engages with the target community in a holistic manner, working with survivors of acid attacks through a 360 degree intervention model supporting them as a first point of contact post-incident, to providing legal aid, health support, rehabilitation and reintegration support. They also work on strengthening systems through advocacy efforts with government stakeholders for a ban on access to acid and the introduction of safeguarding policies. Through their interventions, Brave Souls Foundation has been able to build a strong network of survivors of acid attacks, who have a strong sense of camaraderie amongst themselves and have been reclaiming public spaces for themselves through social campaigns.
https://communityinitiative.in/
Founded: 2002
Geographical Focus: Manipur
Organization Overview:
Centre for Community Initiative’s (CCI) leader Pauzagin Tonsing’s personal experience with his son, who was born with a disability, prompted him to work with Children with Disabilities(CwD), specifically in Manipur, where there is a huge gap in infrastructure, community support and resources for disability. CCI focuses on building community ownership and agency in several ways. While working with CwDs, they take an individualized approach to building a customized plan for each child. To ensure the child can receive the support required, they engage and capacitate different stakeholders in a community. With parents, they heavily engage in identifying needs, monitoring progress, forming parents’ groups, training them to advocate with different authorities for the rights of CwDs, facilitating access to special educator learning courses and providing counselling. They also train the staff of government and private schools in the area to enable the inclusion of CwDs in mainstream education facilities. In addition, CCI also runs a school for children with disabilities to ensure that access to education is not hampered.
Founded: 1991
Geographical Focus: Odisha
Organization Overview:
Bijaylal, the founder and leader of the organization, belongs to the OBC community, which is one of the target communities for the organization’s initiatives. Having grown up in a family dedicated to community-based education, Bijaylal returned to his village post-graduation to engage in social service. The organization’s commitment to community empowerment is evident in its early work, where after building capacities in watershed management, the community took charge of its development initiatives, raising funds and overseeing programs independently. The overarching goal is to foster self-reliant communities capable of sustaining their development initiatives even after the organization exits the community.
Founded: 2006
Headquarters: Chandel, Manipur
Geographical Focus: Manipur
Lives Impacted: 35,000+
Organization Overview:
Centre for Women and Girls (CWG) was founded in 2006 by Hechin Haokip in Chandel district of Manipur and works with 2 districts along the Indo-Myanmar Border. The organization endeavors to empower women and youth by providing need-based capacity building on sustainable livelihood, human rights, and governance. They strive to promote justice through quality education with the involvement of the community.