NEED's approach involves supporting marginalised people by linking them together in groups and building their capacity to effect change in their own lives and communities. The organisation has 4 areas of focus:
Drawing on these approaches, NEED has launched specific projects in over 350 different villages in 6 different districts of Uttar Pradesh. To cite only one example, in September 2002, NEED launched the PACS (Poorest Area Civil Society) Project called "Empowering the Rural Poor, especially Women, through building local 'Women Owned' Organizations, Creation of Network Platforms and Opportunity and Enhancing Human Resource Development in a Sustainable Manner." The project focussed on mobilising the women through SHGs. Because Panchayats (village councils) mainly work in isolation instead of planning, executing, and reviewing their work in collaboration with the local community, NEED has set up two Panchayat Information Centres (PICs) at the village level for distillation and dissemination of information. The goal is to urge Panchayat officials to work in a more community-driven way. Also as part of this project, to address the fact that girls under 10 were doing domestic work rather than attending school, NEED opened 'Remedial Centres' in an effort to equip the girls with the skills needed to directly enter the next level in the formal primary school system. The project is also organising Family Life Education programmes to provide information to girls and women on child marriage, girls' education, and reproductive health.
One ongoing NEED programme uses the Internet as a marketing tool. As part of its effort to form and strengthen grassroots groups, NEED trains SHGs to produce and sell their own handicrafts by building women's vocational and marketing skills. NEED provides training in various crafts based on a woman's existing skills, talents, interests, and resources. These women are primarily from poor, dispossessed, marginalised, or unreached sectors. Photos of products marketed by these women are pictured on the NEED website [1].
Economic Development, Women, Environment, Education, Political Development.
Organisers claim that approximately 30,000 micro-groups have been formed through NEED's facilitation.
NEED claims that, of India's one billion people, 84 million of them are considered to be very poor. In the past years, the number of women living in poverty has increased disproportionately to the number of men living in poverty due to women's limited access to power, education, training and productive resources, and the rigidity of socially ascribed roles. Uttar Pradesh is the most populated state in India and therefore has the highest number of poor people.
Chief Executive, Network of Entrepreneurship & Economic Development (NEED)
39 Neel Vihar, Near 14-Sector Power House
Indira Nagar, Lucknow 226 016
Uttar Pradesh, India
Tel.: 091-0522-2712671, 2712673
Fax: 091-0522-2302694
need@satyam.net.in [4]
NEED website [5]
Emails from Anil K. Singh to The Communication Initiative on November 9 2003 and April 15 2005; and NEED website [5].
How useful did you find the knowledge and contacts on this page to your work?
Links:
[1] http://www.comminit.com/redirect.cgi?m=ac9b55f63819fcb38a822cb82e202658
[2] http://www.comminit.com/en/node/119471
[3] http://www.comminit.com/en/taxonomy/term/307
[4] http://www.comminit.com/en/mailto
[5] http://www.comminit.com/redirect.cgi?m=848cc36bfdad2112cd55b926dddac4aa