Achange undertakes training, documentation, grassroots action research, advocacy and campaigning with individual women and their partners, community members, civil society representatives, and other state/ institutional actors. It works on awareness building on violence, health, education, development, and other issues critical for individual and collective empowerment. It also works on production and distribution of creative material on feminist issues, dissemination of information and knowledge on feminist concerns to meet the needs of women’s groups, NGOs, and development organizations and advocacy on women’s rights and gender equality.
The growth of the non-profit sector in India in the last two decades has been phenomenal. India has possibly the largest number of active non-government, not-for-profit organizations in the world. Grassroots NGOs work in numerous spheres which touch the daily lives of marginalized communities across the country. Engaging directly with the people, these NGOs are able to participate in the thought-making process of the communities they work with, and thus have the capacity to bring about long-term change. As such, the sector has had a substantial contribution in the nation building process.
But accelerated development soon reaches a stagnant point if it is not sustainable. Ensuring sustainability of initiatives requires a reorientation of NGOs focusing on their capacity building to attain competitiveness. This is not an easy transition, requiring NGOs to rethink and reform their programme designs, planning, fund mobilisation, fund management, and effective programme delivery. There is also a need to guide these NGOs to be able to identify and adapt with the changing national and global socio-political and economic developments which affect them. To equip and facilitate grassroots NGOs in the country to address these issues and eventually aim at achieving sustainable development at the grassroots and community level, Achange initiated Empowering Grassroots.
Empowering Grassroots is aimed at handholding, training and enabling community based organisations (CBOs) to maximise their impact on the ground. Under ‘Empowering Grassroots’ initiative, CBOs are trained on vital issues relevant to the development sector in the country like scalability, sustainability, communication, resource mobilisation and governance by industry experts from reputed Indian and international organisations.
Empowering Grassroots is not only an effort to strengthen the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid in India, but also an attempt to bring transparency and accountability in the workings of the development sector at the grassroots level.
Our NGO that employs adults with intellectual disabilities to create exquisite hand-crafted items. Achange not only provides them with paid employment but through the therapeutic medium of creative and culinary activities, enables them to foster self-expression, stress management and emotional growth.
AChange is a charitable organisation that started in 2018 by training less privileged and unskilled men or women in to stitch bags. Since then Achange helped many families to develop skills and earn a regular income; this has changed their lives and the lives of their families.
By handcrafting and selling tastefully designed and nationally appreciated eco-friendly products, Achange means of livelihood and support for those that are often assumed to lead a dependent life. our organisation adopts a pioneering and creative approach where young adults with autism and developmental delay are encouraged and assisted to take small steps towards self-sufficiency.