CB BureauRecently, a press release reached CB’s inbox which declared the NGO Pradan’s ‘audacious goal to empower ten million women in rural Indian communities to improve their own circumstances to celebrate 35th anniversary.’ Suffice to say, the only thing not audacious about this statement was the word ‘audacious’. The NGO’s goal is to positively impact 10 million people in remote areas by working with them to build self-help groups (SHGs).
The goal is to directly help the 10 million people by 2022 across 12,500 villages in the 7 states where it has its operation. This will be done through collaborations with NGOs, government and other stakeholders, besides empowering communities to mobilise on their own. So, not ‘directly’, after all.
Pradan hopes to achieve this by ‘mobilising professionals and the right resources and sharing our portfolio of research and advocacy tools,’ as stated by Executive Director Narendranath Damodaran. As part of its 35th-year anniversary, the organisation hosted Samagam 2018 at Siri Fort Auditorium, Delhi, on its Founders’ Day, 18 April 2018. This was to celebrate its achievements and discuss issues and challenges. It claims to have impacted three million lives since its inception in 1983.
Pradan acknowledges the fact that its objective of ‘changing values, beliefs, and norms in society’ requires long-term engagement between the Pradan team and the community institutions, and that this process will take 7 to 10 years for a team in a location. It is, then, not clear as to how it will deliver on its own target in four years.
CB’s questions on how Pradan plans to achieve this – such as the actual plan and strategies, how it defines and qualifies ’empower’ and ‘impact’, what metrics will be used and how will they track the impact – went unanswered. What we received was a long, generic document on its approach that had a lot of text but offered little insight into the actual details of the initiatives that will be taken up. We still have no idea how Pradan expects to ’empower’ women although we hope that 10 million women will benefit from their efforts.
Pradan’s work focuses primarily on women and it helps them organise into collectives (SHGs) that enable them to improve their livelihoods, build linkages, and break the generational cycle of poverty. The Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Ikea Foundation have been core partners, supplying both grants and resources. Some of Pradan’s work is initiating sectoral institutions like Tasar (Silk) Development Foundation (TDF) and National Small holder Poultry Development Trust (NSPDT), supporting 70 NGOs that focus on the rural poor, and building programmes in partnership with the government, such as the National Rural Livelihoods Mission.