We are an international development agency whose aim is to fight poverty and injustice. We have been in India since 1972. We partner with poor and excluded communities to collectively address poverty, inequity and injustice.

We reached 300 civil society organisations and nearly 5 million poor and excluded people over the past 30 years, helping them fight for and gain their rights to food, shelter, work, education, healthcare and a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

Our vision is a world without poverty and injustice, one in which every woman, man and girl and boy enjoys the right to life with dignity. We work with local partners to make the most of their knowledge and experience.

Our mission is to work with poor and excluded women, men and girls and boys to eradicate poverty, discrimination and injustice.

The people we work with include the dalit and tribal people, other sections of the rural and urban poor, women, children, and minorities. Within these groups, our focus is on those in vulnerable situations such as people living with chronic hunger, ill health, migrant and bonded workers, children out of education, urban homeless people, trafficked persons, persons with disability, displaced people and refugees, and people affected by natural and human-made disasters.

Our partners range from small community support groups to national alliances and international networks seeking education for all, trade justice and action against HIV/AIDS. Our work with these national and international campaign networks highlights the issues that affect poor people and influences the way governments and international institutions think.

We have a unique way of working :

• We focus on building alliances of the marginalised to strengthen existing capacities to fight poverty.
• We work by f acilitating just and democratic governance in order to deepen democracy.
• Our endeavour is to enforce the rights of women and girls.
• Throughout this, addressing immediate poverty needs to make sure that communities cope well after emergencies and access their rights from the state.
• In all this, we work through diversifying our financial and human resource base.

We constantly seek new solutions and ask ourselves how we can make the greatest impact with our resources. We make the most of our skills and abilities by working at many levels - local, national, regional and international.