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Regenerating check dams revives our community
Action Related to the Organization
of Education, Health and Nutrition
(AROEHAN)
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for truly sustainable change
,
the people must own the change process.
Firmly believing in this idea, Action Related
to the Organization of Education, Health
and Nutrition (AROEHAN) works towards
empowering communities to demand their
rights and entitlements, to understand
processes and public delivery systems and
the effectiveness of collective action, and to
make a rights-based perspective an important
component of programmes, advocacy and
policy. Every intervention by AROEHAN in
its core areas of health, education, livelihoods
and governance that creates services and
opportunities for people also weaves in
participatory action by the community.
‘In our quest for bringing sustainable change
to the lives of tribal and rural poor, we work
closely with villagers through hamlet-level
people’s committees, women’s groups, statutory
committees of the Gram Panchayat and
through the Gram Sabha, seeking to empower
villagers to engage in participatory decision-
making regarding village development.
We also work closely with the government
departments acknowledging that if change is to
be sustainable, systems must endure,’ says Amit
Narkar, CEO of AROEHAN.
Founded by Anjali Kanitkar in 2006
AROEHAN was established to
support sustainable change in tribal
and rural communities through
building a cadre of committed
and empowered youth who would
initiate and sustain these efforts at
transformation. The effort was to
access and utilize available resources
to the optimum, keeping in mind the
values of social justice and human
dignity. The projects undertaken
by AROEHAN are exercises in
creating sustainable livelihoods,
deepening democratic processes,
while facilitating better services for
rural and tribal people in the areas of
water conservation, migration, solar-
based irrigation, nutrition, education
and women’s empowerment in
Maharashtra.