Myrada has come a long way from the decade of resettlement of Tibetans. Since the late 70s, when Myrada made a conscious decision to delve into the field of rural development, Myrada looked for a basic approach to identifying the poor and establishing sustainable mechanisms for addressing poverty in the rural areas.
Since around 2010, MYRADA decided to classify its entire range of activities into the following major domains:
- Livelihoods
- Environment and Natural Resource Management
- Health and Sanitation
- Education/Vocational Education
- Capacity Building
The diagram above portrays this growth where work in different sectors has been added to Myrada’s portfolio. The underlying philosophy in all our work has been and is building local people’s institutions to address issues in the sector. All work in any of the sectors has the underlying objective of mitigating risk and thereby enabling the poor to improve their quality of life.
The focus right through has been on building local people’s institutions. The pioneering work done in forming and establishing self-help groups of poor rural women is what has put Myrada on the national and international map. Myrada has grown over the decades. Another important point to note is that Myrada has remained a grass root organisation. Our expertise comes from the continuous opportunity to “keep our hands digging into the soil” to learn from and with the people we work with and work for.
‘Influencing policy’ has been another overarching feature of our work – in keeping with the mission of influencing policy in favour of the poor, MYRADA has constantly advocated for policy changes at every level – from the district to the state to the national level. We have sought to influence state policy in every sector – from livelihoods, to natural resource management to skill training and health. Details of our attempts at influencing policy can be found here