SPREAD addresses both the immediate needs of community members and long term sustainable solutions to marginalization and poverty.
Community members look to SPREAD when they have immediate needs, such as medical emergencies, health checks, warm winter clothes, educational supplies and support for persons with disabilities. SPREAD is grateful for the contributions of individual donors which support these activities.
Using long-term sustainable solutions, SPREAD builds the capacity of marginalized communities to access their rights under the Indian Constitution by:
- Building community institutions and developing their planning and advocacy skills to enable collective action.
- Increasing engagement and co-operation between community institutions and government to affect change.
- Supporting resource generation and management to secure livelihoods.
Current programmes
- Right to Food
- Right to Land
- Right to Work
- Rights for the Disabled
- Rights of Women and Children
- People's Organisations
- Other Work
Process
For more than ten years, SPREAD has used a participatory development process that builds the capacity of community based organizations in a systematic way, starting with the immediate needs of families and progressing to issues at the block level.
- Organizing women's self help groups around savings and credit programmes stabilizes family finances and enhances the status of women in the villages.
- Village Development Committees engage both women and men to tackle broader issues while building governance and advocacy skills.
- Participation in Displaced People Forums, Forest Dwellers Forums and panchayat Women's Federations gives community members the opportunity to further exercise their capabilities, network with like-minded institutions both inside and outside the district and state, and prepare for governance at the block-level and election to formal political office.
Guiding Principles
- SPREAD's approach is participatory. All stakeholders' participation will be sought while making decisions at organisation and project levels.
- Equity for society's poorest is SPREAD's priority as it exercises positive discrimination in favour of the underprivileged.
- SPREAD respects the community's knowledge and skill and takes this into account when designing and implementing interventions.
- Gender equity is a component of all SPREAD's activities as it seeks to change the unequal position of women in the community.
- SPREAD ensures transparency in all transactions and is accountable to its partners and individual donors.
- SPREAD implements its work within the framework of the Indian Constitution.
