Community engagement and mobilisation are central to AKF’s approach to ensuring local ownership and the sustainability of programme interventions. In India, we focus on developing and strengthening sustainable community institutions, enabling them to deliver critical social and financial services. Federating these groups helps them to better connect with local government programmes to access entitlements and public services. We also help migrants and other vulnerable groups to access state entitlements in Bihar, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
9,000
AKF supports 9,500 civil society organisations
AKF supports 9,500 civil society organisations, representing 1.6 million people. These institutions play a major role in mobilising communities to plan, implement and monitor initiatives in agriculture, watershed development, irrigation management, horticulture and dairy development. The local institutions operate at sub-village, village and block levels, with AKF and AKRSP providing technical and institutional capacity building support as well as strengthening relationships with government line departments, panchayats (the Indian term for local self-government) and, in some cases, with financial service providers and agricultural input suppliers/traders.
We also train women’s self-help groups and self-help group federations to address gender-based violence and gender equality in their communities.