At just 18 years of age, Beant is no stranger to social work. She got her first taste of it at the age of 11 as an Adolescent Peer Educator, and was hooked! As the primary driver of Ambuja Foundation’s Women Empowerment Programme in her community, Beant is a busy teen – juggling social work duties, studies in Tally, household chores and of course – all important time with friends!

Hem Raj, a 37 year old farmer, faced one big obstacle in his farming enterprise – getting his produce to market! With no road out of his village, the only way to sell goods, was to ‘walk it out’ – loading produce into baskets that they lugged up hills to the nearest bus stand. It was back breaking work and by the time they reached the market, produce was severely damaged.

The women of Bhadrapali mean business. Once restricted to their homes, today every woman in the community is an SHG member, and earns their own income. This ‘women’s movement’ has caused a wave of change, with the women transforming the community into a ‘Model Village’. Juggling a multitude of tasks, these women are a force to be reckoned with!

In Chirawa, Rajasthan, most of the women are bound to their homes, with families bestowing the responsibility for earning an income on the men of the house. But 19-year-old Monu decided to buck the trend by pursuing a career in Food & Beverage.

Mansa Ram is 75 and supposed to be retired – living the relaxed and quiet life. But as an avid agriculturalist, water conservationist and the President of the Village Development Committee, Mansa is busier than ever! A retired Subedar Major of the 14 Dogra Regiment, Mansa retired from service in 1997 and has spent the last 25 years transforming his farm and village - and it all started with water. With a multitude of water issues in the area, Mansa has been a driving force behind the Village Watershed Development Committee and has transformed the water situation on his own property – advocating interventions to other farmers in the area.

The young farmers of Una block in Gujarat, are on a mission. They have united in their effort to turn their farming enterprises around, creating new opportunities for their members and enhancing profits along the way, by forming the Dhanvantri Farmer Producer Company.

Born hearing and speech impaired, Nrishingha Malik faced a major hurdle when he graduated from his Sewing Machine Technician course at SEDI – how to appear for an interview to get a job? Something most take for granted, became a major blockage for the young man from Sankrail West Bengal, and he decided to turn his attention to kick-starting his own business instead.

In 1987 child marriage was rife in rural West Bengal. But when Basanti Chakraborty heard about the impending marriage of a 15-year-old girl in her village, she took matters into her own hands. Objecting vehemently to the families involved, she spent hours trying to convince them otherwise.

When 2 auditors from the Government Health & Sanitation Department visited Bharseli in 2020, they made a bee line for the ‘kuccha’ houses - avoiding the ‘pukka’ ones which were sure to have toilets. But they were shocked to find toilets in the kuccha houses too – and that they too were being used.

Bhendvi is a multi-language, tribal village on the border of Maharashtra and sits close to the border of Telegana, where people speak one or two of five different languages. As a result, school numbers are low, with many children finding the language of instruction, Marathi, difficult.

When an NGO talks about its various programmes and models of intervention, they often paint the bigger picture of the tangible results, the work as it exists today, and the impacts being made on lives. Rarely do we get the back story – the story of the evolution of the programme and how it came to be in the first place …

SKF India and Ambuja Foundation announced the set-up of a dedicated YES skill training centre in Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad Gujarat. The initiative is an expansion of SKF’s YES (Youth Empowerment at SKF) program, which focuses on training, skill development and employability of youth across Gandhinagar (Ahmedabad, Gujarat), Sankrail (Kolkata West Bengal) and Pali (Jodhpur Rajasthan).