By building people's institutions, Ambuja Foundation generates a multiplier effect- empowering men and women to run their own Federations or Farmer Producer Organisations and kickstarting a movement in the process.

Ambuja Foundation's rigorous programme monitoring process is helping get 'more bang for buck' per project, by harnessing qualitative and quantitative data to monitor each project and identify ways in which we can improve our work and generate multiple impacts.

Ambuja Foundation is promoting adolescent health through a peer led, life skills based, education programme called APEKSHA (Adolescent Peer for Enhancement of Knowledge, Skill and Healthy Association) - reaching over 28,170 youth by training just 970 peer educators from 72 Schools.

Most countries have a singular objective when it comes to economic growth - to improve the lives of its citizens. But, regrettably, India's strong economic growth in the past has consistently excluded the rural poor, which constitutes approximately 71% of our population.

The pandemic has exposed just how vulnerable India's labour force is. An estimated 450 million internal migrant workers make up 92 percent of the labour force in India - with the majority of them hailing from rural India.

One of our earliest learnings at Ambuja Foundation, was that to tackle poverty in rural India, we needed to build the livelihood capabilities of rural people.

Rural women are key agents for development, yet in India, there remains a large, latent potential in the country's women - particularly in rural areas. However, many communities are finding ways to tap this latent potential to enable 'last mile reach' in remote, rural communities for various community services - in particular, healthcare.

In order to tackle malnutrition which is an endemic in a larger number of districts in India, the month of September is celebrated as 'Rashtriya Poshan Maah' - a campaign of the Government of India to highlight nutrition as a key component of the National Development Agenda and achieve better nutritional outcomes.

The 2019/20 Annual Report was launched in September, highlighting the achievements of the Foundation over the last 12months, and once again an e-version of the report was distributed online to all key stakeholders.

Health and Safety (H&S) is of great importance at Ambuja Foundation and across programmes, H&S is carefully adhered to. Ambuja Manovikas Kendra, a school in Ropar, Punjab that caters to children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities, takes H&S seriously going over and above basic requirements (like wheelchairs, ramps and railings) to ensure health and safety is taken care at the institute:

Did you know that 72.4% of India's workforce lives in rural areas? And that agriculture supports nearly 70% of this rural workforce? But with small land holdings and an over dependence on the monsoon, these livelihoods are often unsustainable. Couple that with outdated farming methods, lack of irrigation, and difficulty in accessing markets, and agriculture-dependent households quickly spiral down into a kind of poverty which is hard to break out of.

Women's role in India has typically been limited to 'the home' thanks to a patriarchal society and a 'permission culture' which, according to an IDHS survey, sees 79.9% of women having to ask for permission from a male family member to seek medical care, and 58% of women reporting that they needed permission to visit the local kirana (grocery store)