HomeCAPABILITIES
Social & Economic Empowerment
The ability of governments to achieve social and economic goals with limited resources, largely depends on the efficiency, transparency, and flexibility of public administration institutions.
Despite the substantial progress, there are certain economies that are marked by extreme social and economic inequalities, particularly among women and marginalised groups.
We believe mainstreaming gender is critical to achieving long-term development goals. With experience in policy development, capacity building, adaptive management, community mobilisation, behavioural change communication, deepening social safety nets, beneficiary feedback analysis, poverty assessment, and evidence-based monitoring, we create inclusive and sustainable solutions. Our work can be classified into three broad areas — building girl capital, empowering women, and nurturing resilient communities.
We are building girl capital by tackling unequal access to education; bolstering their voice and agency through sexual and reproductive health education; ensuring that they gain academic and vocational knowledge, and providing life skills to enable them to secure jobs.
We are empowering women by addressing economic and normative barriers to improve their health and nutrition outcomes. We use a variety of interventions including conditional and unconditional cash transfers, behavioural change interventions to challenge social and gender norms, and improve access to social protection programmes.
We are nurturing resilient communities by promoting locally relevant climate adaptation packages, developing a hyper-granular vulnerability index for introducing climate-smart agriculture practices among small and marginal farmers, and conducting research in resilient food systems.
SOCIAL & ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
Thematic Focus
Community Empowerment for Advancing Equity
Gender and Social Inclusion Analysis and Mainstreaming in Developmental Programmes, Policies and Practices
Ending Systemic
Discrimination
Gender-based
Violence
Social Protection and Safety
Nets
Social and Behaviour Change to tackle discriminatory gender norms
Voice, Empowerment and
Accountability
Effective States for Inclusive Development
Aid and Government
Effectiveness
Accountability and
Transparency of Public, Private
and Civil Society Institutions
Public Administration and
Public Sector Reforms
Decentralisation and Local
Government Reforms
Gender Analysis, Gender Audits
and Gender Mainstreaming in
Governance Processes
SOCIAL & ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
Key Projects
BMGF
SAPLING: Strengthening Climate-Resilient Food Systems and Nutrition Governance
BMGF
SAPLING served as a pioneering regional platform aimed at supporting South Asian countries to adopt a food systems approach for tackling malnutrition, aligned with the SDGs.
Children's Investment Fund Foundation
Manzil
Enabling access to quality education & economic opportunities, Manzil seeks to empower young girls aged 14-21 years in Rajasthan to take independent decisions, thereby preventing early marriage and delaying the age of first pregnancy.
Children's Investment Fund Foundation
RajPusht
Reducing the prevalence of low birth weight and wasting among children in Rajasthan, RajPusht is improving maternal & child health by championing cash transfers for new mothers to help them avail nutritious diet.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)
RANI
Aimed at testing the ability of a norms-based behaviour change intervention to reduce anemia, RANI was a clustered randomised controlled trial.
SOCIAL & ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
Featured Insights
FROM THE DESK
Key Publications
Commentary on Co-Creating Sexual and Reproductive Health Interventions with Adolescents: The Experience from Rajasthan
2024
Teenage pregnancies directly threaten women's sexual and reproductive health and well-being.
States like Rajasthan with high adolescent pregnancy rates demand better solutions. We implemented project Udaan to reduce teenage pregnancies in the state, adopting a 360 degree approach.
Manzil: Empowering girls through economic opportunities
2024
Project Manzil was envisioned to promote economic liberty among young women as a way of building their agency and enabling them to take decisions on their age and of marriage and first pregnancy in selected districts of Rajasthan. This book is a celebration of the success of Manzil.
