- SAHAYOG is an NGO working to promote gender equality and women’s health from a human rights framework. Its key activities include advocacy and strengthening partnerships. SAHAYOG is a value based organization, upholding equity and equality, participation, transparency and effectiveness as its major values.
- SAHAYOG believes that socially marginalized individuals and groups must participate in decision-making that affects their lives, such as poor rural women, youth, non-literates, Dalits, tribals and minorities. SAHAYOG works at the community level in partnership with local NGOs to build capacities and provide information so that the marginalized can exercise their rights and access services.
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About: SAHAYOG is an NGO working to promote gender equality and women’s health from a human rights framework.
Its key activities include advocacy and strengthening partnerships. SAHAYOG is a value based organization, upholding equity and equality, participation, transparency and effectiveness as its major values.
SAHAYOG initially worked with the mission of promoting sustainable participatory rural development in Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. In order to implement this mission, between 1992- 2000, SAHAYOG worked directly with rural communities in 60 villages of one block in Almora district of Uttar Pradesh (now Uttaranchal) on issues such as women’s health, including reproductive health and rights, women’s participation in Panchayats, popular knowledge systems, women’s empowerment, youth leadership and Dalit development.
In 2000, after the formation of a separate state of Uttaranchal, SAHAYOG’s intervention in rural areas gradually decentralized into a number of smaller separate organisations, led by experienced women and men who were earlier SAHAYOG staff. They are now accessing independent funding but continue to be associated with SAHAYOG in terms of an informal network based on shared values and approach as well as some common programmes. Another separate organization, Centre for Health and Social Justice, was set up by SAHAYOG in 2005 to work on research and advocacy at the national level.
From the beginning, SAHAYOG also worked as a technical support organisation on issues like gender, women’s health, and women’s participation in Panchayats. SAHAYOG was involved in providing support to other NGOs, government, donors and technical agencies. In 2000, the SAHAYOG head-office relocated to Lucknow. Since then, SAHAYOG has developed close partnerships with grassroots NGOs in Uttar Pradesh and other northern states as a result of its capacity building and information activities on issues of gender, women’s health, work with men, women’s rights and violence against women.
SAHAYOG has been hosting the Secretariat of MASVAW (Men’s Action for Stopping Violence against Women) in Uttar Pradesh, and is also a founding member of HUMSAFAR, a crisis support centre for women in Lucknow. SAHAYOG is a founding member of Healthwatch Forum, a network active in several north Indian states for advocacy and monitoring on reproductive health and rights, and is now building an advocacy platform for youth sexual and reproductive rights in Uttar Pradesh called « Youth for Change. » SAHAYOG has regularly anchored state-level campaigns for women’s rights, in partnership with hundrededs of other organizations.
SAHAYOG has also partnered with internationally reputed organizations working on SRHR (sexual and reproductive health and rights) such as ARROW in Malaysia and the Danish Family Planning Association in Denmark. The IDRC (Canada) and the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam (NL) have supported research work at SAHAYOG. The Coordinator of SAHAYOG is also an associate of the ‘Realizing Rights’ project of the KNOTS team at IDS, University of Sussex, UK.
SAHAYOG is a partner of the global International Initiative for Maternal Mortality and Human Rights, as well as as of WHRAP (Women’s Health and Rights Advocacy Partnership), a South Asian network.
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