The Trust’s Civil Society and Governance theme evolved out of it’s Strategic Plan 2006 recommendations and is a cross-cutting portfolio of the Trust. Over the past few decades, civil society organisations have evolved and become critical to societal change. The centrality of both community based organisations and non-profit organisations in its own grant making have encouraged the Trust to see this as a cross-cutting portfolio. The portfolio thus builds on priorities thrown up by the other themes, such as strengthening community based organisations and embeds new initiatives into other themes, such as encouraging youth development.

Currently, there are two initiatives within the portfolio: a) Youth and Civil Society (YACS) and b) Roopantaran. Initiated in 2003, the YACS initiative focuses on development of young people. It creates opportunities for enhanced self awareness, deepened understanding of the societal context and their role in bringing change in their immediate context. Roopantaran (meaning “transformation”) is the Trust's initiative which focuses on institutional strengthening of civil society organisations – non-profit organisations and community-based organisations.

a) Youth and Civil Society Initiative aims at building capacity and opportunities for fostering active youth citizenship for social change.

Youth as a demographic group shows a certain openness, capacity for bringing change and challenging prevailing societal trends. Despite their transformative potential, the young have largely been viewed as ‘consumers’ of the market and/or political ideologies, or have been ‘instrumentalised’ for service delivery within development. However, there has been little investment in developing the young, through experiential learning and self-exploration. Development actors stand to gain by developing a deeper understanding of needs and aspirations of young people, who constitute nearly 40 per cent of the total population.

The Youth and Civil Society Initiative focuses on building social perspective, attitude and life skills of youth. It creates opportunities for enhanced self awareness, deepening understanding of the societal context and their role in bringing change in their immediate context. To know more, click here

b) Roopantaran – Institution Building Initiative
Currently, the drift of non-profit organisations has been towards immediate programmatic delivery and less on sustained societal impact. Weak institutional fundamentals have been a major factor among non-profit organisations in not becoming sustainable, resource-full and high-performing organisations. Lack of focused technical support available to address institutional challenges, knowledge and competencies within non-profit sector have been the primary reasons for weak institutional strength among many non-profit organisations.

Roopantaran (meaning “transformation”) is the Trust's initiative which focuses on enabling the development of such internally sound non-profit institutions with strong fundamentals to realise their potential for social change. To know more, click here

For a visual journey, click here