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The Trust recognises the role of civil
society as a critical contender, and constructive
collaborator to the state and markets. In
1995, the Trust’s grant making in this
field was initiated as the public initiatives
portfolio, focusing on supporting citizen
action and engagement.
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| Geographical
spread of projects |
Subsequently, based on the recommendations
of the strategic plan 2006, the Trust collected
its various investments in 2002, in building
capacities of civil society organisations
into this portfolio, which then came to
be known as ‘enhancing civil society
and governance’.
Over the past few decades, civil society
organisations have evolved from largely
people movements with a clear political
interest, to non-government organisations,
to community-based organisations that reflect
more stakeholder involvement.
The critical importance of both community-based
organisations and non-profit organisations
in its own grant making has encouraged the
Trust to see this as a crosscutting theme.
The theme 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.
The sub thematic focus areas of the theme
are:
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Human rights and governance, which promotes
governance as a strategy to realise
empowerment goals. For example, access
to justice, institutional reforms (prison),
monitoring of human rights institutions
etc. The Trust attempts to go beyond
supporting action, to the translation
of these into some constitutional framework.
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Citizenship and participation that focuses
on making existing systems work efficiently
and fairly. This could include: |
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Helping in the
implementation of new legislations such
as RTI, NREGA etc. |
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Social watch /
citizen reports etc. |
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e-governance |
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Governance
in civil society, which is for strengthening
governance within civil society organisations
including, but not limited to non-profits. |
While bearing the three sub-themes as guiding
principles, the operationalisation is through
initiatives, which may contain and support
objectives of more than one sub theme.
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