APNNEWS (16 December 2013)

Mumbai : Smile Foundation, a national level development organization conducted a two-day capacity building smile 300×169 Empowering Grassroots Need of the Hourprogramme for grassroots NGOs under its ‘Empowering Grassroots’ programme. The aim was to enable and equip the select NGOs to achieve sustainability by aligning themselves with the CSR mandate under the Companies Acts 2013 and on the wake of a growing middle class in India.

The programme was conducted under the guidance of Subject Experts, Trainers and Observers, besides experts from Smile Foundation.

Aptly titled ‘Empowering Grassroots’, the programme focused on facilitating the grassroots level NGOs to become self-sustainable as well as to bring excellence in their functioning. With the changing dynamics and developmental needs, genuine grassroots NGOs are required to be trained and prepared for sustainability in the immediate future. Taking learning from India and similar economies in the world, such as Brazil, Kenya and South Africa, Smile Foundation has built capacities of 500 grassroots NGOs in last two years under ‘Empowering Grassroots’ programme .

Mr. Vikram Singh Verma, Chief Operating Officer, Smile Foundation said, “Smile Foundation has always understood the need of enabling and empowering grassroots organizations and has been doing it systematically. With the changing time, grassroots NGOs are facing the dual challenges of achieve greater efficiency and also making their endeavours sustainable.” He added, “The Empowering Grassroots’ programme in Mumbai is focusing the building the capacities of grassroots NGOs keeping in mind the CSR mandate under the Companies Acts 2013 and the giving opportunity having emerged with the growing middle class of India. We plan to take this specialized approach of ‘Empowering Grassroots’ to rest of India.”

The two-day Empowering Grassroots programme in Mumbai included training sessions on involving local support for sustainable fundraising, project management, better fund utilization, need of correct communication and brand building, meeting the expectations of donors, communicating with the stakeholders, leadership and the practice of good governance in respect of audit and financial matters etc. Many interesting insights were shared during programme in Mumbai. Various innovative methods to engage people towards supporting a good cause, methodology of communicating and showcasing the real work to a wide section of the privileged society were discussed. The programme also provided a platform to the participating NGOs to share their experience and challenges with one another.

Smile Foundation has so far built the capacities of 500 grassroots NGOs under ‘Empowering Grassroots’ programme in last two years. By 2015, the aim is to train 5000 similar NGOs across India.

Mr. Vikram Singh Verma, Chief Operating Officer, Smile Foundation said, “As an organization Smile Foundation has always aimed to identify, handhold and build capacities of genuine grassroots NGOs to inculcate accountability, sustainability, scalability and leadership amongst them. Empowering Grassroots is an extension of this effort which is showing encouraging results.”

“Smile Foundation will conduct an Empowering Grassroots programme in January 2014 in Bangalore where 16 international NGOs and 32 Indian NGOs will be trained. It will also include international observers. A total of 132 individual participants are planned to attend the 3-day programme,” announced Mr. Vikram Singh Verma, Chief Operating Officer, Smile Foundation.

Source : http://www.apnnews.com/2013/12/16/empowering-grassroots-need-of-the-hour/