EduCARE India

Who We Are

EduCARE India is a grassroots NGO working in community-led sustainable development since 1994, with roots across five Indian states.

When the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals ↗, we already had two decades of practice.

Our Vision

We envision a world where every person has the opportunity and capacity to direct social, environmental, and economic resources towards creating self-sustaining positive outcomes for themselves, their communities, and the natural environments that we share.

We believe that:

Communities can develop from within.
The capacity is already there; it is awakened by nurturing awareness, knowledge, and skills within the community.
Change begins with people helping people.
Passion, initiative, and action make a lasting impact; money is not the only agent for change.
It takes creativity to solve persistent problems.
Old problems don't yield to old approaches; people with different backgrounds and perspectives can come together and build new solutions that make a real impact.
You can lead by example.
Your actions will inspire others to also become the drivers of development that sustains itself.

What We Do

We help communities build self-sustaining solutions that create lasting positive outcomes.

Every community already has its protagonists: self-help groups, health workers, masons, youth, women, and retirees with time and talent to spare.

We show them what that talent could become, what they can achieve for themselves and their community. And we bring what it takes to get there: training and certifications, guidance, connections beyond the community, and more.

We collaborate with them on building self-sustaining programs that will keep generating positive outcomes for their community.

These outcomes include:

Women from the savings collectives certify as disaster responders.
Masons learn earthquake-safe construction, and every house they build after that is safer.

Every program is built to be handed over.

Success, for us, is a community that no longer needs us.

Our Framework

Our work runs through four pillars:

Safety 🛡️

Disaster preparedness in a Himalayan district that knows earthquakes, landslides, and flash floods.
Village volunteers certified as first responders, and masons trained in earthquake-safe construction.

Health ❤️

Community health where the state's reach thins out.
Elder care that keeps people in their own homes.
Clean water and sanitation.

Environment 🌿

Helping people set up livelihoods that regenerate the land instead of depleting it.
Kitchen gardens, botanical gardens, watershed protection, and ecological restoration.

Empowerment 🪽

Helping women set up their own micro-enterprises.
Promoting financial literacy.
Setting up after-school centres and youth-mentorship programs.

Together, these pillars cover what a community needs to develop on its own terms.

The things listed under these pillars are just a few examples. To get a more comprehensive picture of what we do, check out our initiatives and projects ↗

Join Us

Intern ↗ or Volunteer ↗
Learn sustainable development through experience in the real world.
Live and work inside the community; collaborate on developing new projects, and help with running existing projects.
^{Remote internship/volunteering exists too.}

Come as a professional ↗
Professionals, researchers, and visiting scholars take on longer engagements: program design, applied research, training delivery, and more.

Work with us as a partner ↗
We work with government agencies, universities, and CSR programs that want grassroots reach for their initiatives.

Dive Deeper

This page is the short version.