Localising Global Goals
Through Community-Led Action
At EduCARE India, we translate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into lived reality, one community at a time.
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 toward creating sustainable 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, belief, 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. - Real impact takes creativity.
Old problems don't yield to old approaches; people from different backgrounds and different perspectives can come together and build new solutions that make a real impact. - You can lead by example.
Through engagement and role-modeling, you can inspire others to also become the drivers of development that sustains itself.
What We Do
Our work runs through four pillars:
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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.
- Community health where the state's reach thins out.
- Elder care that keeps people in their own homes.
- Mothers' and children's health.
- Clean water and sanitation.
- Livelihoods that regenerate the land instead of depleting it.
- Kitchen gardens, botanical gardens, watershed protection, and ecological restoration.
- Women's micro-enterprise.
- Financial literacy.
- Youth skills.
- After-school centres.
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 ↗
How We Work
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, and bring what it takes to get there: the training and certifications, the guidance, the connections beyond the village, and more.
Our volunteers and interns work inside the community; doing things like:
- running training sessions.
- participating in the self-help group meetings.
- launching new projects and building programs together with the community.
On the ground, this creates various positive outcomes; for example:
- 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.
Join Us
Intern ↗ or Volunteer ↗
Live and work inside the community;
collaborating on launching projects,
running existing projects,
and learning sustainable development through experience in the real world.
Remote internship/volunteering exists too.
Come as a professional ↗
Professionals, researchers, and visiting scholars take on longer engagements:
program design, applied research, training delivery.
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.
For more details, check out our full site ↗