Where We Work
This story has crossed mountains, plains, deserts, and coastlines.
Through the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala, and Himachal Pradesh.
Today, most of our work is focused in Kangra district, Himachal Pradesh.
Our Present
Kangra district, Himachal Pradesh.
Kangra lies in the Himalayan foothills of northern India, where villages are spread across slopes, valleys, and mountain roads.
Most people live outside its towns, and steep roads can make hospitals, markets, and emergency help difficult to reach.
So, when Covid arrived in early 2020, we shifted our entire focus to Kangra.
The crisis passed, but we decided to keep our focus rooted here.
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Our Headquarters
Mission Hill Complex
Mission Road, Ward 5
Kangra, HP 176001
India
Mission Hill is where people gather for training and meetings, and where much of the work across the district is coordinated.
It is also home to the Emergency and Disaster Management Resource Centre, which brings together our disaster-preparedness training and emergency-response work.
The complex includes offices, accommodation, training halls, a library, a GIS and amateur-radio lab, and grounds for drills and simulations.
But our work extends far beyond Mission Hill.
Much of it happens in communities across the district, where our teams work alongside local people.
The Roads That Led Here
Over the years, our work took root across different parts of India.
Each place shaped the work differently, because the landscapes, public services, and local needs were different.
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Punjab
The plains.
Across rural Punjab, we worked through a shifting network of centres and field communities, including Paro, Dholbaha, Janauri, and Harike.
Projects included learning activities, women’s groups, microfinance, livelihood initiatives, and programmes with migrant communities. Projects developed differently from place to place, rather than one programme being carried unchanged from village to village.
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Rajasthan
The desert.
In Rajasthan, the desert shaped a different set of priorities. Work grew around Gajner and the wider Bikaner area, Rang Mahal near Sri Ganganagar, and Jaisalmer and Khuri.
Water, food production, and life in arid conditions became central themes, alongside research into drinking water, desert agriculture, agroforestry, and community programmes shaped around the realities of the region.
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Ladakh
The high country.
Further north, work reached the high-altitude landscape of Ladakh. Around Changa and Kharu, near Leh, projects included waste management, organic farming and horticulture, eco-building, disaster management, children’s education, and women’s empowerment.
All of it adapted to a place where climate, altitude, and distance changed the rules again.
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Karnataka and Kerala
The western coast.
Work reached Uttara Kannada in Karnataka, including Gokarna, and extended farther south into Kerala through a mix of local facilities and affiliated programmes.
Sanitation, waste management, conservation, environmental health, education, and forms of sustainable tourism all became part of a coastal story shaped around the communities and landscapes there.
Our teams lived in each place, found the people already trying, built something the community could keep, and then stepped away.
