|
MAMTA is a
national level NGO committed to integrated health and development
issues in the context of poverty, gender and rights with ‘life cycle
approach’. The organization initiated its work in an urban slum, Tigri (Delhi) in
1990 by providing clinical services to women and children with an aim
to enhance their health status and improve pregnancy outcomes. The
experience of working with the communities provided us with an
understanding that considering health of adolescents/ young people
along with women and children is significant in terms of overall
health and development status of the community. Having realized the
intergenerational effect/impact, the young people became our important
stakeholders with passage of time. While working with young people we
also realized the significant concerns that they had relating to
sexual and reproductive health issues, which mostly remained
unarticulated and un-addressed due to lack of information and
services, parental/community support and understanding. This prompted
us to initiate a broad based integrated approach to addressing these
issues with a gender and rights perspective. Gender mainstreaming was
taken up within the organization at the level of individuals,
programmes and organizational policies with support from UNIFEM.
Since then, in a span
of fourteen years, the organization has
evolved
to expand its operations into newer areas including adolescent health,
education, entrepreneurship development and empowerment of the young
people with a thrust on community participation for better health
outcomes. In the process, MAMTA has not only enhanced its knowledge
base in terms of working with adolescents/ young people belonging to
diverse socio-cultural background but also positioned itself to
undertake the multi-pronged functional strategies to address their
health and development issues at different levels in the country and
globally. |
