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When profiling MAMTA’s journey it is interesting to note how an organization, which began working with communities at a micro level, has grown into an organization with a presence at national and international level. The
work with young people and adolescents was initiated at a stage when the concept of ‘adolescence’ was still very ‘foreign’ in the Indian context
and was hardly recognized as a distinct and vulnerable stage in the Lifecycle. The experiences of implementing the
interventions for young people in the field provided us an insight into their felt needs and
concerns, which we understood well and addressed through innovative strategies. We shared these experiences with other institutions (private and public) and organizations and helped in building their capacities to
work with similar issues. We initiated and strengthened the network on YRSHR across the states of India in order to expand the outreach at the micro level
and at the same time used our learning from the micro level to feed into
macro level efforts like
advocacy
at the national and international level and
capacity building
at the regional level (through the International Training Program for
SEAR). In the process, MAMTA has also enhanced its information base in
terms of working with adolescents/ young people belonging to diverse
socio-cultural background and is attempting to disseminate information
on key issues through its
informatics
strategy. In order to address the health and development
issues of adolescents at different levels in the country and globally,
MAMTA at its own level has conducted
research and
documented it in the form of a series of working papers
as well as other publications. This helps us identify the successful
approaches as well as loop holes so that effective methodologies could
be used in the future. |