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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.
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