Dear Friends,
We are glad to share our Strategic Plan of 2021-2026 with you all. This strategic plan has been developed in a period of extreme turbulence and unrest—nationally and globally. Even as the external context becomes more volatile and unpredictable, there is an inherent irony at best in developing strategic plans that predict exactly what an organisation will do in the next five years. Balancing the comfort of predictability in times that are uncertain is an art. We decided to let our creative juices flow. We are fully cognizant of the fact that this strategic plan indicates a direction, an expression of organisational intent and a framework that explains us to the external world. For the team, it provides required clarity on why, what, and when we want to achieve under each strategic focus.
In the next five years of our strategy, we will focus on consolidation of our existing programme and scaling up in terms of engaging with more cis/trans women and men from marginalised communities, working with them within a gender-just skill education approach. Keeping in mind the reality of Covid and its impact on the poor, we realized the need to dig deeper and build better.
We also plan to explore new areas by establishing partnerships that will help scale up the Gender Just Skill Education approach in the context of new non-traditional livelihoods. We will do this by exploring industries that are enthusiastic to include more women workers and provide them with a gender-inclusive work environment.
Accordingly, we will be revising our curriculum and pedagogy that is blended and that lends itself to scaling up. In partnership with Sakha—our strategic employment partner—we will increase the pace of transitioning to e-vehicles to promote a greener economy.
Institutionally, we foresee that in the next five years a culture of collective leadership is established at all levels in Azad. By deepening our leadership abilities, we will ensure that Azad builds itself further as a caring workspace that nurtures talent and potential while taking care of the well-being of its team. We understand that engaging with social change processes is difficult and challenging work. We will continue to build partnerships with civil society organisations and movements to strengthen solidarity within and across.
We remain grateful for all the support from our various donor partners—individual, national, and international. We will be calling on this support as we move ahead with our plans and we hope that we will be able to build new courageous and visionary partnerships as well. We are confident of deepening further our solidarity and partnership with the communities we work with.
With a strong and dedicated team and the leadership of a visionary Board, we are confident of navigating the future as it comes and delivering on the mission of enabling women disadvantaged by gender, caste, class, ethnicity, religion, race, colour, and sexuality to empower themselves with knowledge and skills to build a gender-just society and earn a livelihood with dignity in jobs and markets that have traditionally been closed to them.
Let us work together to move this world towards greater equality, peace, and harmony.
With gratitude, love, and respect to all,
Anita, Dolon, and Shrinivas