Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Unitarian Universalist Holdeen India Program (UUHIP)?The Unitarian Universalist Holdeen India Program (UUHIP) was created from trusts intended to assist the impoverished people of India. The Program is committed to enabling the most vulnerable groups to improve their lives and change their social and economic conditions in directions of their own choosing.
What are the target populations for UUHIP grants?
UUHIP focuses on
India's most impoverished and oppressed peoples, the dalits or "untouchables"
who are outside the caste system, the adivasis or tribals who are India's
indigenous peoples, and especially the women in those groups. Particular
attention is paid to landless, migrant, bonded and child laborers.
How does UUHIP differ from traditional development
organizations?
Rather than provide grants for sectoral, discrete or
time-based projects, UUHIP supports long-term partnerships with organizations of
poor and oppressed peoples to increase their collective strength, take on
difficult issues, challenge unequal power relationships, and address the
structural causes of poverty and injustice.
What activities does UUHIP fund?
UUHIP provides whatever strategic
support our partners require in order to strengthen their organizations' ability to
organize, innovate, grow in effectiveness and influence, and have a significant
long-term impact on other groups, programs and public policies.
What have the partners achieved with UUHIP support?
UUHIP partners
have strengthened and expanded their own organizations, built cadres of
confident leaders and promoted women's rights and decision-making. Members have
gained access to new employment opportunities, credit, education, health and
other social services and natural resources, and have increased their incomes
and assets. They have strengthened their collective bargaining power and
successfully challenged exploitative social and economic conditions such as
bonded and child labor, untouchability and scavenging. They have promoted
government accountability and influenced public policy, laws and budgets in the
interests of the poor and marginalized. Increasingly they have taken on more
difficult and risky issues such as campaigns for dalit rights and tribal land,
water and forest rights, recognition of home-based workers and street vendors
and a national gricultural workers minimum wage.
What has UUHIP achieved?
UUHIP has provided key support for major
initiatives such as the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, whose Director
and former Advocacy Fellow, Martin
Macwan of Navsarjan, received the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Foundation Human
Rights Award.
UUHIP has encouraged collaboration among all our partners in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, many of whom have formed the Campaign for Human Rights to work together on issues of land rights, bonded labor, untouchability and police atrocities. Samarthan (the Maharashtra Advocacy Institute) and the Center for Budget Studies in Maharashtra support their campaigns. Vivek Pandit, of Vidhayak Sansad, the leader who promoted all these efforts, was awarded the 1999 Anti-Slavery Award by Anti-Slavery International in the U.K. You may read the speech delivered at the award ceremony by Keshav Nankar, a former bonded laborer and now president of the union.
The Advocacy Fellows Program is perhaps our most innovative and influential venture. Over a seven-year period more than 60 Indian social advocates participated in this intensive six-week program of seminars, site visits and fellowships with such U.S.-based groups as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Children's Defense Fund, which use advocacy strategies to influence public policy in favor of the poor. Returned fellows have started several national and regional Advocacy Institutes and training programs as well as Centers for Budget Analysis in India. Thus, a growing number of Indian grassroots leaders have become more effective agents for policy change. UUHIP developed this program with the Advocacy Institute in Washington, DC, several Indian and U.S. NGO's, and the Ford Foundation, which supplied funding.
What activities does UUHIP conduct in the United States?In support of the core partnership program, we engage in a variety of related educational activities in the U.S. and abroad which increase the effectiveness of our limited funds. We create and sustain linkages with a wide range of donors, NGOs, government officials, public interest, women's and human rights groups, researchers, students and journalists in order to:
- promote network building, interchange and collaboration among those who are working on issues of poverty, gender, human rights and social justice;
- generate visibility for our partners' work and issues;
- and respond to U.S. organizations interested in starting or expanding their work in India or in developing new approaches to empowering the disadvantaged anywhere in the world.
We have leveraged several million dollars in additional financial and program support from other donors for our partners and their causes in India. Individuals, UU congregations, the UUA and others have contributed over $535,684 in 2000-2001 ($221,466 for earthquake relief and approximately $314,00 for other UUHIP work). In addition, seed money from UUHIP has enabled partners to generate additional funding from the government and other donors.
For more information contact international @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
