Elgar Pratishthan
Elgar Pratishthan, established in 1999, has been working among the indigenous and rural poor in the Chandrapur and Gadchiroli districts of Maharashtra, with a mission to organize tribals and rural poor for their constitutional and legal rights. Elgar Pratishthan's activities include combining organization building with educational, cultural and livelihood activities. Elgar Pratishthan has organized tribal families in more than eighty villages to struggle to regain their land through grassroots organizing and legal action
Elgar Pratishthan works in close association with Shramik Elgar (Worker's Push), which is a trade union, and Elgar Women's Credit Cooperative Society. Elgar Pratishthan also has partnerships with organizations working on forest rights. Elgar Pratishthan set up the Institute of Rural Organizing that serves as a training and capacity building institute.
In the next few years Elgar Pratishthan plans to:
- Strengthen women's groups in fifty communities through meetings and trainings,
- Organize a grassroots awareness campaigns on women's rights,
- Organize campaigns for implementation of Forest Rights Act, Maharashtra Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MREGS), protection of tribal land rights and rights of unorganized sector laborers,
- Establish at least seven cooperatives that would target farmers and credit needs of the districts that they work in,
- Ensure organization members are actively engaged with the local governing bodies.
Last updated on Thursday, October 9, 2008.
