Ibtada started with its mission to work for women and girl child in 1997 with the formation of SHGs. When we started in March 1999, 16 SHGs were formed which rose to 142 in 2001 and over 2000 SHGs at present. Building upper tier institutions, there are 68 clusters and 4 federations. Building on the SHG programme, Ibtada started livelihood interventions in the area of agriculture and animal husbandry. Goat rearing is one key interventions where Ibtada is working with 500+ families now. Ibtada also focused on skill development of women to enable them work as Resource Persons for their communities. In this process, Ibtada has developed women as Pashu Sakhies, Krishi Sakhies, swasthya sakhies, shiksha sakhies and adhikar sakhies.
The girl child education programme started in August 2000 with 7 learning centres (called Taleemshalas) and grew to 121 learning centres in 2011.These Taleemshalas imparted education to out of school girls till class V, after which they were mainstreamed to govt. Schools. However, after coming of Right to Education (RTE) Ibtada started working with Govt. schools for ‘Right to education’ to improve their quality and strengthen community’s role in functioning of these schools. Currently our Govt. schools programme covers 100 schools in Ramgarh and Kishangarh blocks. Ibtada also runs an Upper Primary School in Gwalda.
In Mewat area, where Ibtada is working with girls since 2000 by running Taleemshalas (primary level learning support centres), girls have started completing their elementary education in large numbers. An adequate number of them are perusing secondary and higher education also. But due to lack of facilities, guidance and exposure most of them are inadequately equipped to aspire and choose an appropriate career direction for themselves. Considering this, since July 2013 Ibtada started a package of intervention for these girls, viz., Life School Education, Girls Resource Centre, Supplementary Education, Computer Education and Career Counseling. After working with the community for over two decades, Ibtada started a Rights & Entitlement project in 2017 in collaboration with Edelgive Foundation after the results of a pilot was found encouraging. This project aims to strengthen the community and community based organisations to access different government benefits and ensures accountability in governance.
Ibtada also enabled the launch of NRLM in Alwar through formation and capacity building of SHG institutions for RGAVP in Ramgarh. Ibtada had entered into an MoU with RGAVP in to form SHG and build 3-tier architecture (SHG, VO and CLF) and their capacity building in Ramgarh Block.
Ibtada has evolved as resource support organisation for the community based micro finance sector. Even during the initial years of Ibtada, its work in the field of SHGs was recognized by many agencies and Ibtada started giving capacity building inputs to other NGOs and agencies. In the year 2000, first such training was organised for various NGOs of Rajasthan with sponsorship from NABARD. In the same year two trainings were organised for Alwar Milk Union in which all Procurement and Inputs staff of Union was trained. The next training was for bank managers of Grameen bank. Thereafter, Ibtada has conducted numerous such trainings.
Ibtada also hosts exposure visits for various agencies every year to enhance their learning on community based micro finance institutions. Such exposures have been attended by State, National and International visitors.
Ibtada is working in more than 350 villages in 6 development blocks of Alwar namely: Tijara, Kishangarh Bas, Umren, Ramgarh, Thanagazi and Laxmangarh. Ibtada works on four major themes: Education, Livelihoods, Girls Empowerment and Rights & Entitlements. Three-tier SHG institutions form the base on which all these programmes are facilitated.
