About Reach India

The Cycle of Poverty
More than 450 million people in India still live in absolute poverty, a figure that exceeds all of the poor in Africa and Latin America combined. Families who live in poverty face challenges that go beyond lack of money. They live in poor health, are malnourished, have high maternal and child mortality rates, and suffer from low self-esteem, lack of knowledge and short life expectancy. Poverty is a cycle of misery that is too often passed from one generation to the next. Breaking this cycle requires new thinking and approaches.

A Pioneering Effort
Reach India is an innovative social enterprise that seeks to break old ways of thinking by bringing proven training and other services to poor girls, women and the organisations that serve them. Reach does this through a growing network of sustainable service centres, social businesses capable of training thousands of committed local organisations to deliver behaviour change education to millions of adolescent girls and women in self-help groups. Reach India is supported by Reach Global, a developer of  life changing education on health, livelihoods and family finance, and models to replicate and scale its delivery to the world's poorest people. Watch a video illustrating Reach India's work.

Reach India Training Is:

• Relevant. Women and girls can easily imagine how participation will benefit them, and their families.
• Easy to use. The material and methods are adaptable and can be implemented in any environment.
• Open to all. Literate and illiterate women and girls can participate equally.
• Motivating. Group-based learning is enjoyable and women and girls leave feeling energised and able to apply their new skills and knowledge.
• Successful. Women and girls understand how they can change their behaviours and practices. Success is attainable and supported.

Measuring Success
Reach India measures success in three important ways:

• Impact. Reach seeks to achieve positive impact in the lives of very poor women, girls and other family members.
• Scale. To make a significant contribution to the massive numbers of very poor families in India, Reach seeks to achieve positive impact among millions of poor people.
• Sustainability. To achieve positive impact at such a massive scale, Reach service centres need to sustain their work with their local organisations and outreach to very poor women and girls.