Achievement At Glance
The cumulative number of young people self-actualised and supported for entrepreneurship from the start date of commitment to December 2021 reached 1782. Tacking systemic challenges through social innovation approach across multiple rural geographies of India, Development Alternatives has contributed to the improvement of young people’s business acumen, entrepreneurial skills and linkages with support service providers. Through collaboration with stakeholders at the local level and strategic partnerships with like-minded organisations at the national level, Development Alternatives is continuing its work towards creating a nurturing, inclusive and robust entrepreneurship ecosystem in the target areas. Through innovative green models and clean technologies, local production and services are mitigating the contribution of enterprises in CO2 emissions of India.
Key Highlight On Guiding Principle
Development Alternatives (DA)'s work in India focuses on creating sustainable livelihoods at scale, through various entrepreneurship and skill development programmes, undertaken in partnership with corporates and bi-laterals. DA's programmes have yielded good results, bringing improvement in income and standard of living, not only for the individuals but their families and communities.
Our partnership approach help identifies stakeholders for supporting youth empowerment and entrepreneurship and collaboration in creating decent and dignified livelihoods for youth and women through entrepreneurship.
In unleashing the power of entrepreneurship, we take a systemic and social innovation approach where we use human-centered design principles of listening to communities, co-creating solutions through dialogue, prototyping based on context, and learning to improve practice.
We also create multiplication mechanisms by building self-propelling models to ensure more people are impacted. For instance, working with government-supported common service centers, we have co-created ‘information kiosks’ enterprise models. As information sources on entrepreneurship, they are able to positively impact society.
Finally, we deploy tools of developmental evaluation to turn learnings into knowledge for transference among partners, and peer organizations, as well as to influence policy and practice.