Dear Visitor

Welcome to the PRIA website. Browsing the pages of our website will give you the chance to understand, and hopefully appreciate, the change PRIA works to bring about in our world.

PRIA’s underlying philosophy for taking forward all its work is: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. It is only when citizens are informed and empowered that they participate in the process of deepening democracy with tolerance towards its large numbers and diversity. PRIA facilitates this empowerment, particularly of marginalised communities, aiming to create a desirable world based on the values of equity, justice, freedom, peace and solidarity. Citizens' rights and responsibilities are nurtured through a balance between authority and accountability. Harmony between economic and social development is sought in an eco-friendly manner where local priorities are not sacrificed to global demands. Individual freedom and autonomy is sustained with collective solidarity.

Empowerment occurs through collectivization and learning.Collectivisation of the excluded is about mobilizing demand, organising for common interests and goals. Learning by the excluded helps them articulate their voice, use their own knowledge, appropriate external knowledge, and engage with other institutions and duty-bearers to claim their rights and create options, solutions and innovations which keepsthem at the centre.

PRIA also works with the supply-side of services, justice, governance and democracyby engaging with local, sub-national, national and international duty-bearers, institutions and actors for policy advocacy.

In the 1980s, PRIA focused on ‘participation’; in the 1990s on ‘civil society’; and in 2000 on ‘governance’. In the coming decade, PRIA continues to focus on participation, civil society and governance within an overall perspective of ‘democracy’ – democracy in formal political institutions; by fostering a democratic culture in family, community, society and institutions;and through participatory democracy with active citizenship.

PRIA’s Strategies for Change

1. Knowledge building: documenting innovations; learning from others; synthesising multiple forms and sources of knowledge;systematisation of experiences of the marginalised;analysing policies, programmes and institutions from the vantage point of the excluded; promoting reflections among the excluded, their federations and networks, intermediate civil society actors.

2. Capacity building: enabling learning of perspectives, attitudes, knowledge and skills by the excluded, their organisations and leaders, their support civil society organisations, elected local government leaders; also demonstrating capacity-building for actors in the ‘supply’ side; capacities in participation, governance and democracy.

3. Advocacy: influencing policies, legislation, programmes, institutions and implementation to make them accessible and accountable to the excluded; supporting networks and coalitions to advocate on the basis of their systematised knowledge gained through monitoring and sharing.

Core Competencies:
a) Facilitating reflections and learning
b) Convening interface and dialogues across multi-stakeholders

In operationalising the above, PRIA conducts research, documents, systematises, sensitises, trains, pressurises and collectivises– all activities that enable and support the effective performance of these two core competencies.

PRIA’s identity is of a civil society organisation with a unique hybrid character reflected in:
• Focusing on both the demand and supply side of empowerment
• Working simultaneously at local and global arenas
• Combining the three strategies of change mentioned above.

Regards
Rajesh Tandon
Founder-President