Child causes and Livelihood and skill developmentYouth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA) is a non-profit development organisation committed to enabling vulnerable groups to access their rights. YUVA encourages the formation of people’s collectives that engage in the discourse on development, thereby ensuring self-determined and sustained collective action in communities. This work is complemented with advocacy and policy recommendations. Founded in Mumbai in 1984, currently YUVA operates in the states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and New Delhi.
In the late 1970s, a group of students of Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work, Mumbai, ventured into the informal settlements of Jogeshwari as a part of a college placement. Their work in the slum inspired them to draw up a full-fledged programme for underprivileged youth; the chief objective being to develop a rights-based approach to address structural inequalities and respond to the issues of the most poor and marginalised. They believed that when the oppressed were made aware of these inequalities, they would come together to address them. Thus the programme aimed to develop a young leadership among vulnerable populations who could steer the ship of their development, where social change would be born of their command.
A few years later, on 30 August 1984, Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA) was formally registered as a voluntary development organisation supporting and empowering the oppressed and marginalised by primarily concentrating on their human rights.
We believe that development is a continuous struggle to create a humane society, which sustains all human beings, as well as nature, where women, men and children enjoy universal human rights. A humane society based onthe values of equality, distributive justice and secularism is liberated from oppression on the basis of caste, class, creed, gender, age, ethnicity, language; is free from all forms of exploitation and violence; and demonstrates integrity and respect fordemocratic polity and processes.Our MissionYUVA will empower the oppressed and the marginalized by facilitating their organisationsand institutions towards building equal partnerships in the development process, ensuring the fulfillment of the human right to live in security, dignity and peace. YUVA will also engage in critical partnership with the government and forge alliances withother actors of civil society such as people’s movements, trade unions, women’s group, academic institutions and the private sector to enable and strengthen the people’s empowerment processes.
YUVA Centre, Plot 23, Sector 7, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai 410210 , Maharashtra
