Vatsalya

Background

Vatsalya is an Indian registered in 1995 not-for-profit organisation that strives to promote inclusive development and improve outcomes around female adolescent health, nutrition and gender equal opportunities.

Vatsalya is founded and led by Dr. Neelam Singh, a dedicated gynaecologist with a profound passion and unwavering commitment to empowering women. Dr Singh encountered gender-biased sex-selective elimination early in her medical career. This ignited her passion to address the deep-seated gender biases prevalent in society, leading her to establish VATSALYA with an initial focus on enforcing the PCPNDT Act.

Over the years, with her expertise in the field and her personal dedication to the upliftment of women, Dr. Singh has steered Vatsalya into adopting a more holistic approach towards women upliftment and empowerment. Today, Vatsalya works in local communities to address issues for girls and women around sex selective elimination of girl, education, RMNCH+A, menstruation, HIV/AIDS, gender and empowerment through lifeskills, WASH.

Our Approach

As a women-centric organization, Vatsalya integrates ‘Gender’ as a cross-cutting theme and incorporates girl-focused and gender-transformative approaches across all our initiatives. Our aim is to align our efforts with the goal of promoting gender justice in our intervention areas. Specifically, we prioritize gender-transformative processes in projects focused on girls' education, family planning, maternal and child health, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). Our approach begins with adopting gender-responsive behaviors, which we gradually transform into gender-transformative behaviors that challenge and change harmful social norms and practices. By doing so, we aim to create a lasting impact that empowers girls and women to achieve their full potential.

Our Strategy

Our goal is to create a society where all individuals, particularly adolescents and women, can thrive in an environment that is safe, healthy, and empowering. To achieve this, we operate on three key principals:

Align and synergize: We align our interventions and interactions with other priority issues such as gender equality, education, health, nutrition, hygiene, and sanitation, with a focus on the most vulnerable segments of the community, including men.
Drive sustainable solutions to bring long term change: We strive to not only acknowledge and identify challenges on the ground but also to be a driving force behind sustainable solutions. This involves generating evidence through research, advocating for change, and creating knowledge that can inform policy decisions.
Collaborate to achieve impact and scale: We partner with public systems, media outlets, academia, and like-minded civil society organizations to disseminate information, scale up our impact, and integrate our programs and policies into existing frameworks.

Our Priorities

Community Engagement: Establishing effective community mechanisms and demonstrating models of implementation to promote desired change.
Social and Behavioral Change: Implementing strategies to promote positive social and behavioral change at the community level.
Behavior Change Communication: Promoting behavioral change through targeted communication strategies to drive positive outcomes.
Research and Advocacy: Conducting research, advocating, and influencing policies to address critical issues.
- Vatsalya's expertise lies in conducting capacity building and orientation workshops on the PCPNDT Act for media personnel. By engaging with journalists, Vatsalya educates them on the ground realities, inspires them to highlight the critical issue in their articles and coverage, and facilitates the widespread dissemination of information related to the Act and its concerns. This has led to major publications such as The Times of India and Hindustan consistently featuring the issue on their front pages across districts in Uttar Pradesh. Additionally, local publications, journals, and magazines also play a crucial role in ensuring the public is well-informed about the alarming decline in child sex ratio and its consequences.
  Through this collaboration with the media across the state, Vatsalya has achieved remarkable results, as coverage of the issue has become a top priority. This, in turn, puts pressure on authorities to take strict action against offenders and intensify the implementation of the Act in the state.
Networking and Partnerships: Building relationships with like-minded institutions to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Community Platform Strengthening: Enhancing the capacity of community-based platforms, including VHSNC, CPC, SMC, and Mother Committees.
Knowledge Creation: Developing and disseminating knowledge to inform program design and implementation.

Operating Model of Vatsalya:

Vatsalya is a non-profit organization dedicated to uplifting underprivileged and vulnerable communities, with a particular focus on women and adolescent girls. Our operating model is designed to be replicable and centres around a holistic and participatory approach. They engage multiple stakeholders in dialogue and foster connections with public systems to ensure sustainability. By collaborating with the public sector and addressing domain-specific issues and challenges, they aim to create lasting positive change. Additionally, Vatsalya actively works on generating knowledge to advocate for scalability and further extend their impact .

Our expertise

Community mobilization and engagement
Capacity building
IEC development
Networking and liasoning
Advocacy
- With government . We have a dialogue with government for the use of Iron supplements for adolescents girls which has been successfully adopted as WIFS program for adolescents by Government of India.
- We are also discussing the sanitary pads waste which leads to landfill and ocean fills and its impact on health with the government for the draft Menstrual Hygiene policy at both the national and state level.
- With Media - Vatsalya's expertise lies in conducting capacity building and orientation workshops on the PCPNDT Act for media personnel. By engaging with journalists, Vatsalya educates them on the ground realities, inspires them to highlight the critical issue in their articles and coverage, and facilitates the widespread dissemination of information related to the Act and its concerns. This has led to major publications such as The Times of India and Hindustan consistently featuring the issue on their front pages across districts in Uttar Pradesh. Additionally, local publications, journals, and magazines also play a crucial role in ensuring the public is well-informed about the alarming decline in child sex ratio and its consequences.
  Through this collaboration with the media across the state, Vatsalya has achieved remarkable results, as coverage of the issue has become a top priority. This, in turn, puts pressure on authorities to take strict action against offenders and intensify the implementation of the Act in the state.
Networking and Partnerships: Building relationships with like-minded institutions to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Community Platform Strengthening: Enhancing the capacity of community-based platforms, including VHSNC, CPC, SMC, and Mother Committees.
Knowledge Creation: Developing and disseminating knowledge to inform program design and implementation.

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