Nayi Umeed is a grassroots governance initiative that strengthens institutional power and civic capacity among elected women representatives (EWRs) and adolescent girls in rural India. Anchored in the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, our work reclaims political space for women at the Panchayat level structured across three tiers, Gram Panchayat(village), Panchayat Samiti(block), and Zila Parishad(district) where development plans are drafted, state schemes are implemented, and democracy is lived.
We equip women to navigate public systems, track public funds, and assert legal rights through targeted capacity-building, civic education, and real-time problem-solving. From drafting Gram Panchayat Development Plans to monitoring welfare delivery, filing RTIs, and halting rights violations like child marriage, our model transforms local governance from within.
In one year, Nayi Umeed has trained 500+ elected women across 80+ Panchayats to conduct social audits, demand entitlements, and hold duty-bearers accountable. We’ve facilitated 300+ land title transfers to women and ensured 700+ widows accessed pensions through direct intervention. Our adolescent leaders, trained through Bal Panchayats, have led campaigns on education, sanitation, and climate justice—shaping local agendas with bold new voices.
With low-tech, high-impact tools like WhatsApp-based learning modules and mobile Policy Camps, we’ve built a decentralized, scalable model for women-led governance that is participatory, rights-based, and field-ready.
This isn’t development work.
This is governance, reimagined by women, for everyone.