A strategic planning exercise by Stree Aadhar Kendra that spans the next
twenty years and attempts to prioritise the issues facing the women's development movement and to prepare an action plan to meet the challenges posed.

The last three decades of this century have been perhaps the most momentous in recorded human history.  In India we have seen a plethora of changes in all areas - economics, communications, science and technology, politics, human development and in fact the very social fabric of the nation. The economy has become borderless, communications have turned the world into a global village, Indian politics has gone from an era of single party domination to coalitions, hitherto underprivileged sections of the population like the dalits, women and other socially vulnerable groups have tried to create space for themselves in the social milieu through ‘alternative’ mechanisms. The development movement in India has undergone a metamorphosis catalysed mainly by increased global interaction with like minded individuals and groups. The successes of some governmental initiatives and social action groups round the country have also contributed a great deal to this process of change.

Stree Aadhar Kendra (SAK) has been a part of the local, national and international women's development processes for the last 15 years or so. It came into being as a response of socially aware women who joined hands in their struggle for obtaining an equal status for women in all fields. It has progressed over the years and from small groups of women it has become a State wide organisation at the fore-front of women's development. The rapidly changing socio-economic-political environment made it imperative that Stree Aadhar Kendra pause, introspect and plan its future course of action. The strategic planning exercise took shape out of these deliberations that lasted for well over a year.

One of the most important feature of the exercise was the participatory methods used. All members of the staff were involved in the process at every step. They contributed whole heartedly to the best of their abilities. While disputes and disagreements arose, attempts were made to settle the same through consensus rather than hierarchical decision making.  The exercise had a clear feminist perspective and efforts were made to devise gender sensitive methodologies on strategy formulation.

The key objectives of the strategy planning exercise were

       1) to prioritise the issues that the women's development movements faces in
            this age and more importantly is likely to face over the next twenty years.

 2)  to focus the institutions’ efforts on key issues rather than diffuse impact   through unrelated diversification.  

 3) to optimise utilisation of all resources, human, technical and financial.  

 4) to position the organisation in the appropriate ‘mind space’ of  the staff,
supporters and most importantly beneficiaries.  

 5)  to develop a suitable organisational structure that can adapt itself to the demands of the environment and facilitate decision making processes.

At all points the team bore in mind that the effort of strategy formulation was not an end in itself.  Implementation of the strategy over the next twenty years would determine the value of the efforts.

The strategic planning team made an all out effort to identify the issues that the development movement faces today and is likely to face in the next two decades.  Some of the key issues identified are

    - the indecisive polity in the country is heading for a change and a period of political instability and therefore more scope for advocacy and lobbying

    - the changing character of the development movement due to institutionalisation of voluntary groups, reduced budgets for welfare and social security, lack of creative and dynamic leadership and growing dependence on foreign funding.

   - political reforms that offer more space to people in governance at the grassroots

   - changing form of poverty in India - from “income poverty” to “skills poverty”

   - the liberalised economy that provides more opportunities of growth and prosperity ............ and exploitation 

   - the onset of a cultural revolution in the country and

   - the growing feminisation of poverty

The process team evaluated the external and internal processes thoroughly. All the organisational strengths and weaknesses were brought to the fore as were the opportunities and threats it faced.  Out of this process has emerged the role that SAK visualises for itself in the coming years. SAK would be

1.       a support structure for natural groups of women at the village level thereby enabling the process of empowerment at grassroots

2.       a network facilitator at the state and then national and international level

3.       an advocate of gender concern at national and international level.

The priority issues that SAK would be focusing on in the next few years are

Violence against women  
Basic Human Rights of women  
Reproductive Health Issues  
Women as economic actors (labourers, self-employed or farmers)  
Participation of women in the political processes.  
Women in disaster situations

Through all this the clearest and perhaps the most specific role that is emerging for SAK in the next few years is that of a “support centre” for micro-organisations of women.