2023, Not just a year!

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What started as a small seed has now become now a full-grown tree with branches going far and wider and roots going deeper. 2023 was a fantastic year and we went above and beyond.

We moved into our own office, of course donated by the founders. Our own office is giving us an enormous sense of identity and pride. We love the vibe of our office and the positive energy it emanates. Team Raah is excited with the prospects, and we are so looking forward to 2024.

Our team too grew from strength to strength. We huddled together and drafted an actionable 2030 strategy which is aligned with the sustainable development goals. We worked backwards and created an organizational structure that is robust yet lean, technically sound yet extremely grounded and passionate. But we continue to stay hungry and foolish.

Our Raah transcended national boundaries and we got recognition and accreditation from United Nation for our Water program. We were invited to the UN Water Conference in March earlier this year which was held after 50 years. It was wonderful sharing and talking about our work.

This year also brought in a unique opportunity for me to meet amazing people at several international conferences I had the privilege of attending from Srilanka and Kaula Lampur to Rwanda. I could share our story with some amazing people and get validation for our work.

We love experimentation and continuously are piloting new ideas. Some fail but when some of them become successful and how. Buoyed by the success of turmeric pilot with 40 farmers, this year we scaled it up to 200 small and marginal farmers. We now plan to expand this program further. Our pilot on dragon fruit cultivation too looks to be completely on track and our saplings from the cacti family have met all milestones so far. Our team is now thinking about several new ideas, experiments and pilots.

We work in rural areas where technology adoption is minimal especially among women. We wanted to break this glass ceiling for our women and wow our team accomplished what looked near impossible. Our women micro entrepreneurs - many of whom have never been to school and cannot read or write but thanks to the persistence and patience and training given by our team are using cell phones to transact business. They were also trained on financial literacy, and we can see green shoots of our vision of making tribal communities resilient.

As our women from rural areas are embracing technology, our team from Head office didn’t stay behind. This year we became more tech oriented and now using several tools to become better and much more efficient. We are using satellites to monitor our plantation, drone photography to get a better grip on our projects, Microsoft teams to better collaborate and the list goes on.

Climate change is real and affecting all of us and especially our tribal communities who are innocent victims. After working for several years on climate change adaptation we decide to expand to also work on climate change mitigation in 2020. We decided to take a holistic ecosystem approach to mitigation and decided to work on multiple aspect like plantation of native indigenous saplings, soil and moisture conservation and building loose boulder structures etc., protecting grasses and diverting grazing, planting vetiver and importantly working with the community and involving them in the program. The program expanded to Nashik last year and this year saw a massive scale up to over 560 acres and 100000 saplings. This has now emboldened us, and we are aiming to cover 50,000 acres by 2030. This year the program got a name - Regreen Nation.

Government is the biggest service provider and any program that needs scale must work with them.

A big feather in our cap in 2023 was signing an MOU with the CEO of Nashik Zilla Parishad. We now are partners in Regreen program where they will bring the MGNREGA funds along with the necessary approvals and guidance and we bring our model. We also signed MOUs with Gram panchayat, Forest department and the joint Forest Management Committees. We are super excited and are looking forward to regreening the forest corridors in the Sahyadris.

Growth is addictive and our Skill training program started in 2021 to train and place youth in corporate India went on an overdrive mode. Before we could catch our breath, we now have 17 centres with one centre outside Maharashtra nearby Baroda, Gujarat. This will allow us to engage our youth positively, specially the drop out youths from under privileged families and ensure that they start contributing to nation building.

It wasn’t just a year! Ups & downs, learnings-unlearnings, highs & lows made our journey momentous, helped us deep dive and most importantly get emotionally & professionally close knitted.

2024, here we come all charged up and prepared. Wishing all of you a fantastic year ahead and may this year see the fulfilment of all your desires.

Cheers!

Dr. Sarika Kulkarni

Founder & CEO