WHO WE ARE ?
Nepal Grassroots Development Forum (NGDF) is a non-for-profit making/sharing organization registered under the Company Act, 2063 of Nepalese government which works to promote the traditional and indigenous occupations of Dalit, including excluded and marginalized groups which have significant contribution to Nepal’s rural economy.
However, these occupations are still largely based on traditional technologies which are not much productive and, therefore, it has not been able to generate enough contribution to national economy. Hence, NGDF is established with an aim to contribute for advancing the occupation of these communities who have been practicing traditional occupations for their livelihood and generating substantial income, through enhancing their competency in the modern market, increasing their access to information and modern technologies, to modernize and industrialize the traditional occupations.
Besides modernizing traditional occupations, NGDF is also dedicated for promoting and preserving the traditional art and skills, cultures, and occupations of Dalit and other marginalized communities, which are in the verge of extinction. It also aims at working for commercializing agriculture and farm products through making compatible agricultural tools and techniques. It creates employment opportunities by developing entrepreneurship through promotion of local skills and technology which ultimately contributes to promote socio-economic and cultural rights of Dalit and marginalized groups of Nepal.
History of NGDF
The concept of the grassroots movement came out from the South Asian Social Forum-2011 in Dhaka, where the issues of grassroots development were profoundly discussed by activists, intellectuals, and experts from around the globe and eventually they came up with an idea to establish ggrassroots development institutions in each South Asian countries and subsequently decided to extend South Asian and International level networks for grassroots development.In this way, the exigency of this organization in Nepal was felt by the members of marginalized community who are dedicated to promote the rights of Dalits and other marginalized ones for long time. The various facts reveal that the systematic development initiatives taken by the government and various development agencies including I/NGOs in Nepal have been continuing over a half decade; however, the real fruit of these interventions hardly addresses the deprivation and backwardness of Dalit and marginalized people. The Human Development Index (HDI) of Dalits and other marginalized communities reaffirms this explicitly.
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other development priorities have become no more than development slogans for Dalits and marginalized people in Nepal. Hence, it is essential to initiate development efforts from the grassroots level with all the aspects of socio-cultural realities and to help shape the overall development process of Nepal. NGDF believes that the real changes come from the grassroots level. Therefore, with a vision to take initiatives on grassroots development emphasizing community based approaches this organization is formed by the development activists, scholars and professionals working for Dalits and marginalized people rights in the country.