Policy
The Organization for Social Development Initiatives is a think tank based NGO working passionately to improve the lives of the poor and raise their standards of living. Our vision is to alleviate poverty in the urban and rural areas of Pakistan and empower the poor to overcome the causes that result in people having to lead lives in under privileged conditions.
Being a developing and a fairly young nation of only 62 years of independence and also the constant victim of political instability and natural catastrophes, our people have struggled to build their lives and the poor have always been adversely affected resulting in their continuous vulnerable living conditions. Pakistan's rapid industrial/economic growth in the last ten years has significantly increased the inequality gap between the rural and the urban living standards. The nation has low literacy rates and these figures become alarmingly low in the rural areas. This makes the rural poor dependant on agricultural and livestock based incomes which are susceptible to natural calamities and external shocks thus pushing the families into the poverty cycle.
At OSDI we strongly believe that every human being has the right to the basic necessities of life which plays an integral role in the well being of his/her family. Our policy takes into account that we incorporate all these aspects like access to education, health facilities, malnutrition issues, better infrastructure facilities like gas and electricity and access to clean water etc. the availability of which is significant in improving the lives of the poor. Our mission of poverty alleviation is in support of the Millennium Development Goal ‘to eradicate poverty' presented by the United Nations and endorsed by the Government of Pakistan.
We endeavor to improve the living conditions of the poor and help people fight the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Our programs have been designed to provide the means and the right tools to the poor in order to create a sense of responsibility among them so that they can take the appropriate initiatives of helping themselves. We intend to achieve our objectives through social mobilization of the communities and create social cohesion, so that people can take the responsibility of helping themselves and break free from the poverty trap. We consider that the only way forward to bring the families and communities in the rural areas out of the poverty cycle is by promoting sustainable development through poverty alleviation and access to universal education for the misfortunate.
We intend to diminish this critical social problem through developing income generation projects for the poor, micro-financing these projects, application of sustainable livelihood approaches focusing on agricultural and livestock development, social mobilization of the people leading to empowerment and development of communities. We will be using small scale interventions to fill in the gaps that can lead to major differences in the lives of the poor .