**Enabling Citizenship in Urban Informal Settlements in Mumbai!** 

**Background**

In India’s informal settlements, millions live without access to basic rights—clean water, sanitation, legal identity, or social protection—simply because the system isn’t designed to see or serve them. People are often excluded from government schemes and services not by policy, but by paperwork, process, and invisibility.

When you lack documents, you lack access. And when you lack access, your voice is unheard, your rights denied, and your potential unrealised.

**Our Response**

At Apnalaya, we work at the intersection of **citizenship, governance, and dignity**.
We enable people in underserved urban communities to become informed, organised, and active citizens—capable of engaging with institutions and advocating for their rights.

Our model is simple but powerful:
**We build civic leadership and community participation, and connect people to the systems meant to serve them.**

**Impact So Far** 

- **3,270** civic actions led by trained community leaders
- **1,797** persons with disabilities secured **UDID cards**
- **198** individuals linked to key **welfare schemes**
- **14,687** families gained access to **basic services**
- **1,618** people received **government entitlements**
- **460** registered for **E-Shram cards** through our facilitation

These numbers reflect lives changed—individuals who are no longer invisible, families who now have water, ration cards, or health insurance, and communities who know how to demand their rights.

**Why It Matters**

Without awareness, access, and agency, no real change is possible.
We often meet families who’ve lived in cities for decades but have never been counted in a survey, issued an identity card, or informed of their entitlements. They’re disconnected from the system—and the system is disconnected from them.

By investing in civic empowerment, we break this cycle. We turn knowledge into action, and action into accountability.

**What We Need**

To scale and deepen this work across our intervention areas in Mumbai, we are seeking **for your support** for the coming year.

Your contribution will help us:

- Train and mentor a new cadre of **Community Resource Persons (CRPs)**
- Facilitate **documentation and access to entitlements**
- Organise **rights awareness campaigns** and civic mobilisation drives
- Build stronger **institutional linkages** with local and state authorities

**Join Us**

Your support can transform the trajectory of an entire community—from exclusion to empowerment.

Help us build a more just and inclusive city—**where every person is seen, heard, and counted.**

#EqualityMatters 

From Exclusion to Empowerment - Ensuring Equality for all

Apnalaya empowers Mumbai's urban poor through health, education, and advocacy for dignity, rights, and sustainable change.

Apnalaya was founded in 1972 by Tom Holland, the then Australian Consul General in Mumbai. Initially called the Holland Welfare Centre, the organisation provided food and care to children of migrant labourers. In 1973, Apnalaya (“our space”, in English) was registered as a Society, and was being run by a small group of volunteers. By 1981, Apnalaya was working in five areas in the city – starting from the south, and expanding into the west, central and eastern parts. Interventions were varied, deep and were most often a direct response to what communities needed – from

balwadis (early child care centres) and clinics, to facilitating educational opportunities for women from indigenous communities. 

The 90s saw Apnalaya evolve from supporting immediate community needs, to programmes using rights-based frameworks as their backbone. Towards the end of the 90s, in four out of five

communities, Apnalaya’s presence was no longer necessary, or the communities were strengthened to take over. The sole exception was Shivaji Nagar, in the M East ward, the area

Apnalaya has been operating in, since 1976. At present most of our work is focused in the M East ward of Mumbai, an area where people live adjacent to Asia oldest and largest dumping ground,

and where, on average 145 people share one toilet seat. The average age at death here is 39, every second child is underweight, women’s participation in the labour force is 9.7% and a family of five typically survives on a combined monthly income of Rs. 13,555. 

Recasting an Integrated Community Development Approach, we developed a structured curriculum-based citizenship programme and ensured that all our interventions were gender

informed. Detailed measurement and evaluation tools were put in place to capture data across all programmes to track the impact of our work. Apnalaya is now recognised for its sustained holistic work with the urban poor and the local government, informed by evidence from the ground.  Although urban centres present real opportunities for poor people, they also create and feed conditions within which poverty spreads. Tackling the problem of Urban Poverty is complex. To effect change on the ground, through our three verticals - Health & Disability, Education & Livelihoods and Citizenship & Advocacy - Apnalaya takes a multi-dimensional approach, one where we work with Individuals, Communities and Government at various levels.

Apnalaya

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Apnalaya

From Exclusion to Empowerment - Ensuring Equality for all

EqualityMatters

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