A short film. A clock turns once through her first eighteen years while her life is drawn as one line. Before she is born, her mother is still a child. At birth, she is already behind. At three, she cannot catch up. At thirteen, she is pushed out of school. At fifteen, she is married off. At sixteen, her marriage is a trafficker’s cover. At eighteen, she is the next mother, and the clock is back where it began. Unless every one of those years meets an answer. Rights and Entitlements answers the years before birth to five; School of Leadership, five to eighteen; Human Protection, eleven to eighteen; Climate Justice, every year. As each one arrives, her line rises over those years, until every year is answered and the clock keeps turning past eighteen.

Indo-Nepal border · since 2000

This Cycle Doesn’t Break on Its Own.

DEHAT works on every one of her eighteen years at once: with the girl, her family, her village, and the public system that owes her.

That was her first eighteen years. Here is every turn, with its figure, its source, and what answers it.

Risks Don’t Occur in Isolation.

They reinforce each other across generations - unless systems respond in time. There is no fixed order: for any child, the trap can begin at any point, and each risk pulls the next one closer.

Tap any moment to follow how one life is shaped.

Maternal health

1 in 2

A Malnourished, Underage Mother

The girl in this picture is carrying a child before her own body is ready. In Lakhimpur Kheri, more than 1 in 2 pregnant women is anaemic, already weakened before pregnancy even begins.

Source: National Family Health Survey 5 · Lakhimpur Kheri (56.1% of pregnant women; the survey marks this as based on a small sample) - highest in the belt

Underage Mother

The girl in this picture is carrying a child before her own body is ready. In Lakhimpur Kheri, more than 1 in 2 pregnant women is anaemic, already weakened before pregnancy even begins.

Source: National Family Health Survey 5 · Lakhimpur Kheri (56.1% of pregnant women; the survey marks this as based on a small sample) - highest in the belt

Vision

A child-centred society where every child realises their rights and lives a safe, dignified, and fulfilling life.

Mission

To work with communities and systems to realise existing power, ensuring children’s rights are recognised, accessed, and upheld in everyday life.

Theory of Change

When communities act and systems respond in convergence, children’s survival, development, protection, and participation are realised and sustained.

The process

When Communities Act, Systems Respond.

Four movements that feed each other. A system that responds changes what a community expects next, and the loop begins again - higher up. Tap a movement to follow it.

Behaviour Change

It starts with individuals and peer groups - Child Parliaments, Youth Groups - recognising a risk and recognising that they have a right against it. That recognition is what turns into organised pressure.

A community that knows its rights starts asking for them → Demand Generation

Each turn of the loop leaves more capability behind than the last. See It Inside the Programmes →

What we do

Four Fronts, One Converging Response.

School of Leadership

Co-Create · Co-Facilitate · Lead

From Child Parliaments to adolescent and youth groups, children evolve as leaders - participating, claiming rights, and driving community and public systems as citizens of today.

14,628+

Children and Adolescents Reached through Capacity Building

877

Community-Based Organisations Capacity-Built with Them

Where we work

23 Districts. 2 States. One Border.

We work across the eastern Indo-Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh and in Maharashtra - regions bound by a shared structural vulnerability. Tap a district to see the ground.

These are not sites of need alone but of leadership. Three districts - Bahraich, Shravasti and Balrampur - hold our deepest, most intersectional investment; Lakhimpur Kheri joins them from 2026, beginning with child protection. The rest mark programme presence alongside their communities since 2000. Open the atlas for the numbers behind each, and their sources.

22,020+

Children & Adolescents Reached

₹19.75 Cr

≈ $2.30M USD (2026 rate)

Invested in Community Systems since 2000

₹8.88 Cr

≈ $1.03M USD (2026 rate)

Public Resources Accessed

Districts across 2 States

Stories of change

“Jurisdiction was not used as a reason to wait.”

A fifteen-year-old girl · Nepal, via Haryana · Human Protection

1 / 8

Read Every Story →

Who is behind this

Thirty-Four People, a Founder, Two Boards, and a Story That Starts in 1968

This organisation is not a head office with a team posted out to the districts. Most colleagues were recruited in the districts they work in and come from the communities they work with, and the ones who came from outside stayed. Choose a face to see whose account you are reading, or follow the register from a cowshed in Champaran to four districts of work.

Devyani Chaturvedi Executive Director · Core Team and Strategic Leadership Team Across districts · Since 2021

The Who We Are page holds all thirty-four colleagues, the founder, the Governing Board, the advisers, the value system and the full register of turning points.

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