Kamla: Fighting poverty for a just society

By Bhupendra Mistry, Founding Director at the Kamla Foundation and Kamla Institute

The Kamla Foundation is a local charity based in Greater Manchester addressing the multiple factors that contribute to communities being locked into poverty in India, striving to understand the ‘whole’ person, building relationships that respond to locally defined problems with culturally sustainable solutions…ultimately giving a ‘voice’ to those that have never had one.

Through our work, we are trying to understand poverty. Poverty has many different facets, each one as unique as the next, each with strengths and weaknesses that can catalyse or inhibit an individual’s journey out of their endless predicament.

Through the work achieved to date by the Kamla Foundation, we have witnessed some of the most marginalised individuals and communities flourish – creating an environment of stability and opportunity, nurturing the right ideas, values, and developing leaders to deliver lasting change. This has enabled us to explore first hand the conditions required for individuals and communities to begin their journey out of poverty – creating that pathway to prosperity.

Building on the learning from the Kamla Foundation, we wish to take our understanding of poverty to the next level. The Kamla Institute launched earlier this year and is a UK based think-tank exploring new thinking for renewal, reconnection and the restoration of hope for the poorest. The Kamla Institute will create a positive space to spur creative thinking on critical social issues, promoting fair debate where cutting edge research and evidenced policy ideas from across the spectrum can be discussed and disseminated.

We will aim to capture all the latest thinking by widening the traditional policy audience so that the debate better reflects all parts of society. Our goal is to stimulate public discussion and advance solutions while creating an informed community that can craft a new vision of action for the future.

We will be challenging the impossible promises of the political extremes by bringing to life an aspirational narrative about the potential of the poorest – rooted in their hopes for a just society.

Applying innovative approaches, capturing impact and critiquing commentary will continue to be the hallmark of our work with both the Kamla Foundation and Kamla Institute. We look forward to having the opportunity to work closely with Resolve Poverty to share our learning and collaborate on key areas of work in the UK.

Click here to view the next chapter of our journey.

Please contact info@kamlainstitute.org if you wish to receive further information about our work and explore ways in which we may work together.

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This article is featured in our 4 September newsletter.

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