Ant Swot Analysis

A fourteen-year old organization, ANT was founded in 2000 by Sunil Kaul and his wife Jennifer Liang, who abandoned a life with bright career opportunities to dedicate themselves to the cause of upliftment of the people of north-east India. The organization is based in the highly turbulent region of the BTAD in Assam, specifically the Chirang Dirstict.

The ANT acts at two levels: working with communities to ensure basic services such as health care and local employment opportunities, and sharing knowledge and experiences with a variety of NGOs across the region through training workshops and printed publications.

Background: A peep into the plight of the Bodoland

Ethnic Conflicts

The period of the British Rule saw a large number of workers

Aagor Daagra Afad – a weaving organization :

ANT seeks to provide livelihood solutions to the skilled women weavers of the Bodoland. The handicrafts have gained reputation nationally and internationally.

It started in 2002. It provides work to 150 women, who also run an in-house weaving centre. Women of the lower economic class benefit greatly in terms of economic independence. Aagor sells over 70 lakhs rupees of products in a year and in 2010-2011, it distributed wages of Rs.35 lakhs rupees to local women weavers. III. IDeA (Institute of Development Action)

IDeA was started with a mandate to build up the capacity of the voluntary sector in the northeast region. Since it started in 2007, IDeA has run over 100 courses and had people from Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura come for the short courses on topics such as NGO management, Rights Based Approach, Proposal development, documentation, training skills etc. These organizations will be sufficiently built up to link to funding resources independently.

The IDeA faculty also goes as resource persons to train staff of other NGOs and also regularly to teach in various institutes and training centres across the

VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT:

 Women Empowerment

Women in the Bodo community are skilled, but are either unable to pursue weaving as an occupation and are engaged in agriculture or do not have sufficient knowledge about the technical know-how or government schemes. A recent study by an Assistant Professor of the Gauhati University states that around 50% of the women are engaged in agriculture and more than half of the women have not completed higher secondary education. Less than 10% of the women are engaged in the occupation of weaving.(http://www.ijset.net/Papers/IJSET-7.pdf)

Further, the instance of domestic violence is high. Girls are not allowed to play football and other sports.

So in the field of women empowerment, ANT has initiated the following:

 Formation of women’s collectives called Jagruti Groups and Jagruti Federations to fight against domestic violence and violation of the rights

 Instilling leadership skills in women for bringing social change

 Starting a cycle bank for women to increase their mobility

 Promoting Micro Enterprises among SHG and