Active participation is promoted through people-centred programmes. The villagers are actively involved in the programme design from the time of its conception and planning to its implementation, monitoring and evaluation. It responds to people's feedback in an appropriate and feasible manner. The capacity to influence programmes increases villager’s ownership and responsibility in the programmes. Most village issues are concerned with all ages and both sexes hence our participatory strategy addresses men, women, youth and children groups.

Poor and marginalized people have multiple problems and issues inter-related to each other. Isolated programmes address only one specific issue in their lives. Although, the different components in our objectives are presented separately they are all integrated and connected to each other in a systematic manner. They are interlinked to each other in the field, in the villages and in the centre. This integration is further strengthened through strong networking with different departments of the government and other institutions in the area.

We believe that the participatory and integrated nature of our programmes increases ownership and stability leading gradually to sustainability. Nevertheless we realize that sustainability does not happen spontaneously but calls for participation and integration. Hence a deliberate attempt is made to enhance the capacity of the people to run their own programme from the very beginning because the result lies in the steps of the process.

Our programme emphasis is process oriented rather than result oriented. The result is successful as each step in the process increases people's capacity to handle issues as independently as possible. This march towards sustainability involves great patience, consistency and persistence over a long period. Drawing out people's potential and nurturing them towards sustainability takes time.

Sustainability also means leveraging existing under-utilized infrastructure in the area such as certain banks and government services. Our attempt is to create links in the gaps that exist between the rural population and large overwhelming bodies like the government, which often fail to respond adequately and appropriately to the relevant, realistic needs and problems of the marginalized community. Our strong network with the people in the villages and the existing infrastructure facilitates appropriate bilateral actions on feedback received from either side.

For sustainability to become a reality for the poor and semi-literate villagers, greater effort is directed towards concurrent capacity building of the people themselves to tap their own resources within the community. Identifying and nurturing leadership and good governance forms a part of our programme.

Networking is done at the grass root level between villages, panchayats, blocks and district with villagers, government institutions as well as at the state and national level with various stakeholders on different issues.