Vision: The people living in rural India, particularly in rainfed areas have empowered to secure their livelihood and quality of life.
Identity and Mission: The WOTR is a committed development support team that motivates and empowers rural men, women and children and other organisations for integrated watershed development and enhancement of quality of life on a sustainable basis.
Aims & Approach : The aim of WOTR is to support village communities in eradicating their poverty by regenerating their environment along watershed lines.
To achieve this objective, WOTR, together with its partners, seeks to mobilize the creative potential of the watershed dwellers so that they come together to regenerate their environment, in a comprehensive and integrated manner.
WOTR has pioneered the concept and practice of capacity building as a "stand alone" component which is a prelude to, as well as an integral component of ongoing participatory watershed development interventions. It also seeks to assist NGOs and other VSHGs interested in watershed development by extending them support to build up their capacities, as well as by networking and linkage building. In order to ensure large scale impact and replication , WOTR seeks to facilitate the unfolding of a people's movement for natural resources management along watershed lines.
To date WOTR has built up the capacities of 109 such NGOs/Govt. PIAs and VSHGs working in 393 watersheds covering a gross area of over 305,717 hectares and a total population of more than 4,10,000 in 25 districts of Maharashtra and one district in AP.
As part of its mandate, WOTR, to date, has provided training support to over 121,696 people (villagers, civil society agencies and Govt. functionaries) from across 22 states in India as well as 17 countries.
It also has large scale women's empowerment and development programmes involving over 3,319 SHGs (more than 45,300 women). WOTR is the Anchor Organisation of Lead Advocacy Network (LAN), India project involving 6 NGOs from 6 states namely Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
A micro-finance initiative begun by WOTR has now been taken over by its sister organisation, the Sampada Trust. In addition to these services, WOTR also undertakes development of IT- based solutions for project and programme management and coordination.
