UNNATI - Organisation for Development Education is a voluntary non-profit organisation. It is registered under the Societies Registration Act (1860) in 1990, Delhi.

Vision
Create an inclusive society where all stakeholders, particularly the vulnerable dalits and women participate with full empowerment and gain equal access and control over services, resources and institutions.

Mission
Promote social inclusion and democratic governance so that the vulnerable sections of society are empowered to effectively and decisively participate in mainstream development and decision making process.

Strategy
The above aim is accomplished through providing strategic issue based support to development initiatives in Gujarat and Rajasthan. This is carried out by undertaking collaborative research, public education, advocacy, direct field level mobilization and implementation with multi stakeholder participation. While we work at the grassroots to policy level environment, for ensuring basic rights of citizens, we derive inspiration from the struggles of the vulnerable and field practices of the partners.

Presently, all the activities are undertaken under the following themes:
(i) Social Inclusion and Empowerment
(ii) Civic leadership and Governance

HISTORY
Unnati has completed 15 years of providing educational support in Gujarat and 7 years in Rajasthan. Over the last 15 years Unnati has made three strategic shifts. Initially during 1990-92, capacity building support was extended to selected VDOs for institutional development. The key thematic areas of support were participatory planning, evaluation and organizational management.

During 1993 –95, along with the above a shift was made to address a variety of emerging issues in Gujarat i.e. rising communalism, drought management, adverse impact of liberalization. Thus Unnati began to play a pro-active role in development education, in addressing major macro issues, focusing the activities on research, documentation and advocacy.

In 1996, we also expanded our activities to the State of Rajasthan. In the beginning, an action research on micro planning for panchayats was initiated in Jawaja block of Ajmer District. During this phase a newsletter, entitled VICHAR was launched in Gujarati and Hindi.

The Gujarat Chapter of Charka, an organization that interfaces between developmental work and media for publicizing positive development initiatives in the mainstream regional newspapers was launched.

UNNATI also became a member of Network of Collaborating regional Support Organisations (NCRSOs).  NCRSO is an informal network of support organizations in India committed to promote participation and gender equity in social development. The network is being coordinated by PRIA New Delhi

A formal review of UNNATI’s programmes was undertaken in 1999 with the help of three external evaluators. The main purpose of this review was to identify strategic issues and re-craft the strategy with a view to achieve greater focus and relevance in the coming years.