Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon encompassing inability to satisfy basic needs like food, shelter, education, health of majority of people, which is aggravated by lack of their access to and control over resources, social exclusion and gender disparity among others. Although, Nepal has been successful to some extent in achieving progress in raising the socio-economic condition of the poor after 1990, the country still requires a lot to do before the people could take some solace.

Country’s inability in harnessing available resources to a desired extent, dearth of visionary leadership, and inefficient bureaucracy are some of the major contributing factors hindering nation’s development. The ills of corruption, poor quality of services, 3 and non-responsiveness of service providers still persist among the government institutions. Still, the underprivileged people look upon the government programs with much hope and aspiration for improving their livelihoods.

SKMT, established in 1993 with the primary objective of serving poor people in need and guided by polycentric development approach, strongly believes that awareness raising and educating mainly the rural recipients of basic services is one of the ways to improve this scenario. Subsequent launching of community development programs keeping poor women and children at the centre would be another step to make the benefits of the development programs more visible.

The Trust therefore, since its inception, has been implementing a number of development projects in rural Nepal targeting women and children from underprivileged communities to mitigate these shortcomings and expedite the development process.