About Us
Who We Are
Raah Health & Social Development Foundation is an Indian not-for-profit, community-based, secular organisation dedicated to improving health, well-being, and opportunity at the grassroots through community engagement and locally grounded innovation.
What We Do
Health and development strategies often fail the global poor. Usually conceived by outsiders from the top down, many prove unworkable in the context of entrenched challenges at the last mile. Recognising the importance of power and participation in defining problems, opportunities, and solutions, we strive to learn together. We embed the innovation process within communities to ensure that ideation, testing, adaptation, and scaling respond to local priorities, generating authentic learning and impactful solutions.
Much of our work focuses on maternal and child health, routine immunisation, and social protection. We also support government health campaigns and community-based initiatives that improve awareness, strengthen service utilisation, and promote equitable access to public programmes.
By learning from community experiences and field implementation, we develop practical and locally grounded innovations that respond to local needs. We invite you to explore our projects!
Where We Work
Our field work is conducted in a rural district of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state with more than 200 million inhabitants and especially poor health and development indicators. Hardoi (population 4.1 million) is a low-performing district within Uttar Pradesh. The Indian government views Uttar Pradesh and Hardoi as high-focus areas for health, development, and immunisation.
While our work is proudly local, our aspirations are global. We aim to contribute ideas, evidence and solutions that can be adapted meaningfully to other geographies and widely scaled.
Our Story
Our journey began in 2012 through efforts to strengthen childhood immunisation in underserved communities. Early field experiences demonstrated that sustainable improvements in health and well-being require close engagement with communities and a deep understanding of local realities.
Over time, these experiences reinforced the importance of working alongside communities, frontline workers, and public systems to identify barriers and develop practical, locally relevant solutions. Through continued field engagement, the team gained experience in community mobilisation, health promotion, and strengthening access to public services.
The challenges and lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need for strong community-based institutions that can support vulnerable households and strengthen links between communities and essential services.
In 2020, Raah Health & Social Development Foundation was formally registered as an Indian not-for-profit organisation. Since then, the foundation has worked to improve access to health services, social protection schemes, and other essential public services through community engagement and locally grounded innovation.
Our Values
- A fair chance. We believe that everyone should have an equal opportunity to achieve good health. Good health is intrinsically valuable; moreover, it unlocks a myriad of possibilities to learn, grow, and to realise one’s dreams. By contributing to health equity, Raah aspires to offer everyone a fair chance in life.
- Empowering local actors. Catalysing change in contexts of entrenched inequalities is extremely difficult. Raah puts local actors at the centre of change. We believe that those with lived experience of an issue or problem are best positioned to understand its root causes and judge workable solutions.
- Building shared success.We are a learning organisation committed to strengthening the capacity of our team and continuously improving our work. Our field team is central to our approach, and many team members have worked in the same communities for several years, building trust, local knowledge, and long-term relationships
- Social inclusion. We value equality, diversity, and take pride in investing in local capacity. For us, each team member is also a partner and a future changemaker. See Work environment.
- Integrity. We are committed to transparency, accountability, and responsible stewardship of resources. Raah maintains strong governance, financial management, and compliance systems to ensure that resources are used effectively and in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. We strive to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct in all aspects of our work. See Governance/ Financial Stewardship.