By Mary Ellen Matsui | Executive Director
The year 2015-16 has been one of fond farewells and exciting beginnings in the life of Atma. We graduated eleven partners from the Accelerator Programme and on-boarded ten more. We welcomed several new team members and expanded the business development team, the M&E team, and the communications team. We launched a great new programme, the Atma Network, and we even moved offices -- though only into the next door building!
Witnessing the incredible growth of graduating partners like Bright Future, OSCAR, and Apni Shala was inspiring, and seeing the potential in our new partners has pushed us to practice Atma's mission internally by strengthening our organisation across multiple areas. In the past year, this has meant developing our team, completing an Atma rebranding, and launching the aforementioned Atma Network, a platform that provides free-of-cost NGO management expertise through webinars, strategy tools, and project guides. I can’t express how thrilling it is every time we hear of a new NGO joining the Network!
This year, we also saw an opportunity to harness the collective power of our partner NGOs. To this end, we launched a cohort for organisations working in education for persons with disabilities – Atma's first sub-sector cohort. In launching this cohort, we to take a step towards addressing key issues such as ‘inclusive education’ and affecting sector-wide change.
It is extremely satisfying to know that with each passing year, we get to associate with not just passionate leaders but also highly skilled volunteers who believe in Atma’s vision. This year we had volunteers from India, Canada, Australia, Austria, UK, Mexico, and the United States. They have worked in areas like M&E, Marketing, Strategy, and Finance, and on Atma Studio projects for our partners. As we grow and welcome more volunteers, we have seen a need to professionalise the Volunteer Programme to ensure that the quality of project work remains high. Our screening process has become tougher, and as of this past year, all volunteers now receive a Volunteer Performance Report that both (1) catalogues completed projects and hours worked and (2) provides feedback on competencies built and project quality from their supervising Partnership Manager. The reports this year have documented critical and high-quality work completed towards strengthening our partners systems.
So, I want to thank our amazing volunteers – you have made valuable contributions to some of the best education NGOs in India. None of this would be possible without the amazing team at Atma who work tirelessly for our partners and their students. They are skilled and empathetic professionals who make my job easy and make the world a better place for children everyday.
Lastly, I want to thank our supporters – new and old – who have continued to believe in the work that we do. I am happy to share that more and more donors are recognising the role that accelerator programmes play in the ecosystem towards affecting lasting change. We can't wait to continue this important work in the year to come.
Annual Report 2015-16: http://www.atma.org.in/…/…/11/Atma-Annual-Report-2015-16.pdf
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