For nearly three decades, Development Alternatives has been working on empowering the poor and the marginalised to access their entitlements and claim their rights. It does though diverse institutional models and systems that can contribute towards the development of informed and empowered communities.

The process involved in strengthening institutions on one hand enables communities to access a range of entitlements to improve their overall quality of life and on the other facilitates and sensitises the governance and service delivery system.

Therefore, this domain of work encompasses multifaceted action at different levels of human to human and human to institutional interactions. This can be summarised as the:

• Formation and strengthening of community institutions that demand and realise their entitlements
• Creating an enabling environment for convergent action that responds to the demands and supports the realisation of these entitlements.

Approximately 12000 households have been made aware of different entitlement schemes and approximately 1600 households already access entitlements worth Rs 107 Lakh. DA intends to set up 12,000 community institutions in the Bundelkhand region till 2012 and also scale up similar initiatives in other Hindi-speaking areas.