“Rural people have to be shown that they and their children have a future on the land and from the land. This means that the objective in rural areas must be to stabilise the population – I do not mean only in numerical terms – by increasing individual earning potential and making the quality of rural life more acceptable in comparison with that of cities.
This is, of course, no new idea. Our earliest health care efforts, initiated by my grandfather, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan, a hundred years ago, were directed towards health care in India’s villages. We have never lost sight of this need and during 1975 and 1976 teams of researchers carried out a series of demographic surveys…The resultant reports proved to be a dramatic statement of the poverty differential between rural and urban dwellers…
I hope it [Aga Khan Rural Support Programme] will make an innovative and effective contribution to the application of effort and resources in the rural areas, both through its own work and by example. This programme is intended to be a catalytic agency, helping to identify income generating opportunities and to develop plans of action.”
Mawlana Hazar Imam
New Delhi, India, January 14, 1983
Speech published in A selection of speeches of His Highness the Aga Khan, Islamic Publications Ltd.
Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP)
The Aga Khan Foundation’s (AKF) Rural Support Programmes are founded on the principle that communities can take ownership of their own development through the establishment and good functioning of representative village organisations.
The first Rural Support Programme was established in the Northern Areas of Pakistan in 1983. AKF rural development interventions now reach over 4 million people living in remote and often marginalised areas in Central and South Asia and East and West Africa.
The core components of support to agriculture, natural resource management, financial services, and physical infrastructure, mediated through locally elected community-based institutions, have remained central to AKF’s rural development programming.
AKDN and Rural Development
Access to finance
AKF has had a long history both in running informal micro-finance initiatives and in connecting local people to formal micro-finance institutions. These efforts aim to increase households’ abilities to manage risk and make social and economic investments.
AKDN
To learn more about AKRSP’s global initiatives, visit Aga Khan Foundation, Development in Rural Areas
Compiled by Nimira Dewji
Ismailimail 