We are C3 Centre for Catalyzing Change
We are for EveryGirl. EveryWoman. EveryWhere.

Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3), formerly known as Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), India, started working in India in 1987. In the last 30 years, C3 has emerged as a key change-making organization focused on improving the condition of girls and women in the country.

At C3, we design solutions that mobilize, equip, educate and empower girls and women to meet their full potential. We strive to create an ecosystem where all girls and women can demand and get their due entitlements. Our work addresses the challenges that they face in our country at various stages in their lives.

At the core of our work and approach is the belief that gender equality is essential for development and democracy. Our programs are aimed at equipping girls and women with practical life skills, improved confidence in personal decision-making, and increased self-esteem.

Our work ensures that girls and women have access to quality reproductive and maternal health care. We are committed to equal participation of women in governance and leadership roles as a step towards building a stronger nation.

C3 is a non-governmental organization registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. Currently, C3 works directly in 10 states of India –
Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Odisha, West Bengal.
Trusted partners of the Government of India

C3 works with government ministries and their departments, practitioners and think-tanks to build, incubate and develop policies and solutions that have positively impacted, and continue to impact, millions of girls and women in India. C3 is part of national and state advisory groups that have helped develop a number of policies and programs that benefitted girls and women – for example, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s guidelines for skilled attendance at birth (for auxiliary nurses/midwives), the National Quality of Care guidelines, India’s Reproductive Maternal Neoborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A) strategy, the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) guidelines, Lakshya guidelines for quality of care in labour rooms, and the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) framework for adolescent education.

Our journey Milestones in Over 30 years of Commitment to a Cause

  • 1987

    We begin by launching the Better Life Option Program to enable adolescent girls make better life choices

  • 1992

    We lead the Innovations in Family Planning Services Project in Uttar Pradesh under an agreement between the Government of India and USAID

  • 1999

    We establish the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in India to rally action to prevent maternal deaths

  • 2002

    We register as an Indian entity to expand our portfolio in the country

  • 2004

    We begin incubating models, building evidence and implementing programs, and testing cost-effective ways of monitoring large-scale programs

  • 2006

    Chief Minister of Jharkhand launches Udaan, C3’s at-scale adolescent education program, in the state’s senior secondary schools

  • 2007

    We launch Pahel, the women’s leadership program which enables women at grassroots to govern with authority

  • 2011

    We sign a MoU with the Women and Child Development Department of Jharkhand to implement Sabla in the state

  • 2014

    We sign MoUs with Jharkhand’s Health and Women and Child Development Departments to implement RKSK and Sabla convergent models in a district reaching 80,000 adolescents annually

  • 2016

    WHO selects Udaan as ‘first generation at-scale innovation program’. Udaan reaches over 500,000 adolescents in over 2,900 secondary schools

  • 2016

    Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare selects Udaan and Pahel as best practices

  • 2017

    Our total number of MoUs with the government goes up to 8

  • 2018

    We launch our new strategy to optimize effectiveness of public policies and programs to positively impact the lives of women and girls by reaching 5 times the current outreach

Mission and Vision
Mission

To equip, mobilize, educate, and empower girls and women to achieve gender equality.

Vision

We envision a future in India where girls and women are fully empowered and enabled to realize their rights and opportunities, and achieve gender equality.

We look very closely at what girls and women need at every stage in their lives, and we transform these needs into specific actionables that governments, and communities themselves, can do. Every month, our work touches the lives of 2,50,000 girls and women in some of India’s most neglected villages and towns.

- Tuhina Nair, Fundraising Manager, South India
We are C3
Core values
  • Respect We treat others with respect and as we would ourselves want to be treated, whether within C3 or with partners, clients, and competitors.
  • Diversity We work with people from all walks of life and see diversity as a strength.
  • Commitment We are steadfast in honoring our commitments.
  • Excellence We constantly strive for excellence in all that we do, whether in designing and implementing programs or in our own internal management.
  • Equality We strive for a world in which all are treated equally, and we do so ourselves in all aspects of our work.
The C3 network

As one of the very few organizations working in India from a time when ‘women’s rights’ was still a relatively little-known and less-recognized notion, C3 has nurtured and developed a wide range of community-based interventions and partnerships around the cause of girls and women.

  • We are founding member and national secretariat of the White
    Ribbon Alliance of Safe Motherhood.
  • We are a member of the Ministry of Health and Family
    Welfare's RMNCH+A coalition
  • We are a member of the national-level Technical Advisory Group responsible
    for Youth Issues, of the Department of AIDS Control (DAC).
Networks