Best Practices Foundation (BPF)

Über uns

Best Practices Foundation (BPF) is a Bangalore-based NGO to improve the quality of life for poor and marginalised communities through participatory approaches to co-create innovations that are pro-poor, inclusive and gender sensitive.
Best Practices Foundation was established in 1999 as an action-based research organisation to identify, document, innovate and disseminate best practices in development.

Mission
We believe that it is important to capture the vast and diverse knowledge emerging from the development community, facilitate sharing and cross fertilization of knowledge and create innovations that address the identified gaps. Towards this end, BPF strives to improve the quality of life for poor and marginalized communities through documentation, innovation, implementation and dissemination of best practices.

Vision
The Best Practices Foundation envisions widespread identification and institutionalisation of best practices in the fields of development, particularly in livelihoods, governance and gender equity. To fulfil this mandate, BPF aims to become an agile, knowledge-based innovation agency and a network hub for the institutionalisation of best practices through multisector partnerships.

Our work
Over the years, BPF has transformed into a knowledge-based institution facilitating the creation of innovative solutions to address some of the most pressing development issues worldwide. It has worked to strengthen local governance, enable access to public services, create sustainable livelihoods, encourage environmentally-conscious agricultural processes, and promote gender-sensitive and inclusive practices.
• Developing innovations that create and ensure sustainable livelihoods, inclusive governance and gender equity. Of particular significance are BPF’s innovations in creating sustainable livelihoods for the asset-poor (MOVE programme) and engendering vocational education initiative (Gender Vocational Education toolkit).
• Conducting action-research in partnership with development community, civil society and policy makers to address gaps in public services and NGO processes to facilitate more inclusive and better reach to communities.
• Documenting and disseminating best practices to enable development practitioners and governments scale innovative practices and assist them to reflect upon and redesign their initiatives.
• Undertaking evaluations to assess impact of interventions of development agencies, and help local and state government institutions design programmes for improved sustainability. Our evaluation approach utilises rigorous methods to assess criteria such as elevance, visibility, efficiency, sustainability, adaptability and replicability.
• Influencing desirable policy change through the creation of issue specific policy briefs that provide rigorous analysis of key challenges and possible solutions, engage in dialogue with state department heads, and issue-based task forces in the Planning Commission of India.

Market Oriented Value Enhancement (MOVE) is a livelihood enhancement programme conceptualized and operationalized by BPF which enables illiterate, landless, and economically vulnerable individuals (particularly women) to run successful micro-enterprises. BPF´s MOVE which was evolved for landless illiterate women, has since been tailored to youth, quarry workers, beedi workers, MSM-Ts and women with HIV/AIDS.

Sangeetha Purushothaman is the Director and Chairman of the Best Practices Foundation (BPF).

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.