2020-21 has been a year when the COVID pandemic challenged humanity. While people across the board felt its impact, the vulnerable segments of society were the most deeply impacted. Communities that Sambandh supports face substantive health and livelihood adversities. In response, we scaled up our sectoral capabilities in health ,livelihood, and education, which were developed over the decades, to enable communities to cope with the trials
of the pandemic. Our teams worked closely with our partners to enhance the health system’s preparedness during
these difficult times. Besides sustaining our core development work, our teams have supported communities and civil society partners in scaling the COVID response work focused on addressing the livelihood needs of the most
marginalized segments. We also significantly scaled up our work to assist marginalized women and girls with support
from development agencies, corporate partners, and individual donors. We have scaled our work with marginalized
smallholder farmers and women micro-entrepreneurs across many districts of Odisha, and we have been working closely with the Odisha state government. Sambandh is an ardent believer of the sustainable development goals SDG
and has incorporated many of it goals and targets in letter and spirit and has been implementing it at the field levels.
COVID has taught us that to address the issues facing the poor and marginalised, especially in these uncertain times, we need a different playbook, which works at a greater scale and encompasses a much broader scope. We are grateful to all our partners for their support in driving the execution of various programmes in this unprecedented environment.

While we have spared no effort to help mitigate adversities, we realised that a more structured approach
makes a more significant contribution. Towards that end, our strategy will be to continue to work towards poverty
alleviation; focus on uplifting women and girls; extend our efforts to assist the most marginalised. Our best endeavors
would be futile without the backing of our partners, and we have included them as an integral part of our vision. I take
this opportunity to thank them for their unstinted support so far and express my confidence that they will continue
to stand by us in our vision for the future. A special thanks to our staff members, who worked tirelessly 24X7 despite
the pandemic. It is due to their tireless efforts that we were able to serve the people with commitment. For that, my
Board members and I express our deep appreciation.

I would also like to share my gratitude to all the Sambandh family members – our employees, donors, peer
organisations, and other stakeholders, who have believed in us and worked selflessly to convert our intentions
into realities.