The empowerment of communities through people’s participation ( ECoPP ) project is a 3 year project and works in 283 villages covering 3 states namely Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. So far 15071 families have been covered.
 
The project addresses the following 3 problems:

•  Income levels of poor rural and tribal families are low due to lack of opportunity for income generation and employment.
• Sectoral communities (Dalits, adivasis, fisherfolk, quarry workers, slum dwellers and small and marginalised farmers) are not organised adequately due to lack of understanding of their socio economic context and their rights and privileges.
• Rural and tribal school going children and youth do not have adequate knowledge and information on life coping skills, their rights and social issues of exploitation, abuse and the environment etc.

Through the following programme components :

• Livelihood Promotion for poor families through skill training and income generating activities
• Right based child and youth development
• Community development and strengthening of federations

• Livelihood promotion activities are based on community needs
• Under the livelihood programme each beneficiary contributes a certain percentage of their income to support an additional deserving poor families
• Children clubs are promoted in each village to educate children on child rights and child protection, environment, climate change etc.
• Child  resource centres with play materials and library books  are established in each village  to provide space for children in the evenings for extra-curricular activities
• Life skill education is imparted to adolescent boys and girls based on 6 modules developed by SCINDeA   
• Village level child protection committees(VLCPC) formed in each village to protect the interest of children with particular reference to the girl child. The VLCPCs are linked to the district child protection officer and the panchayats.
• School management committees have been strengthened in 45 rural and tribal schools     
• Village units in each village have been formed to mobilize govt. schemes and services for individual and the community.Livelihood promotion activities are based on community needs