since VARHAD was founded almost two decades ago. While we began our journey with a mission to provide access to justice to the poor and marginalized prisoners and further contribute meaningfully in their reformation and rehabilitation process, today our focus is far more multifaceted. Although our works with the prisoners and the families continue to strategically place us to be one of the few organizations to have taken up these challenging tasks yet, we have made a conscious attempt to reach out to the youth and women in particular from the Vidarbha region to empower them with adequate livelihood options. Over the years VARHAD realized the fact that an educated neighbourhood is found to report low level of crime rate and in order to uproot the breeding of crime, VARHAD established Samrat Ashoka Study Centre. Over 100 young boys and girls use the Samrat Ashok Study Centre facilities on any given day for the preparation of competitive exams. Till date, over 200 boys and girls have been able to secure a government job. Additionally, we have been able to reach out to more than 300 poor and needy students to take up our library facilities and career development programme. While VARHAD is a well-known entity in the field of Criminal Justice System, recently, VARHAD has forged new collaborations and expanded its work in other developmental challenges particularly in the area of Mental Health and education with a special focus on women and youth development in the Vidarbha region. In view of the growing needs to address the mental health challenges which was experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic VARHAD attempted to venture into this field. VARHAD initiated a few projects in this field with the local support and aims to increase the numbers in this field in the times ahead.