Issue? Notwithstanding world-class engineering and medical schools, India has a paucity of superb liberal arts education focusing on best-in-class pure sciences, economics and other such disciplines.
Solution- A group of philanthropic visionaries envisioned a world-class liberal arts university in India modeled after Yale or Princeton. That dream turned into reality in the form of Ashoka University in the outskirts of Delhi. In ten short years Ashoka is arguably already one of India’s top universities with superb faculty, student-body and governance.
Our Role: IF is one of the founder donors of Ashoka University.
Indira Foundation supports a program with Arpan Foundation to desilt and rejuvenate water bodies in Maharashtra.
There are multiple benefits: a) Desilting increases the capacity of water bodies to collect and store water for use year-round, b) the (fertile) silt removed is hauled away and spread over nearby fields meaningfully increasing crop yields.
A key feature of the programs is the collaborative contribution of the resources needed: 1) Funding: Villagers and farm owners provide manpower plus pay for the transportation of silt, governments pay part of the cost of fuel while donors such as Arpan and IF pay for the equipment rental. 2) Local not-for-profits provide on-the-ground oversight while Arpan provides program-wide oversight.
How to meaningfully turbocharge desired social change .. in the most marginalized communities? Coro India believes the answer is in empowering and motivating leaders of such communities.
Coro builds capacity of grassroots-leaders to tackle five pressing (& interconnected) issues in these communities: 1) Equality and Justice, 2) Women’s empowerment, 3) Livelihoods, 4) Accessing Natural Resources and 5) Protecting the Rights of the marginalized.
Indira Foundation partners with Coro to build such capacity specifically by supporting 8 fellows and 4 grassroots organizations each year for 3 years in backward areas of the Vidarbha region of India’s Maharashtra state. More information on Coro’s work is available at http://coroindia.org/what-we-do/
Needy families of young cancer patients lack funds to get lengthy treatment in Mumbai, often far from home. Moreover, once treated and in remission, the kids hitherto lacked medical insurance. This is where IF is stepping in to help.
IF helped St. Jude’s initiate a health insurance program, the first of its kind, in conjunction with a private insurance company. Simultaneously, IF contributes a key portion of the cost of room/board and ancillary expenses for 40-50 children and their families during their treatment-related stay in Mumbai. Included are free access to a hygienic and safe place to stay, nutritious food, transport to and from the hospital for treatment and educational, creative & recreational facilities and counseling sessions to cope with the stress of treatment.
More information on St Jude’s work can be found at https://www.stjudechild.org/
Aptitude varies: not everyone is suited for college education. Yet, many of those otherwise inclined are motivated and skilled in other ways. High-end vocational training is a promising outlet for them.
A not-for-profit organization, Shanti Seva Nidhi (SSN), has a program to train youth via state-of-art Diploma programs in vocations such as tool and die making, Mechatronics, Electronics, Computer engineering and cloud/Information technology. These programs are offered at NTTF, a Premier Technical Institution started in 1959 by SSN’s founding donor.
IF partners with Shanti Seva Nidhi to provide financial assistance to deserving students from India’s rural or tribal areas with annual family incomes below ₹4000,00 (~ $6,000). These children are enrolled in a three-year diploma program offered by NTTF’s Murbad campus in Maharashtra state. The assistance is in the form of an interest-free loan annually to five students.
Read more about Shanti Seva Nidhi at https://project1000.org.in/shanti-seva-nidhi-ssn/