
We believe that India will never achieve its true growth story until the rural sector of the country is empowered to make choices and transform their own lives. Not only do we want to lift one million people in rural India out of poverty every five years, but most importantly, we want to change rural mindsets. We set ourselves the challenge… can we make rural cool? We started as a small NGO called SHARE in 2000 in one village called Vihule Kond. In 2013, SHARE metamorphosed into the Swades Foundation with a mission to empower a million rural lives every five years. Today, our Swades community is spread across 2,500 villages and our team is 1,300 strong: 300 full-time Swades employees plus over 1,000 community volunteers. In this column, I reflect on our journey and would like to share some key learnings: There is no silver bullet to poverty alleviation. Zarina (my wife and managing trustee of Swades Foundation) and I were convinced that only a 360-degree approach to poverty alleviation would work. Back then we met with immense resistance as most of the excellent work was being done in silos. Today, it is more accepted that a holistic approach is the key. Our unique 360-degree development model covers four key thematic areas namely Health & Nutrition, Education, Water & Sanitation and Economic Development. Our aim is to ensure that this model can be replicated at scale across India and perhaps globally. Know that you don’t know. In the beginning, we were two media people who had some experience of working in rural India, but it lacked depth and a real understanding of ground realities. For one year we studied and visited NGOs, met communities, government experts, philanthropists. Finally, being highly inspired by Sir Fazle Abed’s BRAC in Bangladesh, we adopted his holistic approach at Swades.