GIVING AT SCALE

PHILANTHROPY IS NO LONGER ONLY ABOUT SUPPORTING A PARTICULAR CAUSE, BUT MAKING A LARGER SOCIETAL IMPACT BY INVESTING IN COLLABORATIVES, AND BUILDING NARRATIVES ON THE WAY.

- BY AJITA SHASHIDHAR AND URVASHI MISHRA

WHEN MEDIA INDUSTRY veterans Ronnie and Zarina Screwvala launched the Swades Foundation in 2013, their intent was clear—to uplift the livelihoods of people living in the Raigad district of Maharashtra by giving them access to clean drinking water, building toilets, and providing education. Their dream was to make the region open-defection free. They offered to invest ₹20,000 for each toilet and asked households to put in the remaining ₹5,000. But then, toilets hardly mattered to the villagers! They would rather use the money to buy cattle or fertilisers. People literally shut their doors the moment the Swades Foundation team entered their villages.

The duo decided to go back to the drawing board. They came up with an inclusive strategy where the onus would be on the people themselves to drive change. We came up with a village development plan for three years, and got villagers to identify the ‘need’ gaps (building toilets/health interventions/help with agriculture) and tell us the kind of support they needed from Swades. We made it compulsory for villagers to bear at least 10% of the project cost. We said we will leverage 60-70% government funds and bring in the rest,” remembers Mangesh Wange, CEO, Swades Foundation.

The switch from a push to pull strategy worked. By making sure the most important stakeholder, the community, had skin in the game, Swades Foundation managed to create 250 dream villages in the Raigad district. It is now replicating the model in Nashik and Thane as well.

The foundation also roped in relevant stakeholders. For instance, one of the village schools needed computer education. The state government provided the hardware and invested in the training of teachers, but the challenge was continuous power supply. Swades roped in Selco Foundation for making the school solar power-enabled.