About us

Development of Humane Action (DHAN)Foundation, a professional development organisation, was initiated on October 2, 1997. It brings highly motivated, educated young women andmen to the development sector. They would makenew innovations in development to root out poverty from the country. The Foundation works to make significant changes in the livelihoods of the poor through innovative themes and institutions.

The broad purposes for which DHAN stands are:

• Mothering of Development Innovations: Theinstitution intends to promote and nurture new ideas on development themes, such as microfinance, small scale irrigation, dry land agriculture, and working with Panchayatswhich can impact on poverty in a significantmanner.
• Promoting Institutions to reach scale: Exclusive thematic organisations will be promoted to takeup development work with a sub-sectoral focus.The primary role will be to promote and ensure that quality benefits reach a large number of poor.
• Human Resource Development: The institution would bring young professionals into the development sector and give them an opportunity to practice and develop relevant knowledge, attitudes and skills needed for long term work.

The principles guiding DHAN are

• Engaging high quality human resources to work at the grassroots. The focus would be to enable the poor, not deliver services.
• Valuing collaboration with mainstream institutions and Government to demonstrate new and effective intervention to link them with the people.
• Promoting people’s organisations to ensure entitlements and to build an effective demand system to promote people’s interest.
• Promoting livelihoods to address the issues of poverty directly
• Enriching the themes and retaining sub-sectora lfocus as a strategy for growth

MISSION

Building people and institutions for development innovations and scaling up to enable the poor communities for poverty reduction and self-reliance

VISION

• DHAN Foundation is always a pioneering development institution to build poverty free, gender balanced, equitable, ecological sensitive, democratic,just and value based inclusive society. It creates freedom of choice to the families, groups and community to determine and develop the meaning oftheir lives, their identities and their life styles for the well-being of their life.
• DHAN Foundation opens new frontiers for better humanity and would build scalable, cost effective and sustainable innovations for self-reliance.
• DHAN Foundation will always be acknowledged as a leader in institution building for poverty alleviation. It would be trendsetter in grassroots development with people governance and management.
• It will be occupying its legitimate space in policy making forums to shape the macro environment to the realities of grassroots and serving development community by disseminating good practices. It will shape thousands of development professionals to make millions of poor lives different with dignity and right livelihoods. The DHAN Foundation will foster alternative paradigms with social entrepreneurship and collective leadership.
• It will be respected for its role in unleashing thepotential of the poor and guiding them through theirmovements by building new institutions forachieving significance. It will promote networks,alliances on development ‘Cause’ with relevantstakeholders – Academia, civil society, Government,Business houses, Professional networks, Media,Financial institution and other resource institution –at national, regional and global environment.

VALUES

DHAN has rooted in values, such as Grassrootsaction, Collaboration, Enabling, Innovation,Excellence, and Self-Regulation. DHAN believes thatthese values are its core strength needed to realizeits Vision and Mission.

DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

DHAN Foundation’s development approach entails asystem of inter-linked components. There is a three-way link between thematic focus, social capital andmainstream collaboration to promote sustainabledevelopment for the poor.

DHAN lays high emphasis on thematic focus. Itbuilds social capital by organising the unorganisedpoor communities around the themes of water,microfinance, rainfed farming information andcommunication technologies, and local governance.Localised Peoples’ Organisations are built in urban,rural, tribal and coastal contexts. It is the mostcritical step in building the capabilities of thecommunities to handle the development processesand its outcomes for ensuring their entitlements byacquiring bargaining power.

These Peoples’ Organisations provide platform fornurturing innovations at the grassroots, scale–downtechnologies and contextualizing those technologiesfor addressing the issues of poverty, which arehighly complex and contextual.

The third factor, the mainstream collaboration iscritical for creating enabling environment for theother two factors to perform. The thematicinstitutions continuously build the capacities of thePeople’s Organisations built around the particulartheme to bring relevant mainstream developmentinstitutions, both private and public institutionscloser to the communities. They evolve and nurturethe principle of sustainable partnership between the People’s Organisations and the mainstreaminstitutions. The collaboration process educates bothPeople’s Organisations and mainstream institutionsabout their roles and responsibilities in sustainingtheir collaborations.

Conceptually, the interaction among these threefactors put the primary institutions at the centre,which are ideal platforms for practicing participatorydemocracy and ensuring collective empowerment.

DHAN plays a promotional role in initiating atheme, building Peoples’ Organisations aroundthem, establishing linkages with mainstreaminstitutions and sustaining them. The promotionalrole keeps evolving over a period. As the localcapacity is built, the roles get transferred to people.Simultaneously DHAN as a mothering institutionpromotes thematic organisations as subsidiaries toupscale the matured themes to continue thepromotional role to sustain the Peoples’Organisations in the specific theme. The thematicinstitutions would take up the work of upscaling anddeepening of the themes.

DHAN COLLECTIVE

DHAN Foundation and its institutions form theDHAN Collective. It is to nurture and preserve theculture of collegiality, mutuality and solidarity.Shared purpose, core values and resources (human,financial and physical resources) bind theinstitutions of DHAN Collective. DHAN Foundationas the mothering institution would guide, supportand regulate its family institutions on their mission,policies, strategies and values. Each institutionwould define its ‘own unique’ space.

The Kalanjiam Community Banking Programme,one of DHAN Foundation’s pioneering initiatives andits first institution, has evolved into an institution,the ‘Kalanjiam Foundation’, to take up thepromotional role. It would promote the theme ofKalanjiam Development Finance and guide thepeople institutions. Vayalagam Tankfed AgricultureDevelopment Programme has evolved into theVayalagam Foundation to work on the theme ofconservation and development of small scale waterbodies and stabilize the livelihoods of the farmersdependent on them. The Tata-Dhan Academy wouldbe promoted within the next three to five years asthe next thematic institution. Many suchinstitutions would emerge in course of time –efficient, excellent and with unquestioned integrity –in the DHAN Collective of institutions.