OVERVIEW
Development of Humane Action (DHAN) Foundation, a professional development organisation, was initiated on October 2, 1997. It brings highly motivated, educated young women and men to the development sector. They would make new innovations in development to root out poverty from the country, in thus achieving the Mission of the organisation.
MISSION
Building people and institutions for development innovations and scaling up to enable the poor communities for poverty reduction and self-reliance
The broad purposes for which DHAN stands are:
Mothering of Development Innovations: The institution intends to promote and nurture new ideas on development themes such as microfinance, small scale irrigation, dry land agriculture, and working with Panchayats which can impact on poverty in a significant manner.
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-sectoral focus as a strategy for growth.
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 of their lives, their identities and their life styles for the well-being of their life.
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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 trend-setter 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 live with dignity and right livelihood. DHAN Foundation will foster alternative paradigms with social entrepreneurship and collective leadership.
It will be respected for its role in unleashing the potential of the poor and guiding them through their movements by building new institutions for achieving significance. It will promote networks, alliances on development ‘causes’ with relevant stakeholders – Academia, Civil Society, Government, Business houses, Professional networks, Media, Financial institutions and other resource institutions – at national, regional and global environment.
VALUES
DHAN has rooted in values, such as Grassroots action, Collaboration, Enabling, Innovation, Excellence, and Self-Regulation. DHAN believes that these values are its core strength needed to realise its Vision and Mission.
Mr. B.T. Bangera, Chairperson, DHAN Foundation is an MBA from
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He is currently the Managing Director of M/s Hi-Tech Arai
Limited., an Indo-Japanese joint venture at Madurai. He has over 30 years of experience, holding senior management
positions in reputed companies in India. He has been an office-bearer in the Management Associations and
Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) at different levels. He is keenly interested in education and is a member on
the Board of Governors and Board of Studies of a number of management and engineering institutions.
Ms. K. Noorjehan, Vice Chairperson, DHAN Foundation is
currently an Administrative member of Central Administrative Tribunal, Ernakulam Bench. She was the
Chief Post Master General, Haryana Postal Circle and later became Chief Principal Post Master General of
Maharasthra circle. She was subsequently promoted to the grade of Member, Postal Services Board. She has
over 30 years of experience in different parts of the country. She was instrumental in computerising postal
operations in the southern region, and in creating own infrastructure for several post offices. She is interested
in women development, especially the poor and the disadvantaged.
Mr. R.D. Thulsiraj, Treasurer, DHAN Foundation is an MBA from
Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, is the Executive Director of LAICO-Aravind Eye Care System. For
almost 20 years he had been the Administrator of Aravind Eye Hospitals. He was also the South-East Asia
Regional Chair for the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). He worked with the board of Seva
Foundation (an U.S.-based NGO) for more than 15 years. He has a number of published papers to his
credit, and has presented papers at international conferences on eye care.
Dr. Nirmala Murthy is currently the President for the Foundation for
Research in Health Systems. She holds a Doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health. She has over
three decades of rich experience in public health, involving monitoring and evaluation, research, and health
information systems. She has taught at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She has worked at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Massachusetts and Management Sciences for Health, Boston. She
has been a consultant for various national and international health-related programmes of the Government
of India and the World Bank. She has a number of papers and publications related to health, health policies,
programmes and research to her credit. Her areas of interest are health information systems, and monitoring
and evaluation of health and welfare programmes.
Dr. Priscilla Daniel holds two Master’s degrees and a Ph. D. in Social
Marketing of Health Education. She was formerly the Programme Executive in ECLOF International. She appraises
large loan proposals, trains the staff and Boards of NECs. She worked as an educationist for more than 20
years and was the Founder-President of two NGOs (SUEB – Society for the Upliftment of the Economically
Backward and SIRPI – Social Initiative for Rural Peoples’ Integration) and a Board member of ECLO,
India. Now she is in the Board of Management of Friends of India at Geneva, Switzerland. She was awarded
the Ashoka Fellowship for Public Innovators in 1991 for her contribution in the field of development.
Dr. V. Abhai Kumar holds Engineering Master’s degree in
Communication Systems. He received his Ph.D Degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Currently,
he is Principal of Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai. He is a senior member of IEEE. He has
authored and co–authored a number of technical papers in reputed journals and presented papers at international and national conferences. He
has more than two decades of research and teaching experience in microwaves, remote sensing, digital signal
processing and image processing. His research interests include array signal processing and smart antennas.
Mr. M. Balachandran is a post graduate in Agricultural Science and a
Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers. He is currently the Director of Institute of Banking
Personnel Selection. He is also serving as the Chairman of Star Union Dai-Ichi Life Insurance Corporation
Limited. Recently he has been nominated as a member of the High Power Advisory Committee of Securities
and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), on consent orders and also as a Director of Small Industries Development Bank
of India (SIDBI). He is a member in the Research and Development Advisory Committee of the National Housing
Bank and the Oversight Committee of India Infrastructural Finance Corporation Limited (IIFCL). During the span of
his 37 years of operational banking, he has held positions at various capacities and covered Priority Sector,
Corporate Credit and International Banking.
DR. KRISHNASWAMY RAJIVAN
Dr. KrishnaswamyRajivan holds a Masters and PhD in Economics from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA. He has worked for 18 years (1979-1996) in the Indian Administrative Service at various levels, in the Housing and Urban development Sectors at various levels, starting from city level administration to the Prime Minister’s Office. He was CEO of the Tamilnadu Urban Development Fund, a public-private partnership to finance civic infrastructure, for seven years. Then he worked as Senior Urban Finance Specialist at the Cities Alliance, World Bank in Washington. Dr. Rajivan served as President of Institute of Financial Management and Research (IFMR) which researches financial issues in developing economies. He also serves as a Director of Asirvad Micro Finance Private Limited. Currently he works in countries of Asia and Africa as an independent consultant.
MR. M. PALANISAMY
Mr. M. Palanisamy is a post graduate in agricultural science with specialization in Agronomy from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. He has over two decades of experience in development work and he currently anchors ‘Rainfed Farming Development Programme’ in DHAN Foundation, which works with small and marginal farmers of rainfed areas to make rainfed farming viable. He has rich experience in promoting farmers’ organizations, renovation of minor irrigation tanks with their participation and training them on improved agricultural practices and better water management systems. As a co-principal investigator, he has anchored an action research project “Revalorizing Small Millet in Rainfed Regions of South Asia”, funded by IDRC and CIDA. He has undergone short term courses at the University of Antwerpen, Belgium and Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He has served as a trustee of DHAN Vayalagam Tank Foundation, and currently serving as a trustee in DHAN Kalanjiam Foundation and Sustainable Agriculture and Environment Voluntary Action (SEVA), based at Madurai. He has presented papers in a number of conferences organized by the national and international organisations in the field of farming and water resources development.
MS. V.K. PADMAVATHY
Ms.V.K. Padmavathy is a post graduate in agriculture with specialisation in Agronomy from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. She has over two decades of experience in development work with DHAN Foundation. She led its first thematic institution, DHAN Kalanjiam Foundation, which works for economic and social empowerment of poor women. She is now currently anchoring DhanJeevidam, a livelihood resource centre dedicated for knowledge creation, sharing and management in DHAN Collective. She was instrumental in promoting organisations owned and managed by the women, implementing a number of programmes to address the issues of violence against women, reproductive and child health issues and creating access to safe drinking water, sanitation and so on. She has conducted many training programmes and capacity building events for NGOs, Bank officials, government officials, leaders and field staff of community organisations and National and International organisations. She is a director of Kalanjiam Development Financial Services, a Section-25 Company providing microfinance to SHGs for bridging the gap between SHGs and Banks.
Mr. M.P. Vasimalai, Executive Director of DHAN Foundation is a post graduate
in Agriculture and a management graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
He has over three decades of experience in development work and one of the key people in setting up Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN). He was instrumental in setting up DHAN Foundation in 1997. He has specialised in community organisation, designing development interventions in the fields of natural resource management, livelihood promotion and institutional development. He has traveled extensively within and outside India and has participated/ presented papers on these themes. He is also holding various positions in national and international forums, working groups, task forces and missions of Central and State governments on these themes. He was instrumental in promoting various network organisations. His areas of interest are institution building,
leadership development and promoting various development themes for poverty reduction.
DHAN Foundation bags Jindal Prize 2011 for its contributions in rural development and poverty alleviation.
DHAN (Development of Human Action) Foundation, an NGO based in Madurai was awarded the India NGO award, 2009 by Mr. Mukul Wasnik, Honourable Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment. The award was conferred on 17th September, 2010 at the award ceremony organized at New Delhi. 
DHAN (Development of Human Action) Foundation, was awarded as the 'Best NGO' by teh Goverment of India, Ministry of Tourism and Culture under the National Tourism Awards 2008-09 for its contribution in promoting rural tourism.
Kalanjiam Community Radio promoted by DHAN Foundation was awarded the prestigious Manthan Award 2008 for Community Broadcasting at South Asia level. 
