An opportunity

Walkathon is an annual feature organised by DHAN Foundation on a specific theme for every two years. This is a public event, engaging the citizens for a common cause, organised across the country, where DHAN has its presence. Walkathon is not just an event organised for creating awareness, rather it calls for concerted action on the issues during and after the event. Initiated as Madurai Marathon in 2007, a Run for Water to involving the youth in large numbers subsequently took a shape of Walkathon in 2013, broad basing the event to include people from all walks of life irrespective of age. Since inception, the themes of the event were as followed:

• 2007 & 2008 – Run for Water and Conserving Heritage Water Bodies
• 2009 & 2010 – Run to be Free from Anemia
• 2011 & 2012 – Run for Climate Change Adaptation
• 2013 & 2014 – Walk for Agricultural Bio-Diversity with Special Emphasis on Small Millets
• 2015 & 2016 – Walk for Green and Clean Environment
• 2017 & 2018 – Walk for Giving Forward

Walkathon is a pan-India event organised on a particular day with a lot of programmes before and after the Walk. Drawing and poster making, slogan writing and essay writing competitions would be organised for the students from schools and colleges on the theme. The winners would be awarded at the Walkathon event. Exhibitions and seminars would be organised after the Walkathon event to deliberate on the theme and get into action after the event.

Walkathon 2018 - Giving Forward

Eradication of poverty requires collaborative efforts and resources. If we consider India as a country with rich and varied heritage of giving, we could say the same about other countries too. In India especially, there are various kinds of dhan (donations). Shramdhanis giving labour, Annadhan is giving food and Vidhyadhan is giving knowledge. These were various ways available in the past. However, today and for the future, especially in the present context, there exists a need for various ways of giving. DHAN is working on promotion of a sharing culture among the poor communities with whom it is working, the general public both in India and abroad, and corporates through creating meaningful opportunities and partnerships. Walkathon organized by DHAN Foundation on the theme of Giving Forward is an effort towards nurturing the value of giving among the public.

DHAN Foundation in promoting the value of Sharing

Promoting Communities to Contribute for their Development

DHAN follows ‘Enabling Approach’ and ‘Institution Building Approach’, which lay emphasis on self-help, mutuality, community ownership and control over resources and benefits, thereby the interventions, either in microfinance or water, are perceived as means and not the ends. The ultimate goal is to build Peoples’ Organisations using these inputs as vehicles of change and enabling them to sustain the efforts and results for the long-term, even beyond generations.

By contributing savings and sharing the cost of management, the poor women gain stake in the development efforts, which in fact elevates their self-esteem and brings them ownership. It provides them with legitimacy and voice for their access and equity within and outside their institutions. Having access to decision-making space in an area directly relevant to their lives motivates them toward higher forms of participation and democratic practices.

The self-help groups promoted by DHAN start meeting their costs of operations from day-one of their inception and over a period they manage to meet the costs of operations of the next-level institutions promoted by them such as cluster development associations and federations. In 2017 alone, people have contributed Rs. 190 million, one-third of the overall costs of management.

Community to contribute its share in the overall development endeavour has been a non-negotiable component in DHAN’s strategy. People save in their SHGs and contribute towards rehabilitation of water resources for collective benefit. Surprisingly, their contributions stood at 60% (Rs.994 crores) outshining the support came from government and banks in 2017 (Rs. 644 crores). The community contribution triggers the support from others.

The People Movements promoted by DHAN with women, farmers and coastal communities kindle the feeling of giving. Every year, they generate Jyoti contribution from families to support people in need, help communities facing emergencies and affected by disasters and reach out to left-out poor families. They also contribute materials (pidiarisi – handful of rice set aside every day, pooled and shared for the needy) and involve in voluntary labour (shramdhan) to maintain the common properties.

Promoting community’s shramdhan

DHAN Foundation for the past 25 years has been working for building social capital for reviving the age-old practice of community management (kudimaramath). It organises the framers and farm labourers dependent on each tank into Vayalagam Associations, networks them at the cascade level (chain of tanks linked hydrologically) and federates them at the block or district level to take up conservation drive on the large scale, as well as builds alliances with private, public and non-profit organisations working on tank systems.

At each level of the Farmers’ Federation, leaders have emerged from among the local communities. They now work tirelessly to further the restoration drive. What DHAN has achieved in the process is to hand over the entitlement for managing and use of water in these tanks to the people at the grass-roots, which was the practice in India for centuries, until the British rule, when all these were taken over by the various levels of governmental agencies, which created apathy in managing their own water resources and consequently helplessness in managing their destinies. Through DHAN’s initiative, this has been reversed, with people now taking charge of their water resources and hence their destinies.

Promoting Community Endowments

Endowment for a common cause is not a new concept for India. Sharing ones’ wealth for the needy was our heritage. The inscriptions dating back to 1190 AD in Somangalam village of Kanchipuram district document that traditionally endowment funds were created to renovate irrigation tanks. Similarly, there are several inscriptions stand testimony to the practice of land and livestock donation to temples to meet its routine expenses. The local rulers and farming communities, in those days, realised the importance of creating endowment fund for water conservation and building sustainable livelihoods. Besides renovation, the investment on water bodies can also be compared with endowment fund, since these water bodies remain and support income generation directly and indirectly.

In the modern age, this concept of endowment has vanished due to breakdown in community management. The local water bodies, which were closely fabricated with the local culture and practices, have met with a continuous mismanagement. In many places the tanks were alienated, abandoned, and encroached. These water bodies have been supporting the human kind to combat climate change, address water shortages in southern peninsular India. Considering the situation and based on the learning from the community, DHAN Foundation reintroduced the endowment fund concept in the year 2000 to facilitate people organisations to take-up minor renovation works without depending on outside support.

The farming communities mobilise an equal amount of endowment provided by the philanthropists and invest it in secured fixed deposits with the banks. The income out of endowment fund is continuously used for the annual repair and upkeep of the tanks. The intervention not only helped the community to renovate, but also brought vibrancy to the people organisations through a continuous engagement in the upkeep of tanks. DHAN has made an institutional arrangement in the form of endowment funds at each Tank Farmers’ Association for the sustainability of the association and for future maintenance of tanks. Endowment fund is created at every Tank Association level for ensuring future maintenance and institutional sustainability. The association mobilizes corpus fund with matching grants given by government agencies, philanthropic institutions. So far over 250 Vayalagams have mobilisedRs 10 Million as Endowment grant, which was matched by the community with their contribution of another Rs. 10 million. The income from the secured investments of Rs. 20 million is used by for maintenance of tank structures after their rehabilitation by the local-level Associations.Only the interest portion of the corpus can be ustilized for future maintenance activities of institutions concerned and not any part of the corpus whether contributed by the people or by the philanthropic institutions.

Corporate matching for community funds

Corporate social responsibility spoken everywhere is expected to contribute to sustainable development by delivering economic, social and environmental benefits for all stakeholders beyond their companies.It denotes their sense of responsibility towards the community and environment (both ecological and social) in which it operates. Companies can invest in local communities and join in their collective efforts towards development. In order to account for the importance of social and ecological considerations in doing business, some organizations advocate the concept of the "triple bottom line": social, environmental and economic – or "people, planet, profit."Today, a shift has occurred in the way people conceptualize corporate social responsibility.Now many entrepreneurs consider profit and social-environmental benefit to be inextricable.

In the era of CSR, where there is a legal requirement for the corporate to set aside a portion of their profits for CSR, the businesses should balance profit-making activities with activities that benefit society; it involves developing businesses with a positive relationship to the society in which they operate. The Corporate can work with the community centred initiatives by partnering with them with their support matching the contributions of the local community organisations. They can help people’s organisations to build community schools, hospitals, renovation of water resources and other development programmes being implemented by the peoples’ organisations based on the specific requirements of the local communities.

Promoting community resource centres

The Peoples’ Organisations promoted by DHAN gets graduated as a Civic Institution over the years with their engagement with the general public and start addressing the needs of the people beyond their member families in the form of health, education and other civic initiatives. These Peoples’ Organisations build a community centre to carry out their activities and it acts as a community resource centre. It would act as the place for community celebrations at various occasions, as the place for public meetings of the citizens on various issues, as a place where community members meet and perform volunteer activities. The centres would also be used for training local youths in employable skills, training community leaders and volunteers. These community resource centres would be managed and operated by the community itself. It is constructed with the contributions mobilised from the community and support from philanthropic institutions and individuals.

Promoting community orchards

In the past century, a significant portion of village lands was not cultivated but used by villagers for grazing their livestock, and for collecting wood for fuel, fodder, ma¬nure, house-building materials, etc. Such common land was classified as 'waste land' by the revenue administra¬tion of the colonial period.Thevillage poor depended highly on such uncultivated village common property for collecting wood for fuel and other material indispensable for their everyday life and that the material collected was also a source of income for them.

At a time of unprecedented alienation from nature and knowledge about where our food comes from, Community Orchards can bring back the glory of our past, where the village commons had orchards and were maintained by the local communities. The rural communities revive its age-old practice and raise orchards collectively.

Community orchards can promote community production and ownership. Community orchards can also green the environment and increase biodiversity of the location. They provide a way to share knowledge and horticultural skills and stimulate us into growing our food again. In the face of climate change, the need to reduce food miles makes the provision of locally grown food ever more urgent.In an era of climate change planting trees of economic value and managing collectively can help build food security and community resilience. The community orchards promoted in Panchayats can bring revenue for its sustenance and can spend for village development.

Renovating water resources

A vast majority of lakes and ponds in the southern districts of the country are named after ordinary individuals, as well as rulers, chieftains and kings. All castes including the today’s schedule castes, and castes of barbers, washermen, potters, etc are reflected in the name of a tank. It is high time that we mobilise the common man in India and abroad to safeguard these water bodies and related resources for the benefit of the people at large.

DHAN Foundation will work with the local communities dependent on the tanks, organise them into an association and up take the renovation through them. Dhan will also mobilise a 25 percent of the total cost of the renovation as the community contribution to build their ownership and to take care of its future maintenance. We look forward to your support to rejuvenate the Indian villages and launch the work as a community based, people focused movement. Every completed work will be named either after the donor or in accordance with the donor’s wishes by the villagers. Our fifteen years work in South India and experience in rebuilding the tanks and ponds in various parts suggest that

This contribution would be directly passed on to Vayalagam Village Tank Farmers Association promoted by the DHAN foundation. The work will be taken up with the contribution from both the community and the donors. The accounts of the village associations are annually audited by Chartered Accountants and read in the village meetings. The Foundation from the list of villages generated by their teams in their working area will ensure that the works are completed as per design and result in rebuilding the tanks.

Building model community schools

Poverty prevents children from using opportunities to live healthy and get good quality education. DHAN believes that education can play a key role in breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and social exclusion. It is crucial to invest in quality childcare and education. Recognizing the vital role of primary education, particularly for the girl children, the Kalanjiam federations promoted by DHAN take up education as a key civic development agenda. The special school and tuition centres being run by the federations show the ability of women in managing quality education services to their children.

Promoting Skill Building

Appropriate knowledge and skill are essential for people to successfully respond to the opportunities and challenges of social, economic and technological changes. The number of youths unemployed and under employed is increasing. When the potential of these youths is not tapped, they dissipate their energy through unwanted social activities. On the other hand, the industries are in need of trained man power to meet their growing demand. They could not find out skilled laborers. Imparting required skills to enhance the employability of the youths and build their capacities to meet the needs of the current job market are very much needed. With sound collaboration between grassroots organizations involved in skill building and industries that are in need of manpower we can channelise the human resource for better future.

Most of the members, especially women in the people organisations promoted by DHAN have the entrepreneurship potential. But they need training for acquiring new skills as well as upgrading the skills that they already possess. The People organisations promoted by DHAN already have the experience of providing skill training on established activities such as dairy and tailoring to their members.

DHAN has evolved a model called LIFE (Livelihood Initiatives with Functional Education) Centres. It aims at imparting livelihood-oriented skills to the poor women and men, particularly youths through vocational education. The expected outcome is to make them employable and capable of becoming an entrepreneur, and thereby enabling them to come out of poverty. The livelihood initiatives are implemented in collaboration with government, industries, polytechnics and industrial training institutes.

Promoting model community hospitals

Poor health is a cause and consequence of poverty. The health and well-being of the individuals and communities is influenced by a range of factors both within and outside the individual’s control such as socio-economic status, physical and social environment, and access to affordable and quality healthcare services, formal and informal social security arrangements to cope-up with the shocks and so on. Therefore, addressing the consequences and underlying causes of poor health requires a multi-pronged approach to work on individuals as well as at the community levels. DHAN Foundation, which has been working for eradicating poverty by way of promoting innovations, building localised people’s institutions, started working on health issues of the poor communities since 1993 through a small experiment in Kalanjiam Federations. Over these years, it has evolved a community health intervention model and promoted SUHAM (Sustainable Healthcare Advancement), an exclusive institution to work on it in coordination with other development programmes and institutions promoted by DHAN. Partnerships with private, public and other likeminded institutions backed the genesis and growth of the health programme, which continue to advance over these years.

DHAN has nurtured an idea of promoting community owned and managed healthcare system, which is affordable, accessible and available at their convenience. SUHAM stands for Sustainable Healthcare Advancement, a collective health intervention model evolved by the Kalanjiam Federations promoted by DHAN. This model combines a community owned multi-specialty hospital with a mutual health insurance packagepoor family, who are members in the Kalanjiam SHGs contribute mutually to cover the healthcare costs from primary care to advanced treatments. The first hospital was started in Theni to cater to the needs of 25,000 SHG member families. Following the success of the Theni SUHAM Hospital, the Madurai hospital was started in 2008 to serve over 40,000 poor families. Another Hospital was started in Salem in 2012 to serve 40,000 poor households.

The primary objective of the Community Hospital is to reduce leakages in family cash flows of the poor in the form of medical expenses. The hospital is fully community owned, with the SHGs having provided a portion of the establishment cost and the remaining came from national and international philanthropic institutions. These three community managed hospitals cater to the healthcare needs of over 95,000 families at 30-40 percent reduced cost, with a backup of health insurance.Kalanjiam leaders are involved in the functioning of hospitals and participate in review meetings conducted twice a month. There is a sense of pride and ownership in them.

Establishing village markets /enterprises

Small and marginal landholders are characterised by very little control over the factors of production such as land, labour, capital and organisation. They are unorganized and influenced by the local traders and middlemen who have access to information, capital and are organised well to exert influence on the unorganised smallholders who are poor in all these aspects. The farmers are left with no other option but to sell their produce to those traders at prices fixed by them.

The SHGs or associations of farmers have made their impact in facilitating access to credit, land and water through rehabilitated tanks, ponds and watershed programmes, which had an impact on the production and productivity to a large extent. Whereas the prices input as well as outputs were not in favour of these poor farmers, which need an institutional arrangement to enable the small and marginal producers to enjoy the benefits of increased production and productivity.

Small and marginal producers receive poor net return due to involvement of intermediaries in a longer value chain, who siphon a major portion of the income from the produce. These poor producers are unorganised and often lose control over the produce once brought to the market. They are unable to reach out to distant markets due to high cost of transportation and handling. Due to smaller scale there is less scope for application of technologies to increase the production and productivity. Lack of finance is a major constraint that pushes them towards local merchants for capital with unfair terms of trade. All these issues could be addressed, when these small producers are organised into producer organisations controlled and managed by the producer themselves. What is needed is an aggregation of production and marketing activities with mechanisms to shorten the value chain and make each process owned by the producer themselves.

While the SHGs fulfil the credit needs of households for their livelihood requirements, promotion of livelihood enterprises and livelihood clusters need a different kind of financial resources. Graduation of small and decentralised production to produce aggregation, value addition, branding and promotion to complete the value chain require huge financial capital and technical know-how. The role of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), mainstream agencies in the form of Special Purpose Vehicles, allocations and subsidy schemes, commercial banks in the form of soft / low interest loans are very much needed to promote community driven livelihood enterprises.

Lend your hands with the Communities to Rise-up

Eradication of poverty requires collaborative efforts and resources. If we consider India as a country with rich and varied heritage of giving, we could say the same about other countries too. In India especially, there are various kinds of dhan (donations). Shramdhan is giving labour, Annadhan is giving food and Vidhyadhan is giving knowledge. These were various ways available in the past. However, today and for the future, especially in the present context, there exists a need for various ways of giving. DHAN is working on promotion of a sharing culture among the poor communities with whom it is working, the general public both in India and abroad, and corporates through creating meaningful opportunities and partnerships.

How you can help fellow human being

• Donated blood helps save lives every day, and since blood can only be stored for limited amounts of time, there is always a need for more. You have the potential to save three lives every time you donate blood. As an eye, organ and tissue donor, you have the opportunity to save and enhance the lives of more than 50 individuals.
• Cooking, eating together or just sharing food are still some of the most powerful ways that humans connect with each other. Contact local homeless shelters to find out what their food needs are and help the vulnerable poor in your area.
• By donating to a classroom or school, you can make an impact on some of the most vulnerable people in your community — children. They are also some of the most promising and hopeful people!
• Being someone’s mentor is a fantastic opportunity — not just for them, but for you, too! Working with someone as their mentor allows you to hone your best skills, develop talent in your industry or art and even create a legacy. Anyone can be a mentor, because we are all great at something; moreover, as a mentor you get to help younger, less experienced people in your field who may have had less support and resources.
• Looking for a small but meaningful way to make an impact? Try paying it forward. Do a good deed or unsolicited favor for someone you know, or even a total stranger. There are countless ways you can do something small that means the world to the person on the receiving end, and when you do, you inspire them to keep that good feeling going and pay it forward.
• Being a volunteer lets you choose how to make an impact in your community doing something you care about or supporting a cause that matters to you. There is almost no limit to the ways you can volunteer.
• A patient teacher can make a tremendous impact on a student’s life, and can even mean the difference between success and failure, or acceptance to schools and waiting until next year. If you have the skill and time, consider teaching / guiding a student in your area.

Join us in nurturing the value of giving

Realising the gestures of mutuality exist in the community in various forms from its more than three decades of grassroots work, DHAN has poised to further this value among the Collective Institutions promoted by it. DHAN’s experience over these years shows that while initial interest of the poor communities may have been sparked by the idea of economic gain,with the growth and maturity, they realise that the SHGs and federations are means to address other issues and values in their lives and the society at large.

Enabling poor communities to spearhead their own development is a central philosophy of DHAN Foundation. The primacy is on building social capital, which cherishes the values of self-help and mutuality on the basis of which co-operation for the public good becomes possible. Self-governance and self-management are the propelling forces that transform this social capital into sustainable institutions. Communities can exercise their autonomy only when they gain financial capabilities to run their institutions on their own without dependence on external resources for operating their governance and management functions. This can increase people’s sense of control over issues affecting their lives.

Apart from contributing towards their own development in the form of savings and share in the cost of rehabilitation of water resources, they also contribute towards collective wellbeing of their fellow human beings in number of ways. Their natural inclinations to help others are tuned by the Peoples’ Movements of Kalanjiam (Women), Vayalagam (Farmers) and Neidhal (Coastal Communities). These poor communities are committed to these maneuvers not only for visible reasons, but as an external manifestation of what each of them already holds to be significant and meaningful in life.

How Can You Support?

• Participate in the event to show your solidarity by way of GIVING FORWARD.
• Support in the efforts towards promoting GIVING FORWARD by sponsoring the Event and the Cause
• Share this information to your friends, who can contribute in GIVING FORWARD.
• Volunteer to join us in furthering this initiative

About DHAN Foundation

DHAN Foundation is a Development NGO that nurtures professionalism in development work. Driven by the philosophy of “Giving Back to the society”, around 800 professionals drawn from various disciplines such as agriculture, engineering, management and finance are working at the grassroots with the poor communities. These professionals along with local volunteers are engaged in building localised community organisations by organising and enabling the un-organised poor to work with government and banks to claim their entitlements in a cooperative way. DHAN has so far reached over 1.65 million poor families, spread over 78 districts in 14 Indian States. Community banking for poverty eradication and promoting farm based livelihoods through conservation and development of water resources are the major themes of DHAN. Rainfed farming development, democratizing Panchayats, ICT for poverty reduction, coastal conservation and livelihoods are the programmes currently being scaled-up by DHAN. Climate change adaptation, migration, youth and development are the new themes currently being piloted by it. DHAN works with the state and central governments for effecting changes in their policies in favour of the poor by reflecting on their policies in the fields of water conservation, microfinance and livelihoods.