Brief Purpose and Introduction

The academy is an educational and knowledge development institution promoted by DHAN Foundation in 2001 at Madurai. The development sector, particularly grassroots NGOs, requires development professionals to facilitate the development process. The unorganized poor communities need to be provided with an enabling environment to get them organized for accessing and managing resources for their livelihoods development. Enabling the poor would lead to their entitlement and empowerment. There is a need for long, continuous, and rigorous development processes from committed development professionals to bring the desired changes in the lives of the poor. With this understanding the Academy aims at grooming young graduates into development professionals by inculcating development values and ethics in them. The Academy believes that this process can facilitate the flow of young, socially concerned, and dynamic professionals into the sector to promote a value based society among the poor.

Why scholarship?

What makes the course one of a kind ?

The curriculum constitutes 45% of the classroom learnings and 55% learnings from the field, especially from the community, comprehending the demand system in order to connect with the supply system. The classroom curriculum comprises core courses on topics such as development theories, community organizations, contextualized development practices, communication, research, management, and leadership; elective courses are also available to imbibe additional skillset to the graduates.

1. Professionally well qualified Practitioners’ with significant achievement at grassroots as teaching faculty bring sound Knowledge/Concepts and required skill-sets for community development. This indeed strongly help academy in developing the wholesome character.
2. The “Gurukul approach” by every faculty with keen focus on nurturing each and every individual student make him/her a committed human being with purpose and value driven life for bringing smiles in the face of down trodden. About 15 faculty as faculty counsellor or mentor are assigned one or two students as their ward/mentee. The faculty take full responsibility in equipping the skill of application of knowledge, sprit of innovation in the process part of engaging with community and above all, right attitude.
3. The students spend more than 35 weeks in different villages across different states and work on four different contexts viz. Rural, Urban, Coastal and Tribal. In four splits of experiential learning at the backward regions of the country, each student gains confident and promotes a social capital of organizing 100 to 200 poor families.
4. The skills and staying with community could not be seen in other contemporary management schools or development schools within or outside the country. This is a hall-mark of TDA in its grooming young graduates to work for the poor. The students gain rigor in carrying out action research with high quality methodology.
5. In the two years of curricula, the students try to make the simple living, shape his/her personality to practice Yoga as a credit course in at least 75% of their stay in the academy. The personality development and commitment for the welfare of the people gets cemented.

About Programme in Development Management (PDM):

The Post Graduate Diploma in Development Management (PGDDM) is a two-year full-fellowship programme that prepares students to be able to use research to identify development issues and to develop and test reasonable interventions and equips students with managerial tools and techniques for building people organizations and livelihood development activities

The course is aimed to groom the students to

1. Accept and pursue challenging development career to work with disadvantaged communities and may be becoming life time development worker.
2. Be creative,conceptual,and critical in thoughts,action and take transformation of socio-economic condition of the poor as mission of their lives.
3. Micro-finance and health
4. Have strong people-focused skills necessary for dealing with communities,building teams and organizations.
5. Have the research capabilities necessary to identify development issues,experiment & contextualize interventions and mainstream collaboration.
6. Be equipped with managerial tools and techniques for building people organizations and promoting livelihood development activities.
7. Be a change agent for bring ingequity and justice with actions involving honesty andintegrity.

Outcomes

The financial assistance helps to remove one of the barriers for students desiring professional education for working in the development sector. The Academy seeks continuous support for financing fellowships from various funding organisations, corporate institutions, and philanthropists.

This fellowship is as an investment, and two important returns to this investment include:

Projects Done:

1. During the course, each student will produce a Village Ecosystem Study report, A research report on any development issues, An inception document and promotion of any form of Social capital groups such as Women Self Help Groups, Farmer Associations, Farmer Producer Organisations, Adolescent groups, and another management / research intervention report. – These will be prepared by the students staying with the community during their field segments.
2. Measurable impact on the lives of the poor. One graduate would reach a minimum of 2500 - 3,000 poor families within three years of their placement in grassroots organizations and empower them to sustainably overcome poverty and improved standard of living.
3. Long-term commitment to development work. Even when individuals are motivated, NGOs in the development sector do suffer from unnecessary human resources turnover resulting from financial pressures. This turnover is, in turn, costly to the NGOs, who have to recruit and train new employees. By reducing the financial pressures of young graduates, you are enabling them to continue their work in the development sector considering it as a long-term career.

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