After 21 years in the development sector, Dasra co-founder, Deval Sanghavi has met some extraordinary people who have actively shaped the sector and his thinking. Through No-Cost Extension, an interview-style podcast, you will get a first-hand glimpse of India’s development sector from key figures and explore how they have contributed to making a positive impact on India’s future. Each episode will dive into the thematic areas of the guest’s work, explore pivotal moments of success, failures, and altered trajectories.
Join him in No-Cost Extension where he’ll unpack the mechanics of social change with philanthropists, NGO, foundation and community leaders to see how we can create a future where everyone can thrive.
Subscribe to our shows through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Twenty five years ago Vishal Talreja founded Dream-a-Dream as a voluntary effort in Mumbai with eleven other individuals who were committed to working with young people.
Since then, Ðream-A-Dream has become a non-profit that works with close to 5 million children across six Indian states, with a vision to provide transformative educational experiences that impart life skills to children living in poverty.
Deval and Vishal have known each other since the beginning of their journeys in the social sector, and over the years their relationship has grown from one of co-travellers in the same sector and strengthened into one of friendship.
After a brief stint in investment banking and running Dream-A-Dream as a volunteer effort, Vishal committed to Dream-A-Dream full time, a decision that wasn’t met with approval by his family. Listen as the Ashoka Fellow and Eisenhower Fellow speaks candidly about his early years setting up Dream-A-Dream, the societal pressures to conform and get a ‘real’ job and meeting his life partner Suchetha who is now the CEO of Dream-A-Dream.
In this episode, Vishal also opens up about how building an organization came at the cost of his own mental health and the well-being of his organization. He speaks of his burnout and depression, and how his physical and mental health forced him to pull back and recalibrate, which led him to found The Cocoon Initiative, which allows civil society leaders to take a break from their work to rest, rejuvenate, reflect and revive their core strengths, clarify their purpose and heal their body, mind and spirit from years of having given fully into one’s cause.
To know more about the work of Dream-A-Dream please visit www.dreamadream.org. You can find The Cocoon Initiative at https://www.cocooninitiative.org/.
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to https://www.dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on X at @deval_sanghavi and @Dasra"
Read moreThe Rebuild Conversations is a series in which the No-Cost Extension team checks in with the Rebuild India Fund Investment Committee members to see how they’re doing, what they’ve been learning and how they envisage for the future of the Fund.
Rebuild India’s mission is to provide grassroot organizations with long-term flexible funding that can support them through the course of 5-10 years, without constraints or targets. As of early 2024, the fund has been working with over 142 NGOs from across India.
In this conversation recorded in January 2024, you can hear Rameez Alam (Catalyst 2030), Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma (Farm 2 Food), Deepa Pawar (Anubhuti Trust), Anita Patil (Goonj) and Nandita Pradhan Bhatt (Martha Farrell Foundation) talk about the learning and unlearning of past ideas, grappling with the preconceived biases that we all go into the work with and the difficult questions that need to be asked when navigating the sector.
You can listen to the first two Rebuil Conversations here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yG2jSd9vNJdaj4kJ0SrNu and here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5mSqaxGq3rPSs7BvdzImE0
To know more about the Rebuild India Fund, the work that it does, or more about the investment committee members go to www.rebuildindiafund.org.
If you want to listen to more of No Cost Extension, go to https://www.dasra.org/podcast.php where we’ve got show notes, links and a lot more.
Read moreDeepa Pawar is the founder and director of the Anubhuti Trust, an organization formed and self-led by women, with the intention to work with youth on developing their leadership so that there are aware and responsible youth in society who can lead change for a more just and equitable world.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Deepa sit down at the Dasra office to talk about the stigmatization of Nomadic and Denotifed Tribes in India from the time of colonial rule, their unacknowledged role in the freedom struggle and how they have been historically viewed as outlaws.
Deepa speaks of how NDT communities cannot be viewed only through the lens of vulnerability and marginalization, the contribution of women in keeping the culture of the community alive, and how Anubhuti Trust places agency and liberty at the heart of their approach to movement building.
She speaks of her accidental entry into the NGO sector, how Anubhuti came to be formed, the various areas their work touches upon - from Dalit activism to anti-caste feminism to environmental justice.
Deepa is also a member of the Rebuild India Fund Investment Committee and discusses the need for the development sector to be experimental, the myopic lens through which we often look at results and success and how funders can sometimes get in the way of the work organisations are trying to do.
For more information on Anubhuti’s work check out their website at https://www.anubhutitrust.org/.
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to https://www.dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on X at @deval_sanghavi and @Dasra
All additional audio courtesy of Anubhuti Trust/Youtube and field recordings.
Read moreRahima Khatun has been associated with Nari-O-Shishu Kalyan Kendra (NOSKK) an NGO working extensively with the rights and dignity of women and children across West Bengal for over two decades.
The earliest seed for NOSKK was sown on Republic Day in 1952 when Rahima’s father started a community library in their village before going on to open madrassas to promote education amongst both men and women.
A strong desire to work for the community was ingrained in Rahima as a child and she often spent her weekends building houses, cleaning drains and later worked tirelessly as a youth leader. But it was attending the UN World Conferences on Women in Beijing in 1995 that close to 50,000 women from across the world attended, that strengthened Rahima’s resolve to work in the field of gender rights through NOSKK.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Rahima talk about how attending the Beijing conference impacted her and the organisation’s growth, NOSKK’s work in livelihoods, with self help groups and adolescent health and how they intersect. She also speaks about the transformative work of the Migration Resilience Collaborative, changing gender norms and destigmatising mental health in the communities they work with and within her organisation.
As a member of the Rebuild India Fund, Rahima shares how unrestricted funding has made a huge change to NOSKK’s way of working and how being a part of the cohort has helped them in myriad ways.
Mahasweta Chakraborty, a member of the Rebuild India Fund communications team was the translator during this conversation.
To know more about the work of NOSKK please visit https://www.noskk.in/
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to https://www.dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on X at @deval_sanghavi and @Dasra"
Read moreDeepa Pawar is the founder and director of the Anubhuti Trust, an organization formed and self-led by women, with the intention to work with youth on developing their leadership so that there are aware and responsible youth in society who can lead change for a more just and equitable world.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Deepa sit down at the Dasra office to talk about the stigmatization of Nomadic and Denotifed Tribes in India from the time of colonial rule, their unacknowledged role in the freedom struggle and how they have been historically viewed as outlaws.
Deepa speaks of how NDT communities cannot be viewed only through the lens of vulnerability and marginalization, the contribution of women in keeping the culture of the community alive, and how Anubhuti Trust places agency and liberty at the heart of their approach to movement building.
She speaks of her accidental entry into the NGO sector, how Anubhuti came to be formed, the various areas their work touches upon - from Dalit activism to anti-caste feminism to environmental justice.
Deepa is also a member of the Rebuild India Fund Investment Committee and discusses the need for the development sector to be experimental, the myopic lens through which we often look at results and success and how funders can sometimes get in the way of the work organisations are trying to do.
For more information on Anubhuti’s work check out their website at https://www.anubhutitrust.org/.
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to https://www.dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on X at @deval_sanghavi and @Dasra
All additional audio courtesy of Anubhuti Trust/Youtube and field recordings.
Read moreFrom selling horlicks in the Burdwan coalmine districts to studying filmmaking, this week’s guest on No-Cost Extension, Yasmin Madan has led a rich and varied life.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Deepa sit down at the Dasra office to talk about the stigmatization of Nomadic and Denotifed Tribes in India from the time of colonial rule, their unacknowledged role in the freedom struggle and how they have been historically viewed as outlaws.
From selling horlicks in the Burdwan coalmine districts to studying filmmaking, this week’s guest on No-Cost Extension, Yasmin Madan has led a rich and varied life.
After holding various senior level positions at PSI and serving as the Private Sector Lead at Thinkwell, Yasmini joined Co-Impact – a global philanthropic collaborative ‘supporting locally-rooted coalitions working to achieve impact at scale in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.’
Her extensive experience running country programs in Zimbabwe, Vietnam and Cambodia working across HIV, malaria, reproductive health, sanitation and cervical cancer led her to realise that there were genuine problems in the system that needed to be dealt with so that the system could serve its people in the long run.
In this episode, Yasmin talks about how social innovation is not about disruption but about coordination, collaboration and orchestration. We discuss the difference between funder attribution and contribution, the life changing work of Lend A Hand India, and why we have a moral obligation to impact and scale.
You can read more about Co-Impacts work here https://co-impact.org/
For more information on Anubhuti’s work check out their website at https://www.anubhutitrust.org/.
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to https://www.dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on X at @deval_sanghavi and @Dasra
Read moreWhat is it like to work for some of the most marginalized groups? Nandita Pradhan Bhatt is the Director of the Martha Farrell Foundation, an NGO that supports informal, migrant workers, mostly female domestic workers and adolescent children to build their leadership and collective voice against injustice. Nandita has been a civil society practitioner decades, and has worked extensively on gender inclusion and the prevention of sexual harassment against women.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Nandita speaks of her childhood on tea plantations in Dooars and Darjeeling, where her father was a senior manager and she had an upbringing that cultivated a deep sense of respect, dignity and privilege. Deval and Nandita discuss the issues that workers face and how they were invisible to her growing up. But as the Director of the Martha Farrell Foundation these deep issues are now only too obvious to her now that she’s ‘on the other side’.
After training as a special educator and working with young people, Nandita went back to college for a gender studies degree. She then worked with Dr. Martha Farell at PRIA, working in the space of gender mainstreaming in leadership and conducting gender audits of panchayats. From there her work has gone on to encompass sexual harassment at the workplace, the rights of domestic workers, and more.
Nandita and Deval discuss equality and equity and the difference between the two, how young people have very definite ideas about what they want, and the Rebuild India fund, which Nandita says her heart is tied to.
The Martha Farrell Foundation supports practical interventions which are committed to achieving a gender-just society and promoting life-long learning. You can find out more about them at https://www.marthafarrellfoundation.org/
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval Sanghavi on X at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
How to Listen and Subscribe to No Cost Extension:
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After a short year end break, No-Cost Extension is back. In the first episode of 2024, Deval sits down with Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma, co-founder of Farm2Food Foundation.
Deep tells Deval about the staggering diversity of India’s North Eastern states - culturally, linguistically and agriculturally - and why it’s important to protect this diversity from homogenisation.
After a short year end break, No-Cost Extension is back. In the first episode of 2024, Deval sits down with Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma, co-founder of Farm2Food Foundation.
Deep speaks of his early years growing up and studying in Arunachal Pradesh, the impact the turbulent times in the North Eastern region had on him and later experiences with people led movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
His journey lead him back to Assam with a desire to work with young people and communities and place their needs at the centre. What grew from that desire was Farm2Food, a non-profit social enterprise working with communities to create sustainable, farm-based livelihoods, revive indigenous food traditions and improve the nutritional quality of the food people eat.
Deep tells Deval about the staggering diversity of India’s North Eastern states - culturally, linguistically and agriculturally - and why it’s important to protect this diversity from homogenisation. He shares how climate change has impacted communities, why ‘modernisation’ is not always the best thing, and how communities are increasingly disconnected from their natural surroundings.
They also touch upon the work the Rebuild India Fund and it’s principles which deeply align with Deep’s own beliefs and practices.
Listen to Deep and Deval discuss farming techniques, climate change, community led movements and why it’s important to place nature at the centre.
To know more about Farm2Food visit http://farm2food.org
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval Sanghavi at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
How to Listen and Subscribe to No Cost Extension:
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Revathi Radhakrishnan is the founder-director of the Vanavil Trust, a non-profit founded in 2004 that supports children of two Nomadic communities: Boom Boom Mattikarars and Narikuravars, in Tamil Nadu. After 17 years of working with the communities, Vanavil now has grown into an organisation that works in child protection, health and nutrition, holistic education and livelihoods.
Revathi Radhakrishnan says ‘When a child dies, hope dies.'
Revathi Radhakrishnan is the founder-director of the Vanavil Trust, a non profit founded in 2004 that supports children of two Nomadic communities: Boom Boom Mattikarars and Narikuravars, in Tamil Nadu. After 17 years of working with the communities, Vanavil now has grown into an organisation that works in child protection, health and nutrition, holistic education and livelihoods.
As a child, Revathi was a vociferous reader, devouring whatever books she could lay her hands on. She had to give up her dreams of being a journalist and studied mathematics instead, but after graduating she went on to work in film, journalism and as a tv producer. Through her many professional avatars, Revathi kept her volunteering side alive. But it was the South Asian Tsunami of 2004 that set her onto the path that led to the formation of Vanavil.
Revati arrived in Nagapattinam to help with relief efforts in the wake of the tsunami. But it was the death of a young baby Lakshmi that cemented her decision to work more formally with children from nomadic tribes in her home state of Tamil Nadu.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Revathi tells Deval Sanghavi about the early years of working in this space and the heartbreak that goes along with it, what it means to be a member of a nomadic tribe, how they have been criminialised for centuries and the stigmas that still persist.
But this is a conversation laced with hope - Vanavil’s work in educating young people, the unconventional ways in which they got students in to their school and how they are propelled forward by their belief that all children have a right to their childhoods.
To know more about Vanavil Trust visit https://vanavil.org/
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval Sanghavi at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
How to Listen and Subscribe to No Cost Extension:
Subscribe and stay up to date with new episodes on
Spotify.
Season 3 of No-Cost Extension kicks off with host Deval Sanghavi in conversation with Dhruv Lakra, founder and CEO of Mirakle Couriers, a for- profit courier service that employs low income deaf adults thereby delinking charity with disability.
Season 3 of No-Cost Extension kicks off with host Deval Sanghavi in conversation with Dhruv Lakra, founder and CEO of Mirakle Couriers, a for- profit courier service that employs low income deaf adults thereby delinking charity with disability.
Dhruv grew up in Kashmir before moving to Mumbai for college. Post graduation he had a brief stint as an investment banker before joining Dasra as one of the organisation’s first team members in 2004. A Skoll scholar at the Said School of Business, Oxford, Dhruv returned to India to bootstrap Mirakle Courier.
In this episode, Dhruv talks about how perceptions around the social sector have changed in the last two decades, the personal motivation to begin a social enterprise that worked with people with disabilities, the stigma and social conditioning around disabilities that sets in very early in society, the flipside of bootstrapping, mental health and what he would have done differently. Plus, some stories you might not have heard before, like the time Dhruv, Deval and Neera were house mates.
To know more about Mirakle Couriers visit https://www.miraklecouriers.com/
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval Sanghavi at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
How to Listen and Subscribe to No Cost Extension:
Subscribe and stay up to date with new episodes on
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Deval Sanghavi is back with a new season of No-Cost Extension!
Deval Sanghavi is back with a new season of No-Cost Extension! In this season Deval’s talking to some of the most committed social leaders from India and around the world on what it’s like to work towards the challenging goal of equity. Deval and his guests also speak about what it is like to run organizations post COVID, bootstrapping and entrepreneurship, the work of philanthropy, and what it is like to work with the most marginalized and excluded communities.
Episodes drop November 30, 2023! Subscribe now whereever you get your podcasts to never miss an episode. For more information, go to www.dasra.org/nce
How to Listen and Subscribe to No Cost Extension:
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Loren Cardeli is Executive Director at A Growing Culture, a non profit that believes in food sovereignty for everyone everywhere and works with farmers to ensure they decide what to grow, where to grow it and who to sell it to.
Deval and Loren met at a Synergos retreat and found they had much to talk about and bond over, prompting Deval to invite Loren on to No-Cost Extension as a guest.
Listen to Loren talk about his growing years in New York City in a family that loved to argue, what made him buy a one way ticket to Belize and the experiences he had there that made him think more deeply about food, agriculture and the people who feed us.
Loren speaks passionately about the framing of language, providing farmers support to tell their own stories and working with them to reclaim their ownership across the lands they preserve. You can follow Loren on Twitter @LorenCardeli and A Growing Culture @agcconnect.
For more information on No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2023.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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We interrupt regular programming on No-Cost Extension with Deval Sanghavi to bring you this panel discussion from Dasra Philanthropy Week 2023.
The Going Platinum: Past, Present and Future of Civil Society in India @ 75 report was a collective effort by India’s leading non-profits that showcased and celebrated civil society's contribution to India's development.
The conversation at DPW 2023 was based on the report and spanned policy, service delivery and research/ advocacy – reminiscing the past with an eye to the future.
The panel was moderated by Sneha Menon of Dasra and the panellists were Sanjoy Roy, founder-trustee of Salaam Baalak Trust, Farida Lambe, co-founder Pratham and head of Pratham’s Council for Vulnerable Children, Aditya Natraj, CEO of Piramal Foundation, Priti Patkar, co-founder and director of Prerana and Pushpa Aman Singh co-founder Guidestar India.
To know more about Dasra Philanthropy Week visit http://dasraphilanthropyweek.org For more information on No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2023.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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Sonal Shah has spent her career both in the private and public sector, including stints with Goldman Sachs, Google.org and The White House. She is currently the CEO of The Texas Tribune, a politics and public policy-specific news organization.
But before embarking on her illustrious career, many years ago, Sonal and I were just two teenagers forced to wake up early and help clean up the Gandhi Centre in Houston, Texas after community events.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Sonal and I not only look back and reminisce, but we also talk about the Houston community we grew up in that nurtured so many philanthropic ventures, the need for flexible funding and how it helps build trust and why we need to find the right funding mechanisms for communities.
You can follow Sonal on Twitter @SonalRShah. To know more about The Texas Tribune visit https://www.texastribune.org/. For more information on NCE go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2022.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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Jo McGowan and Ravi Chopra met in the 70s and fell in love through the post. They got married and moved to India in the early 80s and have since dedicated their lives to serving the communities they live in, albeit in very different ways.
From helping set up The Front for Rapid Economic Advancement of India (FREA) to working with the Centre for Science and Environment to setting up the People’s Science Institute in Uttarakhand, Ravi Chopra has spent his life using science and technology to better the lives of others. The People’s Science Institute is known for its pioneering work in the fields livelihoods development, environmental quality monitoring and disaster-safe housing.
Jo McGowan Chopra is the founder and director of the Latika Roy Foundation, an organisation that provides specialized, localized services to children with disabilities and their families, and helps others do the same with the aim of creating a better world for children with disabilities.
Their work has grown and expanded in different ways reflecting their approach to life and personal philosophies. But what is common to both of them is their innate desire to do good.
You can follow Latika Roy Foundation on social media @LatikaRoyFound1. To know more about the People’s Science Institute visit http://peoplesscienceinstitute.org. For more information on NCE go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2023.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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How do you begin to break intergenerational cycles of poor health and violence in a megapolis? What evidence based models of urban health interventions can we look to?
Content Warning: This episode contains mentions of violence that some listeners may find disturbing and listener discretion is advised.
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval sits down with Dr. Armida Fernandez, founder-trustee of SNEHA Mumbai (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action) and the organisation’s CEO Vanessa D’Souza.
Listen in as Dr. Armida Fernandez talks about her start as a paediatrician and neonatologist at a Government Hospital in Mumbai where she and her colleagues treated vulnerable mothers and children from low-income households every day, and the series of events that lead her to begin SNEHA and work in the space of health equity. With over more than twenty years of dedicated work, SNEHA is one of the most respected public health NGOs in India.
Vanessa d'Souza joins Dr Fernandez in this conversation, and shares her thoughts on the importance of building the ‘next line’ in organisations, the need for creating safe spaces and the intersectionality of problems in health and nutrition.
You can follow SNEHA on social media @SNEHAMumbai. For more information on NCE go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval_Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2023.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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Dasra Philanthropy Week is an annual gathering of diverse stakeholders and voices from the development ecosystem to convene, converse and continue sustained action towards the quest for a billion Indians to thrive with dignity and equity.
As the 14th edition of Dasra Philanthropy Week 2023 gets underway, No-Cost Extension presents DPW specials: conversations that we believe will be of interest to our listeners.
This episode is a conversation between Suparna Gupta, founder of Aangan Trust, and Deval Sanghavi and Neera Nundy at DPW 2022. How do we imagine a future of collaboration? How do we recognize privilege? How do you work to bridge the gap between philanthropy and small organizations and communities?
Listen as the co-founders of Dasra look back at their own journey over the last 23 years.
For more information about Dasra Philanthropy Week visit www.dasraphilanthropyweek.org or www.dasra.org. We'll be back next week with more episodes!
This interview was recorded in 2022.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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How can we engage with policymakers in a timely and effective way? What can we do to address the power imbalance between the Global North and the Global South? Why does global philanthropy set aside only 2% of funding for the climate?
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval Sanghavi has a freewheeling conversation with Alberto Lidji, Founder of the Do One Better Knowledge Hub and Podcast.
Alberto talks about his shift from working with private corporations to the world of philanthropy, why he thinks there needs to be a change in the way we work with policy makers, and some of his most memorable guests on the Do One Better Podcast.
You can find out more about the Do One Better Knowledge Hub here www.lidji.org and follow Alberto on Twitter here https://twitter.com/alberto_lidji
To follow No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2023.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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How can we challenge the top-down approach to solving social problems? Can we build bridges between powerful sectors and community organisations? What role does sustained inner work play in serving with love?
Deval sits down with Peggy Dulany, Founder & Chair of Synergos, a global organisation helping dismantle systems that create the most urgent problems of our time: poverty, social injustice, and climate change.
From absorbing ideas about philanthropy ‘through her skin’ at dinner table conversations from a young age to starting The Global Philanthropists Circle (GPC) a home for individuals and families from around the world to re-imagine how to address society’s most pressing needs, Peggy traces her journey in the sector, and the phenomenal work Synergos has facilitated.
You can find out more about Synergos here https://www.synergos.org and follow their work here https://twitter.com/synergos
This interview was recorded in 2022.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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How should funders be rethinking philanthropy in the wake of the pandemic? How can they take their egos out of the equation? How can they operate with a greater sense of urgency, transparency, and trust with grantee-centric mechanisms?
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval Sanghavi sits down with Lior Ipp, the CEO of the Roddenberry Foundation that is inspired by the life and legacy of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry who believed that human potential is remarkable and would lead us to a better, fairer world.
Lior speaks with candour about the power dynamics between donor and grantee, how the pandemic was a catalyst for the philanthropic sector to do things differently, and how the first-of-its-kind +1 Global Fund enables small organizations across the world to challenge the status quo of burdensome applications, restrictions, or reports, and instead driven by a “network-of-networks” of social entrepreneurs and innovators.
To know more about The Roddenberry Foundation visit roddenberryfoundation.org or follow them on @roddenberryfdn on Twitter. To follow No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2022.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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The Rebuild India Fund will support 1000 small community based organizations in the next decade through flexible funding and capacity building, enabling them to survive and thrive.
How do committees select organizations for funding? What is it like to be on a selection committee? What can we learn and unlearn from the hundreds of small organizations doing meaningful work across the country? What can we do better next time?
Listen in to Anita Patil of Goonj, Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma from Farm2Food Foundation, Deepa Pawar, from Anubhuti Trust, Nandita Pradhan from the Martha Farrell Foundation and Rameez Alam, from Catalyst 2030 – NASE.
The Rebuild India Fund, founded by @Dasra and Tarsadia Foundation. For more information about the Rebuild India Fund visit www.rebuildindiafund.org or follow @Dasra for updates.
To follow No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2022.
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When COVID-19 hit, it made clear the undeniable fact of just how vulnerable our poorest communities are. It was a setback of huge proportions, creating a crisis that extended well beyond health to impact on work and livelihoods, education, access to food and nutrition. It exposed how a shock in any one area can snowball pushing communities deeper into poverty. Many small grassroots organizations were the primary support for communities in the worst phases of the pandemic.
The Rebuild India Fund was set up to support those closest to the ground - the small community organizations working at the grassroots to support these communities to become more resilient. The Rebuild Fund does this through flexible funding and capacity building and by recognizing and respecting NGO leaders' ability and power to run their organizations in a manner that serves their communities most meaningfully.
Why is flexible funding so critical for small organizations? How can funders support communities better? After working remotely for so many months, what’s it like to sit down with a group of people in the same room? What is the idea of India? How do we have conversations about change that are respectful and inclusive?
In the first conversation in this series, Deval Sanghavi sits down with the Investment Committee of the fund, made up of NGO leaders from across the country who assess and select the NGOs for the Rebuild India Fund.
Listen in as Anita Patil of Goonj, Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma from Farm2Food Foundation, Deepa Pawar, from Anubhuti Trust, Nandita Pradhan from the Martha Farrell Foundation and Rameez Alam, from Catalyst 2030 – NASE share their thoughts about the initiative and why they believe it’s important.
The Rebuild India Fund, founded by @Dasra and Tarsadia Foundation. For more information about the Rebuild India Fund visit www.rebuildindiafund.org or follow @Dasra for updates.
To follow No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2022.
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How can community philanthropy grow organically in a way that serves the community, unlocking its potential? Why do we use the word risk so much in philanthropy? How can family philanthropies involve the next gen meaningfully in their work?
Deval Sanghavi, host of No-Cost Extension Pod sits down with Maya Patel, the CEO of The Tarsadia Foundation, a family philanthropy working both in India and the United States in health and human services, economic empowerment, and education. In 2016, the National Center for Family Philanthropy recognized the Tarsadia Foundation as a model of successful next-generation engagement in philanthropy.
Maya traces her family’s journey from India to Zambia to America, her father’s lifelong desire to help others succeed, and how their approach to giving has changed over the last decade.
To know more about The Tarsadia Foundation visit www.tarsadiafoundation.org or follow them on Twitter.
To know more about the Rebuild India Fund to go www.rebuildindiafund.org.
To follow No-Cost Extension go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2022.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
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Can urban discard be used as a tool to alleviate poverty? How can the poor be involved in evolving their own solutions with dignity? Why must we focus on the receiver’s dignity instead of the donor’s pride?
In this episode of No-Cost Extension, host Deval Sanghavi speaks to Anshu and Meenakshi Gupta, co-founders of Goonj. Goonj aims to build an equitable relationship of strength, sustenance and dignity between the cities and villages using the under-utilized urban material as a tool to trigger development with dignity, across the country.
Founded in 1999, today, Goonj works in 31+ states across India with a
1400+ team and a network of 600+ partner grassroots organizations. Their
work impacts at scale issues like water, sanitation, agriculture,
menstrual health, disaster response and rehabilitation.
To know more about Goonj visit www.goonj.org.
For more information on NCE go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2022.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
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How can loving a sport lead someone to found an NGO? How can we empower young people to make their own life decisions, rather than giving them solutions? What is the secret to scaling such social initiatives across the world and what changes can one hope to see from the Indian social sector funding landscape?
In the first episode of season 2, Deval Sanghavi speaks to Matthew Spacie, the founder of Magic Bus, an NGO that works with children and young people in India taking them on a journey from childhood to livelihood and out of poverty. There are currently hundreds of thousands of children on this journey of moving out of poverty in 22 states and 80 districts of India. Magic Bus works across south Asia in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
Matthew Spacie (@MatthewSpacie) is the founder of Magic Bus (@magicbusindia), an NGO dedicated to using sport and life-skilling to change the lives of the underserved youth of our communities. To know more about Magic Bus, check out their website, www.magicbus.org
For more information on NCE go to dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on Twitter at @Deval Sanghavi and @Dasra
This interview was recorded in 2022.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
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Deval Sanghavi is back with another season of No-Cost Extension, ready to engage more deeply with the theme of rebuilding. Through conversations with social leaders, small NGOs and voices from philanthropies, Season 2 will focus on rebuilding communities, rebuilding India, and rebuilding the fabric of our society. The first episode drops next week!
This interview was recorded in early 2022.
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Deval Sanghavi speaks to Safeena Husain, the founder of Educate Girls, an NGO that works to support girls’ education across India. Educate Girls has just completed 14 years, and during this period they have grown from working with fifty schools to working in over 18,000 villages across India and reaching millions of children.
Safeena talks about her own personal journey that led her to set up Educate Girls and how they learnt to use machine learning to identify the most vulnerable locations to work in. She also speaks about how she set up the world’s first Development Impact Bond in education (a proof-of-concept that ties funding to outcomes), what we’re not seeing when it comes to the fate of millions of children post-COVID, and her pet peeves on the structural dynamics of the development sector.
Safeena Husain is the founder of Educate Girls, an NGO that focuses on mobilizing communities for girls’ education in India’s rural and educationally disadvantaged areas.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
To know more about Safeena Husain go to educategirls.ngo
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Deval Sanghavi speaks to Aakash Sethi, the CEO of Quest Alliance, a non-profit organization that equips young people with 21st-century skills. Aakash shares what it was like to grow up in a family dedicated to development work, what it means to him to build for a world where young people feel empowered and included, how to grow from loss, and the impact of COVID-19 on education in India. They also chat about how Quest has become one of the best places in the development sector to work in, and how important eating and sharing together is for a thriving work culture.
Aakash Sethi is the CEO of Quest Alliance. Aakash’s work experience in the private sector, working in companies like Microsoft reflects in the manner that he's built Quest, leveraging technology to improve the quality of education and to empower youth to navigate the future of work. He is integrating the culture, tools and practice of self-learning in the Indian education and vocational training system and transitioning teachers as champions of 21st-century skills. By doing so, institutions and teachers are enabling young people to experience purpose and autonomy and take charge of their own learning and career pathways.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
To know more about Aakash Sethi and Quest Alliance please go to https://www.questalliance.net/.
To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow
Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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Deval Sanghavi speaks to Anu Aga and Meher Pudumjee, a mother and daughter philanthropic team who are deeply committed to equity and inclusion. While many families grapple with intergenerational philanthropy, Anu and Meher are examples of how different perspectives can come together to shape a long-lasting philanthropic engagement.
Anu Aga has been a trailblazing corporate leader when there were a few like her. She has led the energy and environment business Thermax Ltd. Anu is a social worker, and has been a Member of Parliament (in the Rajya Sabha) and is actively engaged with multiple nonprofit organizations in India including Teach for India. Her daughter Meher Pudumjee is the Chairperson of Thermax and is active in many initiatives from chairing the Akanksha Foundation and in leading efforts and providing greater dignity and equity to informal workers across India through the Social Compact.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
To know more about Anu and Meher’s work in India’s development sector,
visit https://www.thermaxglobal.com/corporate-social-responsibilities-2/.
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Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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This special episode is a conversation between Deval and Hansal Mehta that took place earlier this year at Dasra Philanthropy Week. Listen in as Hansal speaks to Deval about his perspectives on philanthropy, what he believes is real impact, and his lockdown beard.
Hansal Mehta is a well-known National Award winning filmmaker, director and writer. Some of his well-known films are Shahid, City Lights, and more recently, the webseries, Scam 1992. Hansal is a longtime friend of the development sector. His wife Safeena Husain is a social worker and the founder of the non-profit, Educate Girls in Mumbai.
The interview and the Q and A that followed have been edited. For the full version you can go to Dasra’s youtube channel.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
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Deval Sanghavi speaks to Vineet Rai, the Founder and Chairman of Aavishkaar Group, a leading impact investment platform in the world. Although they have very different perspectives when it comes to development and social change, they share a long friendship that goes back to their early years in the development sector. Listen in as Vineet and Deval talk about the shared idealism that shapes their values, their history of travelling together across the country to learn and understand what was happening on the ground, how capitalism and philanthropy work together, and what impact investing is all about.
Vineet Rai is the Chairman and Founder of the Aavishkaar Group, whose ecosystem includes Aavishkaar Capital, an impact fund manager focused on the global south; Arohan, one of India’s largest microfinance institutions for low-income households; Ashv Finance, an NBFC that works with MSMEs; IntelleCap, a global impact advisory firm, and Sankalp, a networking platform for impact investors.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
To know more about Vineet Rai’s work, please visit Intellecap
and Aavishkar
Group. To get No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes
sneak-peaks, follow Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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Deval Sanghavi speaks to Sharda Nirmal, the force behind the Sharanam Centre, a home for girls in Dharavi, Mumbai, and Karen Doff, the founder of the Aasha Foundation and a longtime collaborator of the centre. The Sharanam Centre is not an institution - it is a home. Sharda talks about how she established the Sharanam Centre as a young woman and with her husband over twenty years ago, and describes how she learnt to manage resistance from the community, and what it was that the girls really needed. Karen first encountered Sharanam as a visitor, but soon became a close collaborator, working with Sharda to support the centre.
Listen in as Karen talks about what giving, scale and sustainability really mean when dealing with the lives of individuals, and how to inspire everyday givers to contribute to the long, hard work of working with children in the development sector.
Sharda Nirmal is the force behind the Sharanam Center, a shelter home for girls in Dharavi, Mumbai that is a part of the Community Outreach Programme (CORP India). Sharda and her husband set up Sharanam twenty years ago, when Sharda was twenty-two years old. Karen Doff is the founder of the Aasha Foundation.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
To know more about the Sharanam Centre, please go to: http://sharanamcentre.org/
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Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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Deval Sanghavi speaks to Donald Lobo, one of India's most unassuming philanthropists. Listen in as Lobo deftly steers the conversation away from the Rolling Stones article he was featured in, and as he talks about his giving philosophy and why he trusts organizations that are truly embedded in communities, what people think the terms impact and scale mean versus what they should mean, and why Lobo’s hopeful about the Indian social sector.
”It is wrong for all of us, including us, to only fund the successful ones. We've got to also look beyond them, right. And look to people who might have tried it and failed, and maybe they just needed that last additional push. Maybe some intangibles. And the other thing we can do , that we need in India, which again, looking at it from a US perspective is getting NGOs in the same room together to talk to each other and for the founder to get the hell out of there.”
Donald Lobo moved to the US from Mumbai in the early 1990s to pursue computer science, and found himself on Yahoo’s founding team. He is also the co-founder and lead developer of CiviCRM, which was set up to give the social sector free and open software. Having always had a keen interest in civil society, Lobo always found time to volunteer alongside his work, and very early on he began thinking about investing more and more of his time and his resources in causes close to his heart. Lobo is the founder of the Chintu Gudiya Foundation that funds NGOs in India and runs Tech4Dev, that works with non-profits to build their tech capacities.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
Know more about Donald Lobo's work at Chintu Gudiya Foundation on LinkedIn. To get
No-Cost Extension news and behind-the-scenes sneak-peaks, follow Deval
Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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In the first episode of No Cost Extension, Deval sits down to talk to Suparna Gupta, the founder of Aangan Trust, a Mumbai-based foundation that works with vulnerable children. Listen in as they discuss what a no-cost extension really means, Suparna’s early years working with children and how Aangan grew, what she has learnt from her journey and of course, the usefulness of sitting in front of excel sheets.
Suparna Gupta is the Founder Director of Aangan Trust. Her career began in advertising , but when her volunteering experience at various shelters and homes from her childhood made her realize the strong need for the rehabilitation of institutionalized children, she moved to work in the development sector. In 2001, driven by her desire to work with this neglected population, Suparna left advertising to found Aangan Trust. Today, Aangan works with some of the most vulnerable children in over nineteen states across India.
This interview was recorded in early 2021.
Know more about Suparna's work at Aangan Trust at @Suparna_Aangan
and @Aangan_Trust on Twitter.
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Deval Sanghavi at @Deval_Sanghavi on Twitter.
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