Together We Empoer 3rd Edition

Jay Sehgal on Community Radio Connect FM 107.8Pooja O. Murada accepting National Sustainability Award for Community Radio Connect FM 107.8 from the Ministry ofInformation & Broatcasting, GOI

CEO Anjali Makhija with community women

Jay Sehgal accepting the 2025 Vision of Gandhi Award from India Association of Minnesota and Dr. Dash FoundationSeghal Foundation 25th Anniversary Celebration14. Learn more about the power of Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) in this article from INTRAC for CivilSociety. See https://www.intrac.org/app/uploads/2017/01/Participatory-learning-and-action.pdf

Critical LearningWhile SMSF teams were implementing multiple interventions to uplift villagecommunities, a strange and unexpected circumstance required their special attention forabout three weeks in the spring of 2010. Group leader Anjali Makhija sent an email toSuri Sehgal in Florida, and Jay Sehgal in Iowa, notifying them that a fatwa had beenissued against S M Sehgal Foundation. She wrote, “As you are aware, a fatwa is a decree bya Muslim religious body.”15Posters pasted on a few walls in Ghaghas and other Mewat villages. had three seals,representing the three madrasas (Muslim educational institutions) issuing the fatwa. Onewas local, in Nuh, the district headquarters of Mewat. e other two were prominentmadrasas in Deoband and Saharanpur, in Uttar Pradesh.As translated roughly from Urdu, the fatwa appeared to specify four points: 1) AllMuslims must stop SMSF work, 2) All Muslims must get together to “finish” SMSF, 3)Men and women becoming members or employees of SMSF are wrong and haram(forbidden by Islamic law), and 4) If Muslims are lazy/slow in stopping this activity, theywill face the anger of Allah.Flyers strewn along village streets said the SMSF team took photos of young girls andposted them online and in printed publications, took women out of their villages,promoted Western culture, encouraged women to do away with purdah (veiling andseclusion), and promoted family planning.Anjali’s email proposed a course of action that she’d already begun to implement. Shefirst notified the most-senior core team staff member, B.R. Poonia, who was already on

his way back from leave in Rajasthan. She immediately called the field team together,most of whom were Muslims from these same communities.e field team responded to the news with incredulity but a sense of calm. ey knewthat SMSF interventions were not against Islamic teachings, and that SMSF supportedempowering women and girls with skills to build their self-confidence. Core values andprinciples, in writing and expressed by SMSF in words and deeds, were wholly respectfulof cultural and religious differences.Field staff took immediate steps to address the issue collectively. Long-time field teammembers, including three young men, Nasir Hussain, Zafar Hussain, and Saheed Ahmad,joined their most senior field team member, Jaan Mohammad, to form a task force tofind out why this fatwa was issued, and whether any real issues existed for SMSF toaddress among the complaints. Nasir Hussain told members of the core team, “Don’tworry. We will take care of this thing.”Work in the villages was to be scaled down for a few days until the situation could befully assessed. A few anonymous phone threats to Ghaghas Community Center prompteda call to local police, who were on alert in case violence erupted.e new SMSF COO, Sanjiv Chatrath, was instrumental in maintaining a calmatmosphere, remaining a steady force on the team. Not fully familiar with the culturaland religious issues related to a fatwa, he had called Jay Sehgal for guidance.Jay suggested consulting with Pooniaji, who was in charge of field team activities.With Pooniaji on leave, Sanjiv had wisely given full authority for handling the situationto the second-most-senior staff member, Anjali Makhija.Anjali’s email summarized the next steps the team decided to take: 1) visit the maulvis(Muslim religious leaders) at their madrasas and invite them to see SMSF work in person,2) request a meeting with the individuals who originated the fatwa to find out theirconcerns and interests, and 3) initiate a rubaru (face-to-face dialogue) with religiousleaders, as the team did from time to time anyway.e team soon learned that several people listed on the fatwa request had not evenheard about it. So the true extent of any threat involved was not yet clear. e task force`members suggested waiting a couple days to gauge community reaction before taking anyspecific action.Meanwhile, Jay Sehgal consulted with Suri Sehgal and found his uncle fairlyunconcerned. Suri knew the Mewat communities appreciated the progress being made inpartnership with SMSF. He knew that any valuable endeavor could draw the occasionalmalcontent or mischief-maker. Convinced that the complaint was the work of a fewindividuals, Suri said he trusted the community and the team to handle the situationappropriately. He added, “We’re spending our own money to put these villages on thepath to development. We are working very hard—honestly and correctly. At least

640,000 other villages in India need help. If this community does not appreciate what weare doing, we will move on.”Jay responded to Anjali’s email with support for the steps she was already taking. Hesuggested meeting with groups of villagers and letting them know that SMSF would stopwork in Mewat if that was the wish of the people, because the work was a partnership thatrequired the villagers’ full support and participation.Jay urged the team to remain focused on the good work they were doing, adding hispersonal certainty, “e villagers will stand beside us.”In more than a decade- of SMSF work in Mewat, only one village had (briefly) beenunwilling to continue with their partnership project. e SMSF team had respectfullywalked away. But village decision-makers had soon invited SMSF back, and thecollaboration resumed.When Pooniaji returned the following day, he met with Anjali and the field team andconsulted with Salahuddin Saiphy to gain his perspective of the situation as a Muslimmember of the core team. Salahuddin had become program leader of the WaterManagement Program the previous September, when Lalit Sharma’s role changed togroup leader.Salahuddin, Pooniaji, and Anjali discussed how to appropriately address the fatwawith the three groups that issued it. Events unfolded quickly as the field team task forcetook the lead. Closely examining the unusual language used in the pamphlets, they soughtthe original fatwa language to discern what it actually said before meeting with themaulvis at the three institutions to find out the reactions of villagers who visited madrasasin Nuh and Nagina.at same evening, the team met with the mufti (Islamic scholar who gives legalopinions) who headed the Nuh madrasa’s “fatwa department.” He explained that hisdepartment’s role was only to endorse a written fatwa request as issued at Darul Uloom, ahighly revered Islamic seminary in Uttar Pradesh. He advised meeting with thoseassociated with Deoband to resolve the issue, as they could influence the two other partiesto stop the flyer distribution.With two maulvis accompanying them for advice and support, the field team taskforce met with local Deoband leaders to discuss the authenticity of the fatwa. One leaderrecalled a meeting with a few complainants a couple months earlier; but he’d found “noevidence of wrongdoing” in the materials presented and had considered the matterclosed.Meanwhile, some field team members reported being asked by a few communitymembers whether they would continue their employment with SMSF (since the fatwasuggested that the work was “against Islam”). Each refuted the allegations with theirfamilies and others.

Salahuddin met individually and in group sessions with field team members toremind them that the decree accusations were false. He assured them, “I am also aneducated Muslim, and I’d be the first person to quit if the foundation was doing anythingwrong.”His words resolved any concerns felt by staff members. e whole field team readilyjoined efforts to counter the baseless fatwa except for one member who resigned, sayinghe felt pressure, but he started a new job so quickly that some on the team assumed he’dplanned to leave anyway.Jay Sehgal provided assurances that no jobs were in jeopardy. SMSF work wouldcontinue no matter what. He reminded the team that Ghaghas Community Center, onlyfifty kilometers from the Rajasthan border, was close to many other villages that neededhelp. Jay believed the Mewat communities would stand by the foundation, and he wasright. ough most villagers knew SMSF had done nothing wrong, they hesitated to goagainst a fatwa publicly. Showing their support “out loud” took a couple more days.e local maulvi behind the fatwa tried to get people from nearby villages to gatheroutside Ghaghas Community Center. When a few raised voices accused SMSF of“teaching against Islam,” and shouted for villagers to attack the center, they were unableto garner any support. e crowd slowly dispersed.Over the next few days, individuals from each village came forward, one afteranother, to personally tell SMSF staff at Ghaghas Community Center that they objectedto the fatwa, and they knew the decree was based on false allegations. ey did not wanttheir partnerships and work together with SMSF to stop. Any hint of disruption dieddown within a few days, and the teams went back to work.Still wanting to thoroughly resolve the situation, Anjali, Pooniaji, and Salahuddinwent together to New Delhi to consult with a professor in the Department of IslamicStudies at Jamia Millia Islamia University. e professor examined the fatwa and theSMSF brochure and concluded that the dispute described was within the purview of aDarul Qaja, a forum that could help resolve such disputes at a local level. He advisedwriting a letter from SMSF, questioning the justification of the fatwa from an Islamicviewpoint. He offered to review the letter for accuracy before it was sent.One week after the fatwa was issued, a meeting was held with the forty-two membersof the field team and the eight members of the core team to talk through the issues,separate facts from misconceptions, and make decisions about their next steps. A few fieldteam members had further considered the possible validity of some allegations noted inthe fatwa. In keeping with the commitment to respect the villagers’ culture and traditionsin all SMSF work, their feedback was taken very seriously.Reviewing text and pictures used in two Family Life Education health sessionmodules, the group agreed that some material, such as a family planning discussion,

might be interpreted as unacceptable from an Islamic viewpoint. Carefully examiningeach fatwa point, the group made proactive decisions to remove any aspect of classcontent that could be construed as objectionable, and also to invite maulvis to discuss andaddress any further concerns.As a result, two health modules on anatomy were deleted from the Family LifeEducation classes. Taking photos of females in Mewat was curtailed; and no photosshowing faces of Mewati women or girls would be put in future SMSF publications.Photos of women and adolescent girls were removed from the website. Written materialsabout SMSF work would be translated into Hindi and Urdu and provided to thecommunity. Family planning issues would be directed to an auxiliary nurse-midwife.SMSF staff would no longer take women or girls to other villages to participate in sportsor any activities, events, or trainings offered to women farmers, self-help groups, and soon. Women on the foundation team would wear conservative, modest attire, such as“ladies suits,” when in the villages. Hiring unmarried girls to the field team would beavoided.Along with modifications to programs and operations, the field team task force wouldcontinue meeting with local maulvis, sarpanches, and community leaders to clarify SMSFwork and intentions. A letter to religious leaders pointed out that the most criticalconcerns cited in the fatwa were entirely untrue, and that certain activities werediscontinued to avoid concerns. Adding that SMSF had never been informed about anycomplaints prior to a decree being issued, the letter requested a review of the fatwa.Pooniaji, Salahuddin, and Nasir Hussain then went to Uttar Pradesh to meet themuftis in Deoband and Saharanpur who issued the fatwa. Salahuddin described SMSFwork to benefit local communities in water management, agriculture development, andcapacity building and sustainability through better citizen participation. He asserted thatSMSF was not involved in any objectionable activities or “conversion” work, and invitedthe maulvis to personally visit the villages to verify the facts on the ground. He requestedthey withdraw the fatwa, as it was based on false allegations, wrongly questioned theemployment of Muslim staff, and created confusion about SMSF work in the minds oflocal villagers.Surprisingly, the Deoband scholars explained that they had no actual process forverifying any allegations made. Fatwas were based solely on written complaints theyreceived. ey acknowledged that positions held by the complainants and SMSF werepoles apart and advised the team to sort out the problem directly with the complainantsand local religious leaders at the Nuh madrasa (the third party to the fatwa).Any pressure on Muslim staff members working in Mewat villages from family andfriends’ questions evaporated when Salahuddin received a response from a senior scholarat Islamic Fiqh Academy in New Delhi. An emissary sent to look into the facts wassatisfied that there was no wrongdoing by SMSF. e scholar produced a written opinion,

which was forwarded to the villages, that included the directive: “All good activities of SM Sehgal Foundation should be supported by all good Muslims . . . .”Salahuddin went with Zafar Hussain, Nasir Hussain, and Jan Mohammad to meet theprominent maulvis of Mewat in Nuh, Ghasera, Ferozpur Jhirka (Haryana), and Tizara(Rajasthan) to update them on this new information, share SMSF development goals,and assure the maulvis that SMSF work was not anti-Islamic or anti-nation. To alleviateany lingering doubts, the maulvis were invited to visit Ghaghas Community Center sothey could interact with villagers where SMSF work was being done and listen to theirfeedback in person. e staff also met with Mufti Qasim, the most highly regarded maulviof Mewat, apprising him of SMSF’s work in the villages, which was nothing like theobjectional information cited in the fatwa.SMSF hosted a community gathering with village elders and opinion leaders topresent a summary of SMSF’s work done in partnership with communities over theprevious ten-plus years. Seeing so many concrete ways that communities benefited fromthe Integrated Sustainable Village Development model, the demonstration village, plusthe employment generated and other programs and projects, convinced a group ofulemas (Muslim religious scholars) to visit the SMSF training center in Ghaghas to see forthemselves if they could find anything objectionable “from an Islamic point of view.”While there, the men were invited to inspect every corner of the Ghaghas CommunityCenter, even women’s toilet facilities, to be sure no hidden cameras were placedanywhere.Field team members spoke with the scholars and discussed SMSF activities. Personalinteractions helped dissolve many misunderstandings, some of which involved semantics.For example, the term “exposure visits” referred to bringing women/girls to meetingsorganized by the Federation of Self Help Groups. But the idea of bringing women/girlsoutside their own villages, even to participate in a sport, did not sit well with some.Villagers in the communities where SMSF teams worked were highly relieved to hearthat the ulemas found nothing objectionable at Ghaghas Community Center. Morepublic endorsement of SMSF came from villagers in a “passive” form when a series ofjalsas (large public gatherings) were held in several villages. In the first, a few kilometersfrom Ghaghas Community Center in the village of Karheda, leaders intended to discussthe fatwa and hold a religious discourse. Field team attendees reported back that the jalsaprogressed well until SMSF was spoken of in a way that sounded “unfair.” A number ofvillagers objected and immediately stood and left. e perceived criticism of SMSF wasagain met with villagers’ “nonparticipation.” Villagers who left explained, “We thought itwas a religious meeting, but we were misinformed. If we had known the meeting was tocriticize the foundation, we would not have attended.”Community members’ nonsupport for the fatwa also caught the attention of localreligious leaders who visited firsthand to see what SMSF was doing in the villages.

Pooniaji served as host and coordinator of their visits. When the leaders saw the workbeing done, they admitted finding nothing offensive. Criticisms from individuals outsidethe villages did not stand; visitors could see that citizens in the communities working inpartnership with SMSF were firmly in favor of the work.Another beneficial outcome of those visits was the formation of a salahkar council(advisory group) that included religious leaders and foundation representatives meetingquarterly to apprise the group of SMSF activities and receive their counsel if any thatmight be construed as against Islam.e sincere input from the field team helped the entire staff become more sensitizedto issues that might be seen as disrespectful of Islam. Because many people from thevillages spent so much time in the Ghaghas Community Center, plans were already inplace to construct a wudukhana, a washing station (for ablutions) used before formalprayers five times a day. Needed modifications were made, and the construction wascompleted.Salahuddin took an added step to consult with the Islamic Fiqh Academy in NewDelhi (another highly respected center with authority to issue fatwas) to seek their rulingon the subjects described in the fatwa in light of the actual ground realities. He requestedthat the Academy issue a new (counter) fatwa supporting SMSF activities.A mufti who accompanied Salahuddin and the team in making the request vouchedfor SMSF’s work again. By granting the request, an additional vote of confidence camefrom a senior mufti at the Academy. He endorsed SMSF’s work to help the poor inMewat, encouraged the team to continue their “good work” for the benefit ofunderprivileged communities, and also advocated education for girls.Once this supportive fatwa was issued in writing, negative intervention from theoriginal fatwa complainants ceased entirely. e controversy died down as quickly as ithad erupted. Morale of Muslim members of the field team rose quickly. Only inretrospect did they realize and admit how stressful the fatwa had been for them.e salahkar council met regularly for a couple years. Field team members continuedto meet informally at regular intervals with religious leaders and others with influence.Minor grumbling from the occasional malcontent occurred infrequently; for example,when the final scene of a video being produced to illustrate SMSF activities showedcolorful balloons released and floating up in the air.Village onlookers were awed by the vibrant sight. When a man from Ghaghassuggested that women and girls should go inside to avoid being photographed by camerashidden inside the balloons, no one even responded. e villagers no longer took suchremarks seriously. One curious villager did chase and retrieve a balloon from nearby hillsto demonstrate that no camera was inside.e Communications team avoided photos of Meo women in the SMSF annualreport for the next couple of years. All SMSF visitors were instructed to refrain from

taking photographs of people in the villages, particularly women and children, withoutpermission from the subjects. ough the issues related to photographs eventuallydisappeared almost completely, the SMSF team continues to honor the practice of askingpermission before taking or using any villager’s photograph.e SMSF team eventually learned that a few originators of the fatwa were local menwho held personal grudges because they had not been selected for jobs at SMSF, or theirSMSF jobs were terminated for cause. Job opportunities of any sort were so few inMewat, and any positions at SMSF were highly desirable. Any job opening that could befilled by someone from the community brought huge response and interest. Many peoplewanted jobs, even the volunteer jobs that paid only a small stipend. Because criteria forvolunteer jobs at SMSF included many factors, such as education, experience, andpersonal rapport with people, inevitable conflicts erupted when a sarpanch or village eldertried to influence a selection process or recommend a nephew, son, or brother. e teammade sure the process was carried out fairly to maintain the SMSF reputation as acredible, ethical, and desirable employer.e entire fatwa experience a few weeks in the spring of 2010 ultimately served tofurther the credibility of SMSF’s work in the region. e original and counter fatwadecrees served to shine a light on the impact of SMSF’s work within communities andresulted in many other villages inviting SMSF to partner with them.Maulvi Qasim, the most highly regarded religious leader of Mewat, was the chief guestduring renovation work of a baoli (a step well). His presence at the SMSF event, and hisendorsement of the work, sent a strong positive message to the local villagers. isMughal period (>500 years old) baoli was revived by voluntary labor from local villagers,students from various schools and colleges, and some foundation staff. Maulvi Qasimpraised the work and appealed to all villagers to partner with SMSF and “all good workwhich is beneficial to humanity, flora, and fauna.”SMSF work continued to expand in partnerships with the communities. oughsome changes were made in the Family Life Education program as a result of the fieldteam’s recommendations, a much larger positive change came almost at the same time,which brought an end to the formal Family Life Education program.Participants in the popular and successful program had mostly been young girls who’dnever been to school. Many who attended school in the past either dropped out or wereforced by their families to quit school. But after the Right of Children to Free andCompulsory Education Act went into effect in April 2010, enrollment of girls in schoolpromptly increased. Now the same girls who might have taken part in the Family LifeEducation classes could all be in school instead!Before the end of 2010, the Family Life Education program was discontinued withthe provision that it could be revived in the future if needed. According to Suri Sehgal,

the “powerful” program helped girls gain confidence, learn useful skills, and developindependence. e team’s attention to this empowerment issue evolved naturally withinitiatives to make sure girls in the villages were not prevented from attending school.SMSF teams began directing support for the creation of centers within schools wheretailoring and other skills could be taught. e empowerment of girls and womencontinued to be woven into every single S M Sehgal Foundation initiative.15. Western media’s understanding of a fatwa had incorrectly associated the term with a death sentence. In reality, afatwa is a non-binding legal opinion on an Islamic matter by a qualified Islamic scholar.

Crystallized StrategyMyriad events throughout the rest of 2010 helped crystallize the foundation’s strategy forhow to proceed in light of limited resources. e Integrated Sustainable VillageDevelopment (ISVD) model was badly needed by every village, but the associated costswent well beyond the scope of a single NGO. e majority of SMSF’s work in India wasstill being financed, as it had been from the beginning, through the founders’ nonprofitorganization in the US. Scaling up ISVD required funding from additional externalpartners. However, a reality was that most partners expressed interest in individualcomponents or modules of ISVD, rather than the entire model. To go beyond a limitednumber of villages required a wider range of stakeholders and partners to lend greatervisibility and credibility to the work and make sustainable growth and developmentpossible.e decision to partner with other organizations to scale up ISVD coincided with aformal rollout of the now-refined approach to citizen participation in their villageinstitutions. Citizen participation training and capacity-building of village-levelinstitutions were people-intensive (rather than capital-intensive) initiatives propelled byindividuals and teams that included volunteers and trainees. Villagers could see that theybenefited from these cost-effective initiatives. e combination constituted a solid,elegant, and replicable model that promised the type of impact the SMSF team wasseeking.Effective citizen participation initiatives along with capacity building promised thelargest potential impact in the long term and the greatest chance of creating the intendedlegacy—to make a positive and enduring difference in rural India. However, a critical

mass of motivated citizens interested in bringing about change was always necessary tomake a lasting difference.Suri Sehgal described the two-pronged approach SMSF would now take: “First, wewill continue to build and refine models in water and agriculture within our cluster ofvillages in Mewat, using SMSF funds. at will continue to serve as the organization’s“living laboratory” of experimental fieldwork. Scaling up of those models will bedependent upon support from our partners. Funds for those projects will be proactivelysought, and we will work in whichever geographic areas are chosen by the partnersproviding the funds. We will solicit financial support to develop the in-house capacity toimplement projects ourselves and, if necessary, outsource parts of the work to otherNGOs. For any venture undertaken, SMSF will hire temporary staff from the local area,working under the leadership of a trusted foundation team coordinator. To provideemployment opportunities to those on the field staff, project leader selections will includeimplementation team members, village champions, and others.”For the second part of the two-pronged approach, Suri explained, “Our experiencehas already shown that partners interested in development are most attracted to tangible‘brick and mortar’ projects. As long as our initiatives appear intangible, a large portion offunds for those will, by necessity, continue to come from SMSF so as not to slow themomentum we are now seeing. e continuing growth of community-led initiatives willbe organic and systematic. External funding will always be welcome, but the movementwill not depend exclusively on external resources.”Simultaneously, the team sought more partnerships in each area of ISVD for scalingup. e relationship since 2008 with Mosaic Company India had brought knowledge,training, and resources to several agricultural intervention areas. In 2010 a new trainingproject called Krishi Jyoti (krishi meaning agriculture, and jyoti meaning light) was rolledout to farmers in twenty Mewat villages. With the application of balanced fertilizer, basedon soil health analysis, using less urea and DAP, and increased use of essentialmicronutrients, at least 4,500 farmers saw the benefit and adopted more effective andsustainable methods that improved their crop productivity and income.Other productive relationships like this were pursued with the help of SMSF’sResource Mobilization and Partnerships team. With support from the trustees, theymotivated the entire SMSF team to appreciate the need to focus on securing externalfunds and grants. In an environment where so many NGOs competed for the samelimited sources of funds in the market, this was a significant challenge for a team thatnever before had to consider these issues. e team began crowd-funding campaigns onthe website and engaged with more than thirty corporations to attract additional supportfor SMSF initiatives.Progress during that period was relatively slow, with limited success in securing newopportunities. e low-visibility profile SMSF had always maintained now needed to

change quickly. Good work by itself would not attract partners. e organization had tobecome more visible and active in seeking outside funds. Publicizing SMSF’s successeswould help attract those funds.Pooja O. Murada, Communications team leader, said that when she began working atSMSF in 2007, a huge amount of work was being done in the field, but very little hadbeen documented. Her first tasks back then included assembling and documentingsuccess stories for publication, and putting a plan in place for developing internal andexternal communications. Under her guidance, the Communications team ramped uptheir production of newsletters, articles, and videos that demonstrated how the varioustechnologies and programs functioned in the villages. International contacts continued tosend visitors to SMSF and help spread information about the work. More students,interns, volunteers, and researchers took part in foundation activities.No singular strategy was possible in proposing new partnerships or building oncurrent collaborations. Understanding the values and priorities of the people andorganizations involved was essential to build enduring relationships. e ResourceMobilization team was tasked with demonstrating credibility, work quality, impact, andvalue, so partners could be assured of good returns on their investments.An engagement letter was signed with ANANDANA (meaning “delightful” inSanskrit), the Coca-Cola India Foundation. SMSF would conduct a feasibility study priorto launching community water conservation and watershed projects in Mewat villages inApril 2011. Within nine months of signing the first agreement, another public-privatepartnership agreement was made with ANANDANA and the Mewat DevelopmentAgency for integrated check dam projects. Harmonious relationships resulted with a hostof new organizations, and partnerships quickly advanced to higher levels.New and continuing partnerships were formed with government departments atdistrict, state, and centralized levels; foreign government bodies and trusts; academicinstitutions, corporations, foundations, other nonprofits, and national and internationalagencies.Changes in some functions and programs helped to solidify the new direction. LalitSharma’s role expanded to include agriculture development initiatives in addition towater management. Any initiatives related to healthcare and education were made theresponsibility of the Capacity Building Center team.In keeping with the goal of helping villagers assume responsibility for their owndevelopment, the team was no longer involved directly in creating healthcare or schoolfunctioning, but rather served as a catalyst. SMSF assumed a supportive role instrengthening gram panchayats, School Management committees, and Village Health,Sanitation, and Nutrition committees. Each program center had its own team and blockfacilitators in the villages. e responsibilities of village champions evolved into more

specialized areas within each center. eir new titles included field assistant, communitycapacity builder, and research assistant. A few were trained guides.Anjali Makhija helped to define the Capacity Building team initiative thatcomplemented the community participation training. e SMSF team had assisted inactivating village-level councils and other local groups all along to sustain specificprograms or projects. But the goal now was to build and strengthen the capacities ofvillage councils and institutions by providing village leaders with the knowledge and skillsneeded to interact effectively and honestly with government officials on behalf of theircommunities. In doing so, they could access funds to maintain and improve villageinfrastructures and hold officials accountable to the communities they represented.Inspiring individual citizens always involved large groups of volunteers, many ofwhom jumped into action immediately once they had the information and training. Butinspiring changes in long-entrenched practices by leaders and representatives frompanchayats and other village-level institutions was a slower and more complicated processdue to cultural sensitivities and learning curves. Some sarpanches and panchayat memberswere without the skills or knowledge to try to access funds they were entitled to receivefor their communities. For some women who were elected as panchayat members, theirhusbands, sons, or other men in their families carried out their panchayat work and spokefor them. e teams encouraged more women to use their voices more actively to gaintheir own confidence and influence.e Haryana Institute of Rural Development (HIRD) posted an ad on its website in2010 seeking NGOs to provide training to panchayats. e Haryana Development andPanchayats Department, which oversees HIRD, allocated funds for this purpose. eCapacity Building team responded to the ad and was invited to make a presentation. As aresult, SMSF was awarded funding for the panchayat training project. e training, heldin the first quarter of 2011, emphasized budgetary and accounting procedures, financialaudits, activity mapping, decentralized planning, and the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act(which provided for the constitution of gram panchayats). In a strategy meeting, theSMSF team agreed to train leaders in at least 10 percent of the 431 villages in Mewat.Anjali Makhija and her team collaborated with the Haryana Development andPanchayats Department on a project to train 308 panchayats in Mewat. ough SMSFwas only working in seventeen villages at the time, this project helped identify morepanchayats with the willingness and drive to develop their communities. e trainingmethod was the already familiar “learn by doing.” Training topics included panchayatroles, the 73rd Amendment (about the powers and responsibilities of panchayats), gramsabhas, and revenue generation for village administration and rural developmentprograms.After two months of training panchayats, the Capacity Building team selected thirtyfive panchayats with oversight of fifty-three villages (including the original seventeen) to

work more intensively to streamline the training model. HIRD funded the second phaseof the training to include 231 panchayat members, including 200 sarpanches.e team helped train panchayats with curriculum provided by HIRD that showedhow to maintain records for financial accounting and legal issues, how to maintain dataon specific government programs, and how to administer and implement the programs.Since panchayats did not have access to computers, they maintained records by hand andsubmitted them to the district office.A Panchayat Advisory Group (PAG) was created in early 2012, consisting of peoplewith experience working with panchayats—NGOs, government officials, ruraldevelopment experts, and panchayat members. e PAG helped in providing directionand assisting with future action plans. Work with the thirty-five panchayats spanned thenext four years and was instrumental in the eventual creation of five more “modelvillages.”Specific characteristics or an exact definition of a model village were not generallyagreed upon. e Association for India’s Development (AID) had not identifiedguidelines for its vision of a model village, stating that such a definition would be selfdefeating because imposing outside opinions on the people of a region would discouragelocal participation. Consistent with the SMSF view, the AID view was that a specificvision for a model village must be developed by interacting with the local villagers and befully dependent on their input.While all this was going on, Program Leader Navneet Narwal and guides on theCapacity Building team conducted trainings in collaboration with Jindal Global LawSchool, where Ajay Pandey was teaching. Law students were becoming increasinglyfamiliar with the issues faced by citizens in rural areas and witnessed the power of effectivecitizen participation to achieve positive outcomes in their villages. More and morevillagers experienced successes for themselves, expanding the scale of the initiative onestep at a time.One well-documented example was a man who attended informational meetings andsaid that his sick buffalo had been poorly treated by a veterinarian. During an informaldiscussion, he learned that he could approach a consumer forum and discuss his situation.He learned how to file a complaint against the veterinarian, and he subsequently won thecase. For one illiterate person to have the power to achieve such positive results became anexample and encouraged other villagers to became actively involved in the developingtheir communities.e most dramatic shift in citizen participation training occurred with the greaterinclusion of women, according to Anjali Godyal. She had come to SMSF as a ruralmanagement intern in 2005, working with village women on the indigenous tourismproject in Jyotisar. She was soon hired to the core team to work in the Life SkillsEducation program, and then as program leader in Capacity Building where she was able

to observe the differences firsthand when women felt empowered. She describedwitnessing the transformative power that emerged when women took leadership roles.When male depot holders became annoyed that their work was challenged, womentrainees were able to diffuse the depot holders’ defensiveness calmly by explaining exactlywhat happened when depot holders didn’t follow the law—sharing the legal ramificationsas well as the very real hardships they caused families. e explanations put their actionsinto context that more often resulted in win-win solutions.e team was primed to continue expanding the community participation trainingprograms as fast and as far as possible. To bring further support to the initiative from theglobal legal community, the foundation’s first annual international conference oncommunity-led initiatives and local participation was presented in partnership with theUniversity of Baltimore School of Law and Jindal Global Law School in March 2011.Invited participants included an array of accomplished people in the area ofdemocracy and human rights. Vanderbilt Law School Professor Frank S. Bloch, a globalfigure in the field of clinical legal education (CLE) and executive secretary of the GlobalAlliance for Justice Education, observed that the framers of the CLE model of learningmay not have imagined an innovative method for addressing the disconnect between thelaw and the lay person that, at the same time, strengthened legal education. Communityparticipation training “has taken clinical methodology beyond professional training oflaw students to use in the field with community members.”Among other dignitaries participating in the conference was an American lawprofessor with significant experience in India, Jane Schukoske. In 1995, while a tenuredfaculty member at the University of Baltimore and a senior Fulbright scholar in SriLanka, Jane became acquainted with Indian legal educators at the National Law School ofIndia University, Bangalore. Professor N.R. Madhava Menon, considered the father ofmodern legal education in India, had invited her to serve as a resource person at a monthlong teachers’ training on clinical legal education. ereafter, Jane maintained ties withIndian professors interested in clinical legal education. During an eight-year period thatJane directed the Fulbright Program in India, she and Professor Bloch obtained approvalfor a Fulbright-Vanderbilt master’s fellowship program in clinical legal education. AjayPandey was one of six Fulbright scholars from India who earned a Vanderbilt master’sdegree.Overall, Jane’s career had centered on legal aid to the disadvantaged and on clinicallegal education. She had established a community development clinic at the University ofBaltimore School of Law in 1996 that is still going strong. She was naturally attracted toSMSF’s focus in rural India and visited the foundation in 2008 at Ajay’s invitation.Intrigued by the SMSF mission, she expressed interest in the open CEO position.Jane met with Suri, Edda, and Jay Sehgal in Captiva, Florida, in January 2011. eydiscussed the foundation’s mission, and the local citizen participation programs in

particular. Jane was immediately recognized as an ideal candidate to be SMSF’s newCEO. Her expertise and contacts with law schools in India made her a perfect fit for thefurther development and refinement of the foundation’s development strategies. A keenunderstanding of the local participation programs was essential to provide neededsupport, and Jane could carry it forward.In keeping with the high standards expected of SMSF’s work, the Sehgals asked Janeto map out her vision of short-term, midterm, and long-term goals. Suri explained,“Community-led initiatives are our strategy and our future. Your job will be to make surethis becomes an all-India movement.”Jane accepted the challenge. She joined S M Sehgal Foundation officially as the newCEO in July 2011 and brought a new level of vitality to the organization along withcredibility, visibility, strong links with law schools, and her committed interest in theSehgals’ strategic vision. Suri Sehgal reflected later, “Jane’s leadership brought stability andeffective management of SMSF.”Jane immediately placed more emphasis on the empowerment of women andcreating programs led by women and responsive to women’s needs and concerns. Underher direction, SMSF’s long-avowed gender equality policies were communicated in printfor the first time. ough an American “white lady” who spoke very little Hindi or theMewati dialect, Jane was able to establish relationships of mutual comfort and rapportwith people she met in the villages. She felt at home within Indian culture. Saris had beenher preferred attire since the mid-1990s, and her warm and respectful manner put othersquickly at ease.When Jane started at SMSF, the local participation training initiatives had reachedseventeen villages in Mewat. By the end of 2011, the program had spread to fifty-threevillages—meeting the goal of reaching 10 percent of the villages in Mewat in a matter ofmonths. Achieving that number with only nine trainers boosted everyone’s confidence.e team expanded to thirty trainers when the next group of well-qualified guidescompleted the training-of-trainers course.Attorney and Program Leader Navneet Narwal was the chief architect of a series offour legal literacy camps in 2011. e training camps at the block level attractedparticipants from fifty-three villages. As part of SMSF’s legal literacy initiative, trainingcamps continued to offer guidance on the expression of individual claims and rights.Within a year, legal literacy camps spanned more than 400 villages. Navneet beganreaching out to the District Legal Services Authority to create linkages to benefit citizensof Mewat, but this effort took more time to nurture.Local participation trainings made an impact from community to community. In thevillage of Papda, as soon as its community leaders became aware of the appropriatenutritional meals their children were meant to receive at school, they insisted on thecorrect distribution and allotment. Similar actions in several other Mewat villages resulted

in improved access to Mid-Day Meals in more schools every year: ninety-two schools in2011, and 120 schools in 2012.Recognition of these efforts went beyond the communities of Mewat. e localparticipation initiative was declared a 2010 finalist for Most Innovative DevelopmentProject, a Japanese Award sponsored by the Global Development Network (GDN). Aconsultant for GDN, Dr. William Carmichael, an economist and former vice presidentof the Developing Country Programs for the Ford Foundation, conducted an evaluationof the work and visited several Meo communities in Mewat District. Months later, hecommented in an email to Jane Schukoske that he “came away from that visit with animmensely positive view of the project and the effectiveness of its strategies forempowering members of the communities that it serves. Indeed, on the basis of myexperience (over a forty-year period) in developing and assessing projects [with thisfocus],’ I regard the IRRAD project as an exceedingly instructive (and regrettably rare)model for effective action in that field.”16As third place winner, SMSF received Global Development Network grant moneythat was used to fund four regional workshops on community engagement and citizenparticipation during 2011 and 2012. Interactive and participatory workshops were heldat law schools in Silchar, Assam; Mysore, Karnataka; Patna, Bihar; and Jodhpur,Rajasthan.In November 2011, Dr. Vikas Jha joined SMSF as group leader, bringing years ofglobal experience in social accountability and local participation. With a PhD ininternational relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Vikas had a strong interest in,and knowledge of, democracy in all its dimensions. Under his leadership, the trainingprogram grew from 278 trained villagers in fifty-three communities to 1,130 villagers in400 communities within a year. e SMSF team was approaching its objective ofreaching all the villages in Mewat.e Rural Research Center’s role had expanded since 2010 when Suri Sehgal and thetrustees asked the team to collate documentation of all SMSF work to date, as part of acomprehensive impact assessment of the organization’s development activities. Dr.Pradeep Mehta, a development specialist with a PhD in economics, joined the SMSF staffin February 2010 as a research scientist. Within a year, he was made head of the RuralResearch Center team, which included data entry experts and field team researchers.Pradeep and Associate Scientist Niti Saxena guided the project to examine the impact ofinterventions in key areas: rural health, water management, income enhancement,education, and community mobilization (which was considered part of every initiative),and draw conclusions about what was and wasn’t working.Since baseline studies had not been done before 2011, the team used experimentcontrol design to minimize the effects of variables, and a logical framework approach for

each program. e goal was to be able to make informed decisions about which initiativescould be merged, eliminated, or scaled up.e Rural Research Center team involved external experts to review the report. isprocess yielded important understanding about trying to do too many things, trackingtoo many interventions, making frequent shifts in strategies, and the need for consistencyin recordkeeping. ese results assisted in better internal work coordination among theteams.Foundation teams now conducted baseline surveys before starting work in a newregion. To adjust to this valuable preparation, team members created written goals withneeded inputs identified before taking direct action to solve problems. Knowing theneeds of a particular community in a given situation, and comparing those needs withavailable resources, made it more likely to reach a successful outcome and measure theoverall impact of an intervention. e extra step also served to check the impulse to jumpin quickly to take steps for communities rather than with them.A key finding in the impact assessment report was that many “brick and mortar”infrastructure projects that had been done in partnership with communities were notbeing adequately maintained, including soak pits and check dam structures. isdisturbing information supported a need for greater advocacy for responsible ownershipof the projects by the community. Strengthening community engagement was crucial forvillage development and the sustainability of SMSF’s interventions.A process was identified for evaluating the potential for longer-term communityinvolvement. Work in any village had always depended on interested and willingvillagers. Results of a subsequent report confirmed that the criteria for communitypartnerships worked to some extent, but did not guarantee sustainability in communityinterest or willingness to take ongoing responsibility. Infrastructure projects wereexpensive and not necessarily sustainable. However, the SMSF team was not about toabandon this important work.What was still happening in Notki, the first demonstration village attempted bySMSF, illustrated the dilemma. e foundation team never fully left Notki after all thework was done to create a model village. However, the method of working with thecommunity changed to a supportive role once the responsibility for maintenance ofinfrastructures and the direction of any ongoing interventions were taken on by theNotki panchayat. At least that was the plan.SMSF had made a huge capital investment in Notki. Visitors from far and wide hadseen the demonstration village and learned about the interventions done there.Notki was a great success story as long as the sarpanch remained committed to thevillage’s progress. Unfortunately, in the subsequent election, the new sarpanch was neitherdynamic nor honest. When leadership shifted its focus from the common good to

personal gain, decline inevitably followed. For SMSF, this served as an important lessonin the critical role of local leadership for sustaining development.Villagers did not even consider making requests to the government for repairs orservices typically provided. Due to the large scale of the work done in Notki with SMSFassistance, some members of the community actually thought SMSF “owned” the village.ey had come to expect a fast clean-up of any problems, just as they saw occurring whenhigh-profile guests visited Notki while the infrastructure work was in progress.e SMSF team had a hard time watching the deterioration in Notki and not beingable to fix each thing that was going wrong. But they knew they could not fostercontinued dependence or intervene to do repairs for the village. e team learned avaluable lesson about the need to strengthen village-level panchayats with continuouspressure on each elected sarpanch to be honest and motivated. Peer pressure was apowerful tool in general, in each panchayat, and with each sarpanch.e SMSF team was already replicating initiatives carried out in Notki in othervillages and using a more-effective approach to citizen empowerment and capacitybuilding work with village-level institutions. Community members constructed toiletsand cleaned villages with the help of the panchayats’ funds and facilitated by the VillageHealth, Sanitation, and Nutrition committees. School Management Committeemembers prepared development plans and implemented water infrastructure projects,including rainwater-harvesting systems, soak pits, and soak wells. Five more modelvillages (Jatka, Mundaka, Sarai, Untaka, and Khedli Khurd) were developed usinggovernment funds, with sustained results.Even in a village where a sarpanch was dynamic, the SMSF team and field-levelcommittees continued their work with villagers to underscore the power of effectivecitizen participation so the sarpanch and the panchayat remained accountable to thecitizens. e more the villagers learned about the process, the more empowered theybecame in keeping their leadership honest, and the more they became involved ininteractive management of their own villages.is had been the goal in Notki as well. e Capacity Building team worked hard toengage village leaders, but progress was far slower under the current panchayat’sleadership. Successes were easier to sustain in other demonstration villages, where SMSF’sapproach was made much more clear from the start.As Suri asserted, “A model village is only possible if the panchayat is active, and thecommunity is empowered and demanding. e panchayat serves as a peer groupwatchdog to keep the sarpanch honest. is is why it is so essential to worksimultaneously with the community and build the capacity of the panchayat and othervillage-level institutions.”To generate more ideas for successful solutions and share important lessons from theteam’s grassroots experiences, SMSF teams facilitated more regular seminars,

consultations, discourses, and external trainings for other NGOs involved in ruraldevelopment. Organizing and participating in conferences and speaking engagementsgave the team the chance to share cutting-edge knowledge with a greater number ofcurrent and potential partners, provide useful insights to those involved in similar work,and learn from others. At the same time, despite any temporary setbacks, collaborativeinitiatives at various levels resulted in more recognitions and honors from esteemedorganizations in the areas of water, agriculture, global development, and socialresponsibility.16. SMSF was still being called IRRAD until 2014.

Grassroots EngagementEvery S M Sehgal Foundation program eventually benefited from the three-year effort(2009–2012) by the Communications team to launch a community radio station. Anaccessible and dedicated medium of communication by the community and for thecommunity, the radio station was envisioned as an effective means for people to learnabout issues, interact, and voice opinions. Community radio promised to be an effectivetool for bringing about social inclusion, empowerment, and change at the grassrootslevel, while also being a source of entertainment.Pooja O. Murada, who had spearheaded the project from the start, asked twomembers of the field team, Jaan Mohammad and Susheel Bama, to participate in thepresentation that was part of the process required to receive a license from the Ministry ofInformation and Broadcasting. Once again, field team members made a winningimpression. e screening judges were convinced that the foundation had the skills andreach to work directly with grassroots communities. SMSF received a three-year grantagreement for almost Rs. 5,000,000 from the Ministry of Agriculture to set up the radiostation in the Ghaghas Community Center and provide it with all necessary equipmentand broadcasting support.To select a team to manage local day-to-day operations of the radio station, SMSFoffered a six-month broadcast training program. irty-four young people from all overMewat participated in the training. e Communications team worked hard to enlistwomen in the training. Women-friendly policies were adopted during the training andmaintained thereafter. e foundation’s gender and sexual harassment policies were

strictly adhered to in all situations. Women were provided with shared transportation,and no woman hired was required to do evening broadcast work.Community members and local talent came forward well before the launch, and atevery step along the way, to help shape the broadcast programming. Villagers said thatsince the radio station was going to be the “mouthpiece” of Mewat, they wanted it calledAlfaz-e-Mewat (Rural Voices of Mewat).At the time, some local villagers were not familiar with radio towers or transmissions.Fewer than half of the residents of Mewat owned radios. At dusk on the evening after theradio tower was installed outside Ghaghas Community Center, the team was testing thetower connection and the radio antenna. e small red light bulb on the top of the towerbecame a subject of curiosity and unease. A rumor quickly spread that it might be acamera for taking pictures of women. A group of curious villagers gathered outside thecenter, some looking fairly concerned.To quash the unrest, Pooja called on members of the team who lived nearby to openthe gates and invite people inside to see the radio operation. Senior field staff member,Sayeed Ahmed, turned off the red light and explained to the people how radio wavesreached them. A few folks went inside the recording studio, and the team turned on theradio so those outside could listen to the conversation inside—the very first “broadcast”from Alfaz-e-Mewat.Sayeed invited the people who had gathered to listen to the radio each day and “pleaseadvise us for improvements.” All concerns were gone as villagers left with smiles.e first test broadcast of Alfaz-e-Mewat FM 107.8 MHz was on January 10, 2012.e first station manager was a well-qualified young Meo woman, one of two womenwho had completed the training. Razia (she did not use a second name) was one of threewomen associated with SMSF featured in the book Poetry of Purpose: A Portrait of WomenLeaders of India by Dr. Shashi Gogate and Mick Minard.17Razia had a natural public speaking style. She was an ideal role model for other Meogirls who were not as confident or allowed to go to school or work. Coming from theMewat villages, Razia had a burning desire for education and to serve her community.Most of her family had discouraged her from attending school and actively tried to stopher studies, but her mother was supportive. As Razia continued to win prizes for academicexcellence, her family finally acknowledged their pride in her. She was permitted to stayin school despite taunts from a few conservative community members.Razia went on to college, something quite rare for a woman from her circumstances,and graduated first in her class. Her achievements were acknowledged in 1998 when shewon the Mewat Development Agency’s Best Woman Award. She completed a master’sdegree in sociology and worked for the Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses aspart of a project funded by SMSF.

When the funded project ended, Razia was recruited for a full-time position on theSMSF field team. As a community mobilizer, Razia was instrumental in convincing Meowomen to step out of their homes to receive healthcare, seek vocational and life-skillstraining, and participate in community work. She stood up and spoke to men in thevillages and inspired male youth by engaging them in dialogue.To support girls’ education, Razia was appointed project leader for the TARA Aksharliteracy program, a learning program for adults created by an NGO called DevelopmentAlternatives. Among her other work for SMSF before accepting the managementposition at the radio station, Razia had been block coordinator for a cluster of villages,assisting in implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment GuaranteeAct. She had supervised the Life Skills Education and the Rural Health programs.In Razia’s position as a facilitator on the field team, several Meo men reported to her,which was quite uncommon at that time. She met new challenges with determination,confidence, a positive attitude, and occasional coaching from the SMSF team. Herprimary motivation was to help empower girls and women in Mewat, and her newposition at radio station Alfaz-e-Mewat FM 107.8 provided her with a broad-rangeopportunity.e announcement that the station would be “Bringing Airwaves of Change” wentout in the local language to more than 183 villages within a twenty-kilometer radius ofGhaghas, reaching up to 200,000 people. After seven weeks of test runs, the formalbroadcasting launch was held on February 28, 2012. Starting with four hours a day,programming increased to nine hours a day before the end of the first year. Outside ofMewat, people with internet access could listen online.e station offered a blend of program formats and topics that addressed issues inagriculture, water, soil health, education, local culture, effective citizen participation, andvillage-based institutions. While a variety of programs were presented, care was taken tofeature those geared specifically toward women, highlighting issues such as reproductivehealth, women-oriented government programs, the importance of educating girls, and soon. ese fit well with the key interests of the station manager and the entire radio team.Early programs that focused on women included Saaf, Safai, aur Sehat (Cleanliness,Sanitation, and Health) and Waqt Hamara Hai (Our Time Has Come).Razia faced some friction at first as a Meo woman working in an untraditional role atthe radio station. Villagers with patriarchal mindsets were concerned when they firstheard her speak on the air. She attracted the notice of religious leaders in the region whopaid close attention to her broadcasts. On a day when a few maulvis arrived at the radiostation during one of her programs to inquire about Razia, the young woman, wearingher hizaab (head covering), faced the visitors directly and spoke to them about her workfor the welfare of the people of Mewat and her desire to promote positive change in theirlives.

e visitors found Razia to be a faithful Muslim. As they continued over the next fewmonths to monitor her radio work, Razia won over any doubters, and they began toexpress appreciation for her program delivery, even offering her advice on how toimprove her Urdu diction. When welcomed, she went out on interviews with listenersand visits in the community.From its inception, the radio station was essentially owned and embraced bycommunity members. e learning promoted by Alfaz-e-Mewat enhanced civicparticipation. Providing a platform for marginalized communities to speak out allowedSMSF to gauge community interest in specific issues and increase villagers’ awareness oftheir role as citizens. Pooja and the Communications team took part in variousnetworking committees and developed professional media partnerships to strengthen thestation’s financial sustainability and ensure ongoing innovative programming.e first to join in partnership with Alfaz-e-Mewat was Sesame Workshop India Trust.Galli Galli Sim Sim, an Indian version of the American television series Sesame Street,produced by Sesame Workshop India and adapted by the radio team to include localvoices, became a popular children’s series that helped increase school attendance andpromote awareness of health and sanitation, particularly for girls. e station was anexcellent vehicle for celebrating events, such as International Women’s Day, InternationalDay of the Girl Child, International Literacy Day, and Children’s Day.Razia and two other reporters from the original broadcast team, Arshad Ayub andJaved Hussain, frequently visited the Health Department, talking to doctors and seniorofficials to create and enhance program content. eir work on radio programs featuringhealth issues (Galli Galli Sim Sim and Saaf, Safai, aur Sehat), and a program about Sufihistory and music, called Su Safar, brought them various recognitions. All three wereselected to participate in a government campaign on health by the National Rural HealthMission, a poverty alleviation project implemented by the Government of India Ministryof Rural Development.e SMSF team recognized radio as an increasingly powerful communication tooland valuable voice for women. e radio programs were posted on community radioplatforms so other stations could play them as well. Some of Alfaz-e-Mewat’s programswere organized as call-in campaigns. One such campaign, Asha ki Kiran (Ray of Hope),held in early 2013, asked listeners to nominate local women to be recognized for theirefforts and achievements in their villages.As a result of the campaign, 150 people gathered at the SMSF Community Center tocelebrate International Women’s Day, and sixty-five women achievers in Mewat,identified by their peers, were honored as a way to recognize their accomplishments andmotivate others in their community. Following the success of Asha ki Kiran, a new call-incampaign on “closing the gender gap” began.

CEO Jane Schukoske encouraged the Communications team to expand the outreachto more communities, students, and NGOs. e station began serving as a trainingground for interns and volunteers from urban and rural areas, many of whom went on tointroduce the mission of Alfaz-e-Mewat in national and international forums. Localleaders, officials, artists, and distinguished listeners served on the advisory committee forthe community radio station.e radio station team catalogued more than 600 hours of innovative programmingfor listeners in at least 225 villages during 2014. With the integration of mobile phonetechnology, the reach of Alfaz-e-Mewat’s fresh innovative programming extended beyondthe broadcast range of the transmitter. Using toll-free phone numbers and an integratedvoice-recording system, programming was accessible by cellphone. Of the more than18,000 callers to the radio station, 20 percent were women—a significant numberconsidering that, although more than 94 percent of the families in Mewat had cellphones,most were owned and used at that time only by male members of the family.A research monitoring report from 2013 showed that within a year of the radiostation launch, more than 50 percent of households in Mewat had radio capabilities ontheir mobile phones and 17 percent of households owned radios. is was an increase ofalmost 4 percent. Qualitative discussions in villages revealed that Alfaz-e-Mewat was afactor in the increased popularity of radio.When the community participation training concept was originally introduced, theSMSF team had watched closely, hoping to see community members take ownership ofthe initiative. Progress occurred gradually. As villagers became more interested in learningabout the Mid-Day Meal program and other programs and services they needed, theywere now choosing topics to address. As more people practiced effective citizenparticipation, greater awareness expanded throughout the district.e number of village trainees in early 2012 was more than 1,200 people. Trainingsconducted in three centers involved forty-eight individual sessions. Brainstorming aboutthe issue, the team decided to discontinue the Rs. 100 training honorarium and condensethe number of sessions. When attendance went down by 60 percent, guides wereconcerned, but attendance climbed back up within three months. Villagers were alreadyconvinced of the empowering value of the work. ose who had completed the trainingunderstood what the benefits of their new knowledge meant to their families who nowreceived subsidized food every month. eir children received Mid-Day Meals every day;they received subsidized seeds and agricultural equipment; and their families’ old-agepensions were processed quickly because they knew how to follow up on any problemwith a government program. As trainees received more of their mandated benefits, theytended to participate more and pay more attention to the workings of government

programs. eir activities were spreading awareness to people in every village in theMewat district.Staff guides were now providing citizens awareness and participation training tocommunity leaders at five training centers. People from fifteen villages at a time cametogether in a central location for training twice a month. Smaller trainings were held inindividual villages. Some meetings were organized spontaneously in the afternoon orevening with about thirty people if a particular issue was pressing. To cover so manyvillages, each trainer conducted two or three meetings a day.Wall paintings that were used so effectively to illustrate Mid-Day Meal entitlementsnow also illustrated the same in several other programs, such as the Public DistributionSystem and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Peoplecould see who was responsible for what, and learn the steps they could take to request andreceive their benefits. e community training initiative in citizen participation andempowered self-representation produced such excellent results in a relatively short periodthat it was propelled into a flagship SMSF program.An article written by Ajay Pandey about the collaborative clinical legal education“experiment” conducted by SMSF and Jindal Global Law School, which was published inthe Maryland Journal of International Law, described how law schools and NGOs couldwork well together to bring about transformational change in rural India by promotingeffective citizen participation.18 At the second annual conference organized by SMSF andJindal Global Law School, in November 2012, the keynote address, delivered byProfessor N.R. Madhava Menon, praised the program and the potential for a model forinvolving law students to help fulfill the intentions outlined in India’s constitution withregard to a citizen’s right to a dignified life.In expanding SMSF’s programs beyond the Mewat district, citizen participation andsustainability principles were now integrated into every development project undertakenwith partner funds. A move into the neighboring district of Alwar, Rajasthan, fit well withSMSF’s organic growth strategy to further empower local citizens.Pawan Kumar, the program leader for Agriculture Development, had traveled toAlwar with Pooniaji in 2011 to evaluate potential NGO partnerships. Pawan handled thedue diligence, making sure any partner-NGO in consideration was in compliance withfederal regulations, and checking NGO longevity and track records with self-help groups.From a shortlist of four or five contenders, Pawan and Pooniaji identified anattractive opportunity to partner with an Alwar-based NGO called Ibtada, which focusedon empowering women primarily through their work with women’s self-help groups thatwere already organized. In Alwar’s villages, empowering women evolved more naturallyand quickly than the team had seen in the villages of Mewat. Pawan described

empowering women as his “most rewarding” work, and the work with the most potentialfor making a difference.With financial support from Misr Hytech Seed, a leading Egyptian seed companyowned at the time by Suri and Edda Sehgal, SMSF began a project called Krishi Chetna(agriculture awareness) in 2012. Ibtada served as the local implementation partner for theproject. Work began with women farmers in eighteen villages to build their capacity toactively participate in agriculture-related decision-making by providing them withscientific knowledge. e project conducted demonstrations on wheat, mustard, andmillet, and gave milk-animal farmers information about balanced animal nutrition.A smallholder farmer from a self-help group, Lakshmi Jatwa, was one of eight womenselected to receive training as part of the Krishi Chetna initiative to become a krishi sakhi(farmer’s friend). As co-leader of Krishi Chetna, Lakshmi worked to expand the reach ofself-help groups, teaching basic reading and writing, facilitating soil tests and fielddemonstrations, and encouraging women farmers. She spread awareness to other farmersabout the benefits of crop diversity and the critical importance of soil health.Lakshmi, whose husband had previously not allowed her to leave their home, earnedrespect for her knowledge, inspired her daughters to further pursue their own educations,and made her husband proud of her skills. Motivated to inspire other women, Lakshmisaid, “A woman can bring about changes in India if she is able to stand on her feet.”19For sustainability, Ibtada organized a block-level women farmers’ association andprovided funds that could be used by women in the project villages to purchaseagricultural services and inputs (equipment, feed, seeds, energy, and so on). A similarproject, sponsored by K+S Fertilizer Ltd., called Unnat Krishi (agriculture improvement),involved a group of women farmers growing mustard and millet in ten villages in Alwardistrict. A crops sustainability fund was created for farmers to purchase inputs and servicesafter the educational aspect of the project was completed.SMSF’s krishi partnerships were created to serve as a tool to demonstrate how toincrease agricultural productivity in a sustainable way and to help farmers receive theirmandated services. Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), agricultural extension centers financedby the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, had been mandated since 2004 toprovide information and training services to farmers in every district in India. But theirwork had not reached rural villages in Mewat, and was so far only reaching a few villagesin Alwar district. Maintaining a firm intention to serve only as catalysts in this process,SMSF’s Agriculture Development team wanted to make sure that KVKs providedaccurate and sustainable information.Suri Sehgal affirmed, “Each program in water or agriculture must establish acommittee somewhat similar to the school or health committees at the village level toempower members with sufficient knowledge so they can bring their concerns in those

areas to the attention of local government. If the services are delivered as is mandated, thevillage development process will be greatly accelerated.”e potential for taking SMSF’s Agriculture Development program into Bihar wasfirst discussed in 2012 after a conference on citizen participation was presented there.One of the least-developed states of India, Bihar was located more than a thousandkilometers from Mewat.e SMSF team agreed that establishing a pilot project in Bihar was a good idea. Anintern was tasked to prepare a short list of districts where SMSF might be able to replicatesuccessful agriculture development models if partner funds could be found. e criteriafor choosing a district included an identified need for SMSF’s expertise in agriculture andcitizen participation training, and making sure that no excess of NGOs was alreadyworking there. e ideal choice of the region for agriculture projects would have availablefresh water but not be flood-prone. Based on need, per government indicators and thepotential for agriculture and livelihood development, the chosen district had to beconnected to public transportation. Misr Hytech was a possible partner, as was anotherSehgal-owned seed company, Hytech India, in Hyderabad. Pawan Kumar and Biharnative Vikas Jha visited the region to determine the best place in Bihar to begin work.ough programs to encourage effective citizen participation in their localinstitutions had reached all 431 villages in Mewat by 2012, the foundation team facedintractable difficulties in twenty-eight of those villages by December that year. A fewvillages were entirely unresponsive to offers to meet or receive information or training.Some villagers were willing to let SMSF make improvements in their communities, butthey refused to participate in the process. e foundation team was firm that no workwould begin in any village that was unwilling to take part and assume ownership of theirown development.Leaders in some communities objected to promoting education for girls or trainingwomen and refused their consent for any outside organization to work in their villages,saying it would “spoil” their society. A few warned that team members “will have brokenlegs” if they tried to work in their villages. e training team curtailed further attempts towork in those twenty-eight villages.Apart from the issues faced in those twenty-eight villages, the Citizens Participationand Sustainability initiative and the Capacity-Building activities used to strengthenvillage-level institutions were a powerful combination that made up SMSF’s full-scaleapproach to projects for empowering local citizens in 203 Mewat villages and beyond.For this same work, the Rockefeller Foundation named S M Sehgal Foundation amongthe 100 Next Century Innovators in 2013.

e Capacity Building team was about two years into its more formal trainingprogram with panchayats when a proactive approach suggested in a Panchayat AdvisoryGroup meeting resulted in the introduction of microplanning in five villages in 2012.Microplanning, a form of community action planning, was a participatory andinteractive process. e overall objective was to initiate community-led development inan environment of unity and citizen leadership by promoting decentralized planning atthe grassroots level. e idea was for the selected villages to prepare their owndevelopment plans based on their particular needs. To achieve success, all sections of thecommunity had to be fully involved, including women, people with disabilities, and thepoorest and most disenfranchised citizens.Sarpanches in Untaka in Nuh block, Mamlika in Punhana, Shakarpuri, and Mundakatogether under the Firozpur Jhirka panchayat, and Sarai in Taoru, were ready to supportthis experiment in participatory planning. e village of Khedli Khurd in Nagina blockwas included later. Full involvement was needed in strengthening panchayati rajinstitutions and promoting the transparency and accountability of gram panchayats andthe Block Development Office. Involvement of the block development officer wasimportant because this person served as organizer and coordinator of various governmentprograms for their block.e microplanning process took four to six days in each village. Making sure theywere being sensitive to local customs and traditions, the field team walked through eachvillage, seeking people willing to take part. e team was conscientious about includingeven the most-isolated citizens, describing the objectives and being careful not to makepromises.Anjali Makhija explained, “We had four teams. We gathered history from villageelders, constructed a resource map for each village (water, roads, etc.) and a social map(households, facilities, etc.). Facilitators made sure all concerned had a chance to sharetheir views. To help identify issues, we wanted to be sure to hear what women needed. Weorganized a gram sabha for women, called mahila gram sabha, where women were free tospeak without fear or the influence of men.”e issues in all five villages included some combination of the same problems: theunavailability of safe drinking water in homes and schools, lack of proper sewage disposal,unhygienic conditions/open defecation, damaged electricity wires, and poor roadconditions. (Eighty percent of the roads were kutcha [dirt] roads.)Once needs and problems were identified, the village groups identified their highestpriorities for required interventions and created an action plan for each. Individualvillagers and other stakeholders were invited to participate: Communications teammembers, panchayat members, representatives of the bank, and any other localinstitutions with interests in areas such as agriculture or water. e next step was to verifythe findings so links could be made with appropriate government departments, and

expenditures could be calculated related to each identified issue. A final document wassubmitted from each village’s panchayat to the district office, and a follow-up plan witheach department was carried out by the panchayats.In Sarai, a Mewat village of 222 homes, a woman named Vimla Devi had been thesarpanch for four years. When the Capacity Building team began working with Vimla in2011, she did not speak on her own behalf. Men in her family spoke for and representedher in her panchayat work. However, with encouragement, her enthusiasm and desire tomake a positive difference in her village inspired her to speak for herself.Vimla said, “I used to be a little apprehensive talking to government officials, as I donot know how to read or write. But slowly, as I started meeting them more regularly, myconfidence grew. Now I never send my husband or son to execute my panchayat-relatedwork. I always talk to the concerned authorities on my own.”Serving as an inspiration to women council members in surrounding villages, Vimlaproved that women could be equally effective in leadership roles in their local institutions.When SMSF first began work in Sarai, the village was a typical underdevelopedcommunity. Vimla walked door to door with the Capacity Building team to help educatevillagers about the ill effects of open defecation. Using funds from the Nirmal BharatAbhiyan (Clean India Mission) government program, the village installed toilets in 175houses.In January 2013, when the panchayat undertook the microplanning exercise in Sarai,the entire village participated in developing microplans. e panchayat submittedapplications to the district administration and received government funds to constructpaved roads in the village, install solar tube lights in the streets, and put water tanks andindividual toilets in more homes.Vimla’s efforts integrated School Management committees and Village Health,Sanitation, and Nutrition committees with the village council, so all village-levelinstitutions worked together for holistic development in Sarai. As sarpanch, she activelyparticipated in all monthly committee meetings. She conducted unscheduled visits at theschool on a regular basis to ensure that teachers were present, children were being taughtproperly, and hygienically cooked Mid-Day Meals were received on time.Vimla continued to attend panchayat training programs conducted by SMSF, actingas a motivator for other women who functioned as proxy council members, encouragingthem to take the reins of village development in their own hands. She told them, “Whenyou don’t have the confidence, you must build it slowly. Only when you seek informationwill you get educated and empowered to realize the power of your own potential.”20As a result of the microplanning process in the five villages during 2012 and 2013,village leaders, committees, and individual citizens made positive changes in theircommunities. eir actions and decisions resulted in the receipt of government funds to

construct roads in almost every village. Money was provided for installing toilets,rainwater-harvesting systems, and water tanks. Soak pits were built, and boundary wallswere constructed around schools, burial grounds, and ponds. Old electricity wires werereplaced in half the villages. ough the issue with safe drinking water was not fullyresolved, citizens of all five villages increased their involvement in gram sabhas tocontinue improvements in their communities.In light of the microplanning successes in the five villages, the team turned newattention to the first SMSF demonstration village: Notki. An SMSF task force, consistingof core team and field team members, reviewed the status of Notki in April 2013 andprepared a report noting what was and wasn’t functional in the village: Five of the sevensoak wells were functional, but soak pits had become defunct, the road was in bad shape,only two solar tube lights still worked, and the school infrastructure was in disrepair. eresulting action plan involved establishing a committee to work with the panchayat andthe citizen’s participation group in the village to maintain and improve what was alreadybuilt.For Notki villagers to feel empowered to actively participate and accept responsibilityfor their community, SMSF teams and field-level committees worked with the villagelevel institutions and individuals to better understand how to access government fundsand services that could solve some of the specific village issues being addressed. Field teammembers held regular meetings in the community and worked with the panchayat tohave more toilets built under Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan. With government help, everyhome in Notki finally had a toilet! e sarpanch took the initiative and built a soak well.Villagers were finally beginning to actively seek available help from the government.ough a collective decision was finally made for maintenance of the Notki orchard to befully assumed by the panchayat, the village-level institutions were still not fully active.What had happened over the years in Notki was more proof that the team had tobuild and strengthen the capacities of community leaders and village-level institutionsfrom the start in every single project in every community where SMSF worked.Communities had to be inspired, motivated, and prepared to manage for themselves andsustain the results of any improvements made.e training and support provided to village-level institutions by the CapacityBuilding team was essential in the development of the model villages. Individual citizensand village-level institutions, along with local village champions as active partners, hadworked effectively in concert with the government.Five other model villages surpassed Notki by the time Notki was fully refurbished in2014. e Notki community had been so dependent on SMSF for so long that moretime was needed for Notki villagers to reach that level of sustainability.

17. Dr. Shashi Gogate and Mick Minard (2015) Poetry of Purpose: A Portrait of Women Leaders of India by, PurposePress Books LLC. See http://www.poetryofpurpose.org/18. Ajay Pandey, “Experimenting with Clinical Legal Education to Address the Disconnect Between the LargerPromise of Law and its Grassroots Reality in India,” Maryland Journal of International Law, Vol. 26:135. November17, 2011.19. Lakshmi Jatwa was also featured in the book Poetry of Purpose: A Portrait of Women Leaders of India.20. Vimla was also featured in Poetry of Purpose: A Portrait of Women Leaders of India.

A Game-Changing MandateRenaming the Capacity-Building initiative to Strengthening Village-Level Institutions(SVLI) was one of several changes in the overall organization of SMSF during 2014. eidea to change the name from S M Sehgal Foundation to Institute of Rural Research andDevelopment (IRRAD) was finally and formally dropped. Having matured from its“adolescence,” SMSF was now incorporating more sophisticated and effectiveorganizational components. e overall structure was simplified to focus on the mosteffective program areas along with SVLI: water management, agriculture development,and local citizen participation and sustainability. A shift toward specific projects andcreating ada ptive technologies would more effectively facilitate integration of all programactivities and result in greater impact on communities.e Rural Research team developed questionnaires, baselines, and analysis tools,including maps and convergence diagrams that illustrated SMSF’s work, program byprogram, in each geographic area. ese tools showed where interventions overlapped inMewat villages. A needs-ssessment survey to determine existing problems helped identifythe most acute issues, so village interventions could be designed according to the uniquerequirements and priorities of the communities.e Communications team’s strategy included refining the vision, mission, values,and brand guidelines. e website was revamped and social media activity increased. ekey statement reaffirmed: “e S M Sehgal Foundation team embraces core values ofintegrity, excellence, professionalism, and optimism, along with the belief that, withappropriate support from civil society organizations and the government, rural

communities will be mobilized to develop their own vision for development andtransform their awareness into action.”Each core value was clarified with an ownership statement:Integrity: We value honesty and consistency of character in our actions and attitudes.Excellence: We encourage a culture of innovative thinking and creativecollaboration.Professionalism: We practice and promote professional standards in our work.Optimism: We believe in passionate optimism and continuous learning to realize ourvision.Coordinated by each program, SMSF organized trainings, cross-trainings, andquarterly meetings with field and core staff and specialists to enhance the cohesion of theteam. Meeting minutes and training materials were translated into Hindi to further teamlearning and focus. Several experienced field team members were deployed to leadershippositions in Alwar and Samastipur, where leadership training of twenty-five senior fieldstaff members was conducted.Guides now monitored and evaluated the functioning of programs related toconsumer awareness and services in 150 villages. Each guide worked with twelve-tofifteen villages. New leaders came forward in twenty-five villages in 2014. Monthlymeetings with each new batch of leaders helped them maintain momentum and keepabreast of government program updates and information.All staff participated in annual gender-sensitization trainings, and women’sempowerment was an embedded objective. Since every program model was also relatedto empowering women, a formal mandate was implemented so every training facilitatedby SMSF included at least 50 percent women participants. is was now part of everyinitiative.Women comprised 54 percent of the participants in training for twenty-eight gramsabhas. SVLI teams now worked with 440 women in five mahila sangathans (women’scollectives). ese active women leaders represented panchayats, School Managementcommittees, and Village Health, Sanitation, and Nutrition committees. eir training,knowledge, and skills for undertaking development activities in their own villages weresupplemented by help from other women leaders.e sarpanch of Sarai, Vimla Devi, attended the trainings to encourage and motivatemore women to participate in the same process. She stood and shared her ownempowerment story, telling the women, “Nothing will happen unless we step outside ourhouses; for any change we need to come out and work together.” Women listened andstepped forward.Anjali Makhija observed, “When women come together as a collective force, they gettremendous strength and inspiration from each other. I have seen how they felt resigned

even when they were members of village-level institutions. e sangathan has given thema sense of power and belonging.”With the participation of the mahila sangathans, the five model villages (Mundaka,Jatka, Untaka, Sarai, and Khedli Khurd) became open-defecation-free, and citizenparticipation initiatives were effective in all five villages. More villages were undertakingmicroplanning and implementing projects according to their own identified priorities.SMSF used partner funding to implement specific projects in these villages if villagelevel financial resources were not available. ese included school renovations, rainwaterharvesting structures, water tanks, and the provision of agriculture inputs.e team facilitated workshops with state government officials so village leaders haddirect access to them. Synergy with government decision-makers was an importantstrategy to build relationships, since those are the people with the funds. When the SMSFteam provided support to get projects implemented, the result was a win-win for thegovernment, the communities, and SMSF.Because most of the members of Village Health, Sanitation, and Nutritioncommittees were women who did not even know they were members, that meant unusedfunds. SVLI support to revamp the committees and make members aware of theirauthority helped to inspire them to become active.Women accessed and used the allocated funds, mobilizing their communities to buildtoilets, undertake sanitation activities, and promote immunizations. More women likeVimla became active panchayat members, rather than have their husbands or sons serve astheir proxies. Mahila sangathans activated projects in thirty villages.Working with communities to revitalize the defunct government-mandated SchoolManagement committees, SMSF filled some gaps in services in order to get morechildren, especially girls, to attend school. Simple but important interventions in schools,including separate latrines for boys and girls, access to drinking water, and a platform forsanitary food preparation for the school lunch program, saw student attendance go up,particularly for girls.Teachers were initially reluctant to work with School Management committees. eyhad typically selected the committee members and wanted to maintain control of thefunds. e SMSF team contacted the principal secretary of Education and organizedinterface workshops with her, which produced good results. District education officialsgave written approval for SMSF to provide training to School Management committees,building their capacities and organizing general meetings for all members, which madecandidate selection and utilization of funds more transparent.e Strengthening Village-Level Institutions initiative expanded to 100 villages inMewat in 2014. e SMSF team created an informal assembly of NGOs, corporate

foundations, and government bodies, called the Haryana Education Forum. AnjaliMakhija coordinated three meetings that year, and subsequent annual meetings.e Panchayat Advisory Group continued to meet every year, providing ongoingguidance and support. e SVLI team was invited again by the Haryana Institute ofRural Development to train panchayats. Being invited as experts by HIRD and theMinistry of Panchayati Raj for numerous meetings to prepare curriculum and trainingmaterial for panchayats further underscored SMSF’s credibility. Similar training for otherNGOs on specific village-level institutions brought additional endorsements. e DistrictRural Development Agency in Bilaspur, a city and district in the neighboring state ofHimachal Pradesh, requested and received SMSF training for panchayat members.e team noticed that a critical mass of about twenty-five champions was needed tobring about real change in local citizen participation to any single village. So the trainingwas offered to twenty-five participants at a time in a village with work donesimultaneously with sarpanches, panchayats, and community members.Ten legal literacy camps were organized in 2014 at the village level. Prior to that,camps were organized on the block level, covering fifty to eighty villages at one time. eteam determined that village-level camps that covered only four or five villages were easierto manage logistically, and guides could provide the needed personal attention toattendees and more appropriate follow-up.By this time, attorney Navneet Narwal was successful in establishing linkages withDistrict Legal Services Authority (DLSA). Eight of the ten camps held that year wereorganized in collaboration with DLSA at their Legal Care and Support centers. Paralegalvolunteers from DLSA were present in the camps, and the DLSA Secretary and ChiefJudicial Magistrate attended each camp.Community participation and leadership in local institutions was now embracedbeyond the 403 villages in Mewat District, Haryana, to fourteen villages in Alwar,Rajasthan, and eleven villages in Samastipur, Bihar. No other SMSF initiative had reachedmore than fifty villages. Effective citizen participation demonstrated the tremendouspower that aware citizens could have, which reaffirmed the foundation team’s vow tomake this effort an all-India movement.Navneet observed, “Awareness and hand-holding support gives villagers confidenceand the power to solve their own problems by knowing their rights and using themproperly without fear of formal authorities. e way in which people have changed isabsolutely magnificent and gives confidence that the system will become better whenpressured by the people who are striving to improve it.”A substantial shift in the potential for rural development occurred in April 2014,when the Government of India made mandatory provisions in Corporate Social

Responsibility (CSR) under Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013: profit-makingcompanies in India that had a prescribed net worth, turnover, or net profit must nowestablish a CSR committee and spend a minimum of 2 percent of their average net profitsfrom the past three financial years on CSR initiatives. e specific CSR activities, outlinedin Schedule VII of the Act and in keeping with the United Nations SustainableDevelopment goals, included efforts to eradicate hunger, poverty, and malnutrition;promote gender equality, empower women, promote education, and enhance vocationalskills; ensure environmental sustainability; and more!e SMSF team recognized the strong potential of this new law that was essentiallypromoting many of the same issues that their work was focused on. Endorsing sustainabledevelopment, the new law promised to make a powerful impact on the lives of India’spoor.CEO Jane Schokoske explained, “e CSR law has opened the doors for a significantinfusion of new funds for development work in rural India. Our focus remains oncreating and fine-tuning innovative models of rural development and testing them indifferent geographical, geological, and sociocultural settings. e government has thecapacity to implement these models across rural India. Partnerships between government,communities, corporations, NGOs, and other voluntary groups are important to achieveshared goals. A win-win situation is possible for each!”e SMSF team was inspired and ready to utilize this new opportunity to multiplyand propel the impact of foundation programs. Spreading the word about basicchallenges facing the poor in rural India to businesses, corporations, government, andother NGOs and foundations included an open invitation to work together withcommunities to bring about more positive developmental change.e Resource Mobilization and Partnerships team carried out crowd-fundingcampaigns on the website and began engaging with a few dozen corporations to attractadditional support for SMSF initiatives. Recognizing that stronger momentum wasrequired, Suri Sehgal introduced some targeted restructuring. He asked Anjali Godyal totake up the CSR fundraising challenge and gave her the freedom to hire a team to attractpotential CSR partners. As group leader for externally funded projects, she now hadoverall responsibility for concept papers, project proposals, on-the-ground projectimplementation, progress reporting to partners, and final reports.Anjali Godyal’s team vision was to establish a greater sense of collaboration andmutual respect in all partnerships. With each proposal in the pipeline, her initial approachwas for SMSF to be recognized as an organization with experienced and competent staff,that embodies professionalism, transparent operations and financial processes, and has aproven track record of credibility and impact.

Since S M Sehgal Foundation had two current external corporate partners that hadbeen funding projects in the Mewat region for several years, the first effort would be tostrengthen those existing partnerships. With the first partnership, a global leader in cropnutrients, the team proposed an integrated project to consolidate components of theircurrently funded projects in agriculture development, school infrastructureimprovements, and water management into a unified project to demonstrate greaterimpact and efficiency. In addition, the partnership was transitioned from an annualapproval process to a three-year cycle to ensure continuity and shared commitment.Building on their successful water management collaboration, which was already workingwell in the Mewat region, projects for the other current corporate partner,ANANDANA, were expanded to include the neighboring district of Alwar.e team adopted a structured approach to identify possible new partnerships formore CSR initiatives,. ey studied potential partners’ websites for references to theirCSR policies, what projects they had previously supported, and determine possiblesynergies.e initial outreach involved contacts by email or calls to their offices. Proposals weredeveloped on a case-by-case basis to engage partners with shared values. e entire SMSFteam increased their efforts to attract CSR funds. ough the process was lengthy, theysubmitted several proposals. Only a few materialized into actual CSR projects at first.ough CSR project managers were interested in working on tangible outputoriented projects such as pond rejuvenation, check dams, farmers trainings, crop yieldincreases, income increases, etc., they found it hard to justify spending money on projectswith “intangible outputs” such as community empowerment, increasing women’s role inlocal institutions, or community awareness and participation. But despite the earlylearning process in these efforts, SMSF’s winning strategy soon proved to be a dynamicgame changer that propelled the entire organization forward into a new decade ofexplosive growth.Suri Sehgal was recognized in 2013–14 by the Indian Confeder-ation of NGOs witha Global Indian Karmaveer Puraskaar Lifetime Achievement Award, a Global Award forSocial Justice and Citizen Action. S M Sehgal Foundation remained a vanguardinstitution, a hallmark of integrity, with strict policies against dishonesty, and alwaysworking to stay credible, scrupulously transparent, and accountable in daily operations.Typically straightforward about the outside realities, Suri Sehgal reminded the team ofSMSF’s primary commitment to support local participation to ensure sustainability, “Keybarriers remain. India faces the challenges of community engagement and poorresponsiveness to community demands despite the best intentions of the top governmentfunctionaries. Making sure that funds reach the right beneficiaries, at the appropriatetimes, should be a goal of the government. Good laws are on the books, but greaterenforcement of the laws is needed. e effective participation of rural citizenry plays an

important role. A fleet of local people must constantly monitor local service delivery tokeep it on track to help correct the deficiencies and conquer the barriers.”In September 2014 S M Sehgal Foundation received the Millennium Alliance awardfrom FICCI, USAID, and the Technology Development Board, Department of Scienceand Technology, Government of India, for the Water Management team’s innovation ofa pressurized recharge well for storing fresh water in a saline aquifer. is same projectand the Local Participation and Sustainability initiative had been short-listed forMillennium Alliance awards the previous year. e award included funds that wouldmake it possible to take the Water Management team’s innovation to more communitiesin need.When the pressurized recharge well model was ready for replication, the Governmentof India provided support to demonstrate the model in four areas. A request was made forfunding for more demonstrations under various site conditions, such as where the salineaquifer was deeper, or other areas where saline water intruded.Bringing this technology from the concept stage to the point of recognition hadinvolved many levels of development and many talented people doing plenty ofbrainstorming and hard work to refine the concept, build multiple prototypes, test,troubleshoot, and problem-solve. SMSF consultants, engineers, hydrology experts,proposal writers, and field staff all played a part in the outcome. Several team membersattended the award ceremony, celebrating the achievement and the opportunity to helpmore villages.e following year, when Lalit Sharma came across a notification from a newlyformed Solutions Summit being organized by the United Nations and the UnitedNations Foundation to “lift-up and progress” the work of “exceptional innovators” whoare developing solutions that address one or more of the global Sustainable DevelopmentGoals, he submitted an abstract about the technology developed for creating a fresh-waterpocket in the saline aquifer. e jury responded that such a simple, sustainable, gamechanging technology should be replicated wherever salinity is a problem. ey invitedLalit to make a presentation in person in New York. On September 2015, on behalf ofSMSF in a presentation at the United Nations, Lalit freely offered the innovation for useby others around the world.After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May 2014, andcontinuing over the course of his first year in office, he cited goals quite similar to theSMSF development efforts. One after the other, programs launched by the primeminister were initiatives SMSF was working on. In October, the prime minister createdan ambitious plan to develop 800 model villages called Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojna.Under this plan, each member of Parliament was to choose a village in their jurisdiction

to enhance development in the areas of health, education, housing, infrastructure repair,and strengthening their village-level institutions while promoting transparency andaccountability. ough some of India’s past leaders had “talked about” similar ideas, theSMSF team welcomed this positive news with hope and offered to share their ownsignificant learnings about developing model villages.e team published articles acknowledging this truly ambitious effort, underliningthat it would only be successful if the people in the chosen villages were empowered,engaged in the process, and able to plan collectively—and the plan must be inclusive ofall members of the community, such as youth, the disenfranchised, and especially women.e team repeated as often as possible that, just as women played a dynamic role in allaspects of the development of villages in Mewat, their leadership was essential to Mr.Modi’s plan.ey reiterated that individual citizens and members of village-level institutions mustbe empowered, trained, and engaged meaningfully in the process for any developmentactivities to be sustained. Sustainability in general depended on continuous communitybuy-in and ongoing evaluations of progress.Suri Sehgal affirmed, “A village is only a model village if the panchayat is active andthe community is empowered and demanding.” He stressed that, “Trainers need to bepeople with compassion who will encourage community leaders to meet together toidentify areas of convergence with government departments so that citizens canaffectively approach those departments for improving services.”Prime Minister Modi offered further support for the initiative by declaring December25, 2014, as Good Governance Day. He used the occasion to launch new informationand communication technology to help bring information about government services tothe people. He vowed to provide “transparent, effective, and accountable governance.”21He was quoted on his internet portal, saying, “Success of democracy is impossible withoutparticipation of the people.”All of this was quite encouraging!By July 2015 the prime minister introduced a five-year, multibillion-dollar watermanagement initiative called Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (prime minister’sirrigation scheme) to help ensure adequate water for crop cultivation for all farmland andto promote water conservation, precision-irrigation technologies, and aquifer recharge.Suri Sehgal observed again, “e prime minister is advocating what is absolutelyneeded in the country and, again, that is what we are already doing!” He added, “I hopethe government will engage more with community. e schemes will remain top-downonly without the participation and ownership of the community,” Suri reinforced theSMSF directive to remain in a catalyst-only role in empowering citizens to make surethat mandated services were delivered. e most obvious overarching lesson, proved againand again, was that no initiative was sustainable unless it was community-led.

e foundation remained actively involved in implementing numerous complex andintegrated projects. Multiple SMSF proposals were in process. Concept notes andexpressions of interest had been submitted to various entities to invite collaborations.Systematic steps had been taken to include the tools, strategies, and processes that provedmost effective in making an impact.In preparation for further expansion, the team was scouting and studying severaldistricts within geographic reach of the current programs, primarily in Haryana,Rajasthan, and Bihar, and also for potential new partnerships in Madhya Pradesh,Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. Each new region in consideration was evaluatedaccording to essential ingredients for success.Enthusiastic participation by people in the communities was essential for thesustainability of whatever was created or built, but other factors were considered as well.ese included whether reputable NGOs had been or were still working in the area,whether government officials were supportive, the availability of an agricultural profileand understanding of the physical terrain, and if expert reviews of draft proposals werepositive.As usual, each of SMSF’s main programs moved along at a different pace anddepended on the continued engagement of partners of every kind in the process. Everyplan was well thought out with respect to its short-term and potential long-termoutcomes. Successful outcomes were tied to awareness, education, and the integration ofall related aspects of a community’s needs. Jay Sehgal explained, “e results of trueprogress are rarely immediate because development is such a slow process. Impact canonly be measured over time. is dynamic is important to keep in mind whenestablishing partnerships for funding that is required for particular initiatives.”He put the concept in simple terms: “ere are two types of impact: immediate, suchas changing the paint color in a room, and long-term, which is something very different.We evaluate our impact based on our mission and also on the mission of our partners. Weare careful to understand our partners’ mission statements, so that any work we do willalso help our partners meet their own stated goals. A company with a sincere interest inwater augmentation wants to see immediate impact—for example, to create rechargewells that make more drinkable water available. Using partner funding, we can create thedesired facilities and infrastructure, but our perspective must also be in line with ourmission in order to achieve true prosperity for the communities of rural India.”Jay stressed, “We must maintain a balance: the partner’s immediate impact and ourfocus on that longer-term goal. We will keep instilling our vision in the implementationof every project with the ultimate goal of positive change, seeing the people in rural Indialeading secure, prosperous, and dignified lives. is kind of change, which includesempowering women, will not happen tomorrow; it could take a generation to see ourmission realized. We can’t ask our large multinational corporation partners to wait thirty-

five years to see the results of their investment. So we will continue to take an integrated,comprehensive approach to the work. Our ultimate goal remains intact—that we neverforget what we are about.”21. “Modi’s good governance drive keeps some babus busy on Christmas.” Times of India, Dec 26, 2014.

Impact AssessmentAs fifteenth-anniversary celebrations continued into early 2015 with special events andgatherings, a formal assessment was undertaken to compare each current SMSF programand project with the impact being made. e team compiled a collection of achievementsand lessons learned. Program initiatives continued to move forward as information wasassembled and analyzed. e Rural Research team supplemented their regular monitoringreports with new stories, and perspectives from people throughout the organization,paying particular attention to overarching lessons. Important lessons learned helped inreevaluating current strategies and paving the way for the future direction.SMSF-sponsored gatherings during that period made mention of the milestones atfifteen years: radio programs and book launches and conferences or workshops on water,agriculture, local participation and sustainability, health, education, and women’sempowerment. An initial gathering, held at the Ghaghas Community Center, includedthe entire field team and Gurgaon staff.In reviewing the work that had been done, certain realities were evident. For everygood idea that proved to make an impact, the team had experimented with many otherideas. In each case, traditional knowledge was combined with modern technologies, testedin multiple locations, and further improved before being promoted in wider applications.e learn-by-doing process had provided the team with powerful information aboutwhich programs or interventions created maximum impact, at minimal cost, in theshortest time frame. Big projects made significant impacts but they were capital-intensive,whereas the “right” small interventions proved cost-effective, had major impact, and

offered a higher possibility of adoption in communities. And both types were still valuableand necessary.With continuing focus on water security, conservation, and ensuring safe drinkingwater, SMSF was increasingly recognized for its rural water management initiatives,which had evolved primarily from listening and taking villagers’ needs seriously. Watersecurity was still the most basic and critical necessity in rural India. To improveagricultural productivity of rain-fed areas, or even maintain the current agriculturalproductivity, more water infrastructures, such as lakes, check dams, village ponds, andwells, were needed to store water and charge the aquifers.22Lalit Sharma described the complexity of the issues faced in each project:“Development involves a multitude of factors. Efforts in one direction are oftencountered by forces from another. For instance, it is not sufficient to conserve waterwithout addressing the equitable distribution of that water. Water collection,augmentation, and conservation go hand in hand with water security issues. We mustmove from scarcity to security. ere is no life without water.”Integrated water management projects could be capital-intensive, but SMSF’sinventive hydrologists had created cost-effective, replicable models for water collection,conservation, storage, recharge, and filtration. Scaling up would be necessary to widen thebeneficiary base in more villages and states to trigger an all-India movement to createwater security and ensure water availability for irrigation under drought conditions.Now that most SMSF Water Management projects were being funded externally, theplan was to replicate proven models in partnerships with more corporations, government,and other like-minded organizations and individuals, and create water-literate andconservation-conscious communities by supporting the formation and strengthening ofWater Management committees, Water User Groups (WUGs), and village-developmentcommittees. e team envisioned an empowered Water Management Committee inevery village to ensure water security throughout India.WUGs consisted of direct and indirect beneficiaries at the village level of any givenwater-augmentation project. Each WUG generally included ten-to-fifteen members fromthe panchayat, School Management Committee, anganwadi center, and other activecommunity groups who took responsibility for management, operation, andmaintenance of any water management structures and intervention projects carried outin their communities. Members included Mid-Day Meal cooks and workers, auxiliarynurse midwives, teachers, retired government employees, and youth active in social work.Community contributions raised for the operation and maintenance of a projectwere deposited in a bank account overseen by two WUG-nominated members. eSMSF team conducted frequent water literacy sessions and training programs to helpbuild and maintain the groups’ active engagement.

Individual empowerment, community ownership, and the availability of funds(without dependence on funding from any agency, foundation, or panchayat) offered thebest chance for any intervention to be sustainable in the long term. Trained WUGmembers could leverage funds from community contributions as well as variousgovernment programs and schemes for water projects and other developmental work intheir villages.Water Management projects incorporated a sophisticated series of modules thatreflected the integration of lessons learned about what worked best over time. ey beganwith needs assessments and problem identification, baseline surveys, focus-groupdiscussions, village-level meetings with local citizens, interactions with governmentofficials, and literature reviews. Once suitable implementation sites were identified,prerequisite ground conditions were sought for maximum water-harvesting potential. Forgreater community awareness and mobilization, the team developed informationalmaterials, conducted water literacy sessions, water awareness marches, rallies, and streetplays, as well as painting competitions and essay-writing contests for schoolchildren.Project implementation involved local artisans and labor. Proper management andlong-term sustainability of any project intervention included a committee of active andinterested people from all possible sectors, as always with heavy emphasis on theinvolvement of women.Infrastructural components of any project depended on local needs and groundconditions. Activities related to agriculture, livelihood, and village infrastructuredevelopment were incorporated as needed for each project. Decisions on structures to bebuilt and projected costs were finalized only after experts visited the locations, discussionswere held, and agreements were reached with local villagers. Regardless of the project ornature of the collaboration, the crucial ingredient to accelerate progress in the villages wasin promoting effective citizen participation at all local government levels.Projects were monitored and evaluated periodically for their performance and impactassessment. ough most were successful, the team knew to expect some fine-tuning ormidcourse corrections as any project progressed. ese were carried out only afterdiscussion with the funding partners.Parallels could be seen in the evolution of SMSF’s integrated AgricultureDevelopment program initiatives. e most valuable lessons and impacts came byproviding groups of farmers with education, information, and awareness with the use ofcrop demonstrations that illustrated more effective and sustainable methods forimproving crop productivity and increasing their incomes.e three “krishi” project partnerships had the potential to lead to forming activeAgriculture Development committees, which the foundation team wanted to see in eachvillage. ese always inspired surrounding villages and served as catalysts for prompting

thousands of poorly functioning Krishi Vigyan Kendras (agricultural extension centers)to carry out their government-mandated responsibilities. Finding creative ways toempower farmers to expect and request much-needed services from extension centers wascritical for establishing food and nutrition security.Each krishi partnership project in place by 2015 involved training modules that hadbeen carried out for four years. Projects were interrelated and included infrastructurebuilding components and collaborations with other programs and teams. For example,the first two years of work with Krishi Jyoti, the partnership focused on cereal crops. Athird year focused on vegetable crops, and a fourth was spent on basic citizenparticipation and sustainability practices so the development progress would be sustainedby the community as the SMSF team phased out of work in the village.During that same period, a water augmentation project was completed andimprovements were made to schools in those villages. ough side-by-side cropdemonstrations, generating awareness, and capacity building were common to the krishipartnerships, other aspects were tailored to each community’s needs. Components, such asthe number of crops, each project’s timespan, beneficiaries, and partners, differed fromproject to project.To estimate the number of beneficiaries of Agriculture Development projects through2014, the Rural Research team extracted the government census count (31,667) of thefarming population for the 107 villages where SMSF programs had a presence. Primarybeneficiaries received direct training, farm demonstrations, and projects implementedwith assistance from SMSF teams. Secondary beneficiaries were household members ofprimary beneficiaries, and tertiary beneficiaries were farmers in the vicinity who benefitedfrom observing the demonstrations.An effective ICT (information communication technology) tool was offered to KrishiJyoti farmers in Mewat in 2014 as part of a larger National Bank for AgricultureDevelopment project to promote rural prosperity. e idea had evolved partially fromresults of a pilot program in 2009, carried out in partnership with One World South Asia.Voice messages recorded in-house were broadcast to mobile phones, providing farmerswith valuable information in their local language about projects and farming practices.e Local Participation and Sustainability team also used an ICT tool to widen thereach of their initiatives. ey established a Citizen Information and Support Center(CISC) in the SMSF office in Nuh, using an integrated voice-response system and tollfree number. e cloud-based platform made it possible for villagers in Mewat to make acall on any basic mobile phone and ask questions about public programs and services. Afacilitator with a smartphone responded to the calls and held meetings with villagers ifmore detailed information or assistance was needed.

Mobile phones were now typically available even in the poorest homes. In one period(September 2014 to May 2015), two thousand calls were answered and four hundredvillagers visited the center, seeking guidance on solving problems related to the PublicDistribution System; on claiming pensions under social security programs; on Ladli yojna(protection of girl children), a scheme launched in 2008 to empower girls by linkingfinancial assistance to their education up to the senior secondary level; and on IndiraAwaas Yojana (housing for rural poor), and other applications.Advantages of the new CISC service were noted at a meeting with Umra villagers inthe Nuh block in February 2015. Daily-wage workers shared that the center’s servicehours (9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) were particularly helpful. Two villagers learned from theircall that wives and children of people with disabilities were eligible for monthly financialaid. Each applied for the pension funds and submitted their papers to the blockdevelopment officer.Villagers from Tusaini in Punhana block of Mewat became aware of provisions inPrime Minister Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (clean India mission), claiming up to Rs.12,000 per household for the construction of toilets. An online link to the programfacilitated payments directly to beneficiaries’ bank accounts, speeding up the process.Direct deposit to individual bank accounts also prevented any siphoning of money beforeit reached the intended beneficiaries. A government initiative that began in 2014encouraged all Indian citizens to have bank accounts so that such funds, includingpension funds, scholarship money, and so on, could be directly deposited into them.SMSF-trained guides helped villagers obtain IDs and open accounts.A pilot program launched in September that year with a like-minded developmentorganization was already showing excellent potential for scaling up. With trainingproviding by SMSF, Swades Foundation successfully replicated Citizen Participation andSustainability initiatives in 360 gram panchayats in six blocks of Raigad district,Maharashtra, about 1,450 kilometers south of Mewat.e team provided a three-day training-of-trainers course with forty program stafffrom Swades Community Mobilisation. SMSF provided a staff member at Swades fortwo months to help ensure the program’s proper functioning. Trainees were able to adaptcomponents of the model to fit the community needs in Raigad. e group created aone-year action plan to work on problems with specific programs. Legal Literacy campshelped by focusing on those issues.Raigad community leaders learned that vigilance committees were mandated by lawto monitor food grain distribution under the Public Distribution System. e stategovernment constituted vigilance committees at village, block, municipal council,municipal corporation, and district levels. At the village level, the committees, led by thesarpanch, consisted of thirteen official and nonofficial members. With their new learning,the Swades team trained 674 community leaders who produced impressive results within