Tag: Small Change NGO

  • Small Talk with Percy Ghaswala

    CHANGE leaders do great things, and often that is all we know about them. Here we want to get a different glimpse of the personalities that constitute the development space. Every month we get one leader to answer four questions, not necessarily about their work, but about themselves. This week we catch up with Percy…

  • Taking Greenwash Route to Fix Plastic Crisis

    By NIVEN REDDY —- THE issue with plastic is evident for everyone to see: it fills our streets and waterways and now we know that plastic particles have entered our food systems too. So how do we address this issue? How can we prevent our families from ingesting toxic plastic during every meal? Certainly not…

  • You Can Make Others’ Wishes Come True!

    GLOBAL giving trends show that hope and empathy inspire most donors to give – and the holidays, including the end-of-year festive season, motivate 61% of them. In Asia in particular, surveys have shown that religious giving is more diverse than any other region, with 32% of donors giving at Christmas, 25% at Eid al-Fitr, and…

  • King of Kindness

    NOVEMBER 20th was Universal Children’s Day, a day set aside by the United Nations to promote the welfare of children globally, established with the adoption of the transformative doctrine on childhood rights, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, in 1959. India celebrated the day together with the rest of the world until Nehru’s…

  • ‘Our Grandparents Wouldn’t Use Toilets’

    OUR Small Talk for this week is a tad different. We are celebrating ‘November For Kids’ at Small Change, focusing on children and highlighting issues they deal with. So this week, instead of talking to a leader in the development sector, we talk to three teenagers who are supported by Mountain Children’s Foundation (MCF) based…

  • Football: Game Changer On And Off The Pitch

    AISHWARYA and Yuvraj are among the first team members of Shining Stars Football Club, a not for profit programme of PASS Collective who work with girls and boys from marginalised urban communities of Bengaluru, Karnataka. With our focus on children and youth this month, here the teenagers tell us how football has helped them face challenges,…

  • Dharavi boys join beach clean-up wave

    SPARKED by one man, Afroz Shah, and joined by thousands, Mumbai’s Versova beach clean-up – the largest in the world – has turned into a movement that has inspired many. Amongst them are 22-year-old Saif Ansari and Adnan Khan, 20, from Dharavi, Asia’s biggest slum – and the most densely populated. While still in their…

  • India’s Growing Sustainable Food Movement

    SUSTAINABILITY. It’s a popular catchphrase these days in the development sector that now includes food and agriculture. But what does it really mean? According to the American Public Health Association, a sustainable food system is one that “provides healthy food to meet current food needs while maintaining healthy ecosystems that can also provide food for…

  • Small Talk with Neichute Doulo

    CHANGE leaders do great things, and often that is all we know about them. Here we want to get a different glimpse of the personalities that constitute the development space. Every month we get one leader to answer four questions, not necessarily about their work, but about themselves. This week we catch up with NEICHUTE…

  • 5 Creative Fundraising Campaigns

    INDIA’s tenth Daan Utsav just ended with tens of thousands of people celebrating the giving festival by donating their time, money, skills or even hugs.  As different kinds of donation campaigns flooded social media, the one thing that became clear was the need to stand out. The ease of electronic transactions has taken online fundraising…

  • How To Build Our Own Silicon Valley

    By ABHIJIT BHADURI —- FROM 2010 to this year, venture capitalists invested $168billion in firms in the Bay Area which accounts for almost a third of the total investments in America. Three of the world’s five most valuable companies are in the Silicon Valley: Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Facebook. They are valued at $2.5trillion.…

  • Fundraising Is Selfless – Just Do It!

    By MICAH BRANAMAN SHARMA —- THE festive season is here once again! As families come together to celebrate a variety of festivals from Navaratri, and Durga Puja to Dussehra and Diwali, consumer spending traditionally skyrockets. To harness the excesses of consumerism for good, #DaanUtsav, literally the donation festival, kicks off in tandem with this celebratory…

  • A Clean Wardrobe, a Cleaner Conscience

    By KARUNA EZARA PARIKH —- THE first images of the Kerala floods I saw were not on the evening news or in the papers the next morning, no. They were on social media. There were awful images of damage done alongside pleas to donate, pleas to reach out, pleas to help. At first, I watched…

  • Don’t Stare: Breast Is Best!

    WHAT do you think when you see a woman feeding a child? Disgust, contempt, lustfulness? No? Then why does breastfeeding remain so controversial in many parts of the world, including here in India? Breastfeeding is nature’s way of providing infants with the necessary nutrients and antibodies. World Health Organization advocates for women to breastfeed exclusively…

  • Small Talk with Manju Vyas

    CHANGE leaders do great things, and often that is all we know about them. Here we want to get a different glimpse of the personalities that constitute the development space. Every month we get one leader to answer four questions, not necessarily about their work, but about themselves. This week we catch up with Manju…

  • Prometheus Unbound: Fire And Optimism In India

    By CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA —- EVEN in the United States, a country that’s no stranger to monumental acts of philanthropy, Azim Premji’s generous gift for primary education in India created a ripple, generating headlines such as “India’s Bill Gates donates $2 billion” and “India’s Warren Buffett…” Although the money went into a trust to fund education…

  • A Fresh Look At What We Eat

    IT was the autumn of 2004 when Canadian environmentalists Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon discovered a diet that would start a mini revolution in the way we think about the food we consume. The young couple were visiting their cabin in the wilderness of northern British Columbia when they realised they had nothing to put on…

  • ‘Bridge From Misery To Hope’

    IN a country which is home to the largest number of illiterate adults in the world, the story of a 96-year-old grandmother sitting for the first exam of her life earlier this month warmed the cockles of many hearts. Karthyayani Amma of Cheppad, in Kerala’s Alappuzha district was one of 40,440 people to take a…

  • Small Talk With Ashif Shaikh

    CHANGE leaders do great things, and often that is all we know about them. Here we want to get a different glimpse of the personalities that constitute the development space. Every month we get one leader to answer four questions, not necessarily about their work, but about themselves. This week we catch up with Ashif…

  • Ordinary people, extraordinary power

    By ANSHU GUPTA —- THERE’S a recent image that will remain etched in our collective memory for a long time: 40,000 farmers from Nashik marching towards Mumbai in scorching heat to demand their rights. The reason it makes for a compelling image is because the farmers joined hands across caste, religion and class lines to…

  • To Child Refugees, With Love

    DESPITE the world having the most number of displaced people in history, migration is still a controversial topic. There are currently 68.5 million people forcibly displaced globally – 25.4 million of whom are refugees. Refugee: a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution or violence – a…

  • Bollywood Stars Are Turning Green

    WE all love to read about what our favourite celebrities are up to, but it’s always nice to hear that they’re doing more than going to yet another party, shopping or travelling. Stars supporting charitable causes isn’t a new concept, but once Angelina Jolie and George Clooney made it cool to support social activism, the…

  • Privilege And Bias Affect Our Empathy

    By ALEX GABBAY —- IN 2001, I moved to Kathmandu to produce three films for UNICEF. Whilst making them I realised that films were able to connect two communities: people in need and people with privilege. And that through storytelling we could create awareness and ultimately empathy. To give you an example, I made a…

  • Films to watch if you want to change the world

    WANT to change the world but aren’t sure where to start? Get inspired by watching one of these documentaries: 1. The Thin Blue Line and Making a Murderer are two documentaries following the cases of men exonerated of the crimes that they were convicted and details how mistakes, misconduct and malintent within the justice system (of…

  • The Princess Of Charity

    MEGHAN MARKLE, actress, philanthropist, activist, humanitarian, World Vision ambassador, UN Women’s advocate for political participation and leadership, now has another title: princess. Meghan married Prince Harry of Wales last Saturday, a royal event that had all of the world chattering. An American, an actress, in the British royal family? But Meghan is much more than just a…