In Vrindavan, thousands of elderly widow mothers face the harsh reality of abandonment and suffering. With no one to turn to, many are left begging on the streets, exposed to heat, cold and rain,Donate so that Maitri can provide shelter, food, clothes and medical support to abandoned elderly mothers now. Give generously.Winnie Singh has witnessed many cases of widow mothers being abandoned on the streets of Vrindavan, one of the holiest places in India. “Children leave their mothers as soon as they become widows. The children start feeling the burden. This has become a practice in today's society that money comes first and everything else later,” says Winnie whose Maitri India, rescues widowed mothers from the streets of Vrindavan.Many widowed elderly mothers often end up living a lonely life and begging to survive on the streets. And Maitri aspires to take care of every widow in need of help, but because of lack of funds, Winnie and Maitri are in a position to do it."Elderly widows don't have shelter. They sleep in cowsheds over sacks. They don't have a blanket. Nights are really difficult for them," shares Winnie Singh. <img src="https://cfstatic.give.do/1abfb906-563b-4747-85b8-8af2071a2856.jpg" />Maitri aims to:<ul><li>Provide shelter and nutritious meals leading to improved health and wellbeing</li><li>Make physical and mental health services accessible</li><li>Offer necessary quality aged care and assisted living support</li><li>Increase awareness and engagement around the struggles of abandoned widow mothers</li></ul>Why donate to MaitriWinnie needs your support to help those in need of food, healthcare and well-being. “Maitri urgently needs your support to provide nutritious food, clothing and healthcare to sustain these widow mothers who are prone to more illnesses as they age,” appeals Winnie. “You can become the family they were denied. Hold their hands so they don't need to beg ever again,” she adds. Let’s rescue abandoned widows mothers from the streets of Vrindavan and give them a better future. Donate now.Our help will enable Maitri to save hundreds of abandoned widows from a life of begging, and restore the respect, dignity, and identity they deserve.

Help provide shelter, food, clothes and medical support to abandoned widow mothers of Vrindavan. Donate now

For a mother who has spent her entire life loving and raising her child, being beaten and mercilessly thrown out onto the streets by her own son is too heartbreaking to overcome. But this is a common story among the elderly residents of the Guru Vishram Vridh Ashram. “I’ve seen mothers in old and torn clothes, their bodies smelling and their hands and feet rotting and covered in maggots,” shares Dr. G.P. Bhagat, founder of the ashram. These abandoned elderly men and women lay starving on the streets hoping for someone to rescue them from their suffering. But most people walk past them without a second glance. “Like this”, Dr. Bhagat explains, “many elders die on the roads.”Since 2003, SHEOWS (Saint Hardyal Educational and Orphans Welfare Society) has rescued over 10,000 elderly people from the streets and given them a home with care and support. The elderly staying at the ashram have all been abandoned by their families and have nowhere else to live. Your support can give them comfort after their abandonment. Donate now.Donate easily through UPI, all debit/credit cards and net banking. Charitable donations to this fundraising campaign are tax exempted under 80G of the Income Tax Act (India). Safe and loving homeFor 20 years, SHEOWS has been providing free shelter, nutritious food three times a day, clothing, medical care, recreation activities and emotional support to abused and disabled elderly people rescued from the streets of Delhi. The Guru Vishram Vridh Ashram has a dedicated rescue team that saves the elderly from the streets and gives them immediate medical care upon their arrival at the home. To tend to the multiple health complications of the seniors, the home has a medical facility with doctors and nurses, a physiotherapy unit, a pathology lab, a digital X-ray monitoring machine and a pharmacy to provide 24-hour care to older adults anytime they require assistance, even during emergencies. Dr. Bhagat prioritizes the health of the seniors and ensures that they receive three balanced meals a day based on their precise health requirements. Need for the fundraiserThe humanitarian mission of SHEOWS is making an impact in the area, as more and more people are being rescued and brought to Guru Vishram Vridh Ashram. To meet the financial costs of running the home, SHEOWS needs support to continue providing the residents with all the facilities that they need. This includes constant care and round-the-clock medical attention, nutritious food and maintaining a hygienic environment to keep the seniors in comfort and good health. Dr. Bhagat explains that as the number of residents is increasing, SHEOWS needs support for food and medicines. “I request you to help these elderly parents lead a peaceful life.”Donate now to help Dr. Bhagat continue caring for the 500 destitute elderly and giving them shelter, food, medical care and the will to carry on living despite their tragic abandonment by their families. Your support will enable SHEOWS to keep serving abandoned senior citizens and help them recover from the trauma of abandonment and life on the streets. “I have been serving these elderly as if they were my own parents”, shares Dr. Bhagat. “I want only one thing - their tears should vanish and they should have a smile on their faces.” To help Dr. Bhagat achieve this dream, your support is critical. Donate now to help SHEOWS care for more abandoned elderly. Donate to this fundraiser by Give, India’s largest online donation platform, to support SHEOWS in their mission to rescue the abandoned elderly from the streets and give them shelter, food, medical care, recreational activities and emotional support.

Help Dr. Bhagat care for 500+ elderly parents rescued from abuse and homelessness

In the dark and dingy alleys of red light areas, injustice, pain and suffering run rampant. And the worst affected are the children who grow up in red-light areas and are subjected to constant abuse and violence. “The sight of a 12-year-old girl being gang-raped by a group of men near a house l haunts me to this date. I was filled with anguish and resolved to do something,” says Girish Kulkarni who has made it his life’s mission to rescue children from red light areas and give them a safe and secure childhood. In the last 3 decades Girish has saved over 1100 girls from a life of abuse in red-light areas, giving them a loving home, education and medical care. He has further supported over 20,000 children with a better life.Sadly, Of the 250 the children rescued from abuse and exploitation, around 70 of them are HIV positive. The high cost of medication has left Girish struggling for funds. Your support can help him provide these children with the care and upbringing they need. Donate now.Donate easily through UPI, all debit/credit cards and net banking. Charitable donations to this fundraising campaign are tax exempted under 80G of the Income Tax Act (India), &amp; 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (USA). A movement to protect vulnerable children“Growing up in Ahilyanagar, the experiences I had as a child witnessing the horrors of sex trade defined the path of my life. I had even seen my friend’s 15-year-old sister and 70-year-old grandmother being forced to do sex work for the price of a cup of tea”, recalls Girish. “I started by merely feeding and teaching children of sex workers initially with the intention of giving them some respite from the horrors of life of abuse in red-light areas. Gradually more and more mothers started coming to me and asked me to take their children away, even if it was just for a couple of hours,” he further adds.The work that Girish started in his youth gradually grew to become a movement, with many more joining his cause. His NGO Snehalaya to date has transformed the lives of millions. Girish’s work is crucial for the survival and safety of vulnerable children of sex workers. Snehalaya is almost entirely dependent on donations from the public and your support can strengthen his mission to save children most in need. Donate generously.The horrors of life in red light areas“The cruelty and abuse that children as young as 6 or 7 years of age face is something that I can’t explain in words. Young daughters of sex workers are made to watch their mothers being raped, are brutally assaulted and forced into sex work. No child deserves to grow like this, Girish says in anguish.Sad reality of life for children growing up in red light areas is that they are deprived of even the most basic needs like proper food, safety and education. Moreover, a good number of children rescued by Girish are diagnosed HIV positive. The task of securing medication, providing them quality education and much-needed nutrition is one that requires constant support from donors. Moreover, the increase in healthcare cost has left Girish struggling to keep his home for children going. But your support can enable him to give his children a loving environment and save many more who still remain trapped behind closed doors.Donate to this fundraiser by Give, India’s largest and most trusted online donation platform, to help Snehalaya give hundreds of children rescued from red-light areas a life away from violence and abuse.

Help Girish give 250 children, rescued from abuse in red-light areas a new life

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Development Consortium is a development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, women and vulnerable communities to overcome poverty, inequality, abuse and injustice. We are dedicated to working with the most vulnerable people and we serve all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender.

Donations through Give Foundation, registered under section 80G of India's Income Tax Act, 1961 are tax-deductible.

Varsha Venugopal

Anshuman Prasad

Fiona Conlon

Gatisheel Dass

Arnab Bhattacharya

Development Consortium

This nonprofit is registered as a charitable trust under section 12A of India's Income Tax Act, 1961.

This nonprofit is registered under section 80G of India's Income Tax Act, 1961. This means you can deduct 50% of the donation you made through your tax return.

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In India, a child dies every 4 minutes from a vaccine-preventable disease. The government has made huge strides in strengthening last-mile immunisation infrastructure, meaning that the key remaining barrier is communication with parents. Millions of children each year miss out on getting the right vaccine at the right time because parents lack key information like when or where to attend an immunisation camp. 
 Suvita works to bridge this last-mile communication gap. We deliver two core programmes:1) Sending personalised SMS reminders to caregivers when their child is due for a vaccine. This approach is customised to each child's immunisation journey, yet highly scalable thanks to our tech infrastructure.2) Harnessing the offline social networks that are central to India's villages. We identify opinion leaders and invite them to become immunisation ambassadors, who use their knowledge of the local context to increase awareness and motivation around vaccines in their community.Our programmes are based on groundbreaking evidence from Nobel-Prize-winning economist Abhijeet Bannerjee and colleagues - together, they can increase immunisation coverage by 25%. 
 We work closely with state governments in Bihar and Maharashtra, and our SMS reminders already reach hundreds of thousands of new parents across India. As we scale our programmes to support the 25 million children born each year, we aim to help close the immunisation gap, safeguarding a happy and healthy future for India's children.Find more information at www.suvita.org

Suvita

While literacy rates for females have improved, the female labor participation rate (FLPR) continued to fall down to ~16% in 2020 from 21% in 2019 (Source: World Bank). Even in urban India, FLPR fell down to 7.35% in April 2020 from 9.7% in 2019-20 as the pandemic hit, according to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy.Similarly, while the national education enrolment ratios have sprung up, the enrolment ratio for girls is far lower than boys in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. According to the National Family and Health Survey (2015-16), only 27% rural women have completed education till 10th grade.Societal constructs and gender norms are at the heart of this problem, along with a lack of access to finances, information, resources, role models, peer networks, mentorship. As per the National Family Health Survey, at least 26 percent girls still get married in India between the ages of 15-19. Less educated younger women become unable to stand for themselves with their marital families and often bear the brunt of domestic violence, thus impacting their autonomy and well-being. Additionally, studies have also shown that early marriage and adolescent pregnancy resulted in body mass depletion and anemia. 
 Development Consortium (DC) with its inherent belief in education began its project Streeksha: Educate to Empower in Alwar, Rajasthan in 2021. The project aims to bridge the current gender gap in professional education and workspaces to encourage financial independence for women in India.DC undertakes the following interventions under Streeksha:<ol><li>Facilitating higher enrolment and ensuring completion of higher education of selected participants from states like Bihar, UP and Rajasthan</li><li>Providing support systems and guidance to the scholars to support them in availing jobs (employment) or starting their own ventures (entrepreneurship)</li><li>Organizing peer support groups &amp; assigning mentors to support emotional development in our scholars</li></ol>Over and above these interventions, DC conducted baseline studies in 2022 in a few selected districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and these studies revealed that the annual income in 90% of the families was below 10,000 rupees. While an overwhelming 94% of the girls wanted to pursue further education, only 28.89% of them said that the family would allow them due to shortage of funds or impending marriage. Almost all the girls interviewed (96%) believe that scholarships can be a major enabler for their pursuit of higher education.   
 Development Consortium (DC) undertakes Project Streeksha with the vision to ​support in developing independent, autonomous, healthy, and empowered women that lead fulfilled and enriched lives. Keeping this in mind, DC envisions short term and long-term impact for our scholars. Significant short-term impact for our scholars would include:<ul><li>Increased access to critical financial resources </li><li>Improved practical skills, social support networks, and employability trainings for effective development and employability</li><li>Improvement in Female Labour Participation Rate in lagging states</li><li>Reduced risk of university/college dropouts and delayed marriage of women candidates </li><li>Increased participation of women in decision-making at family and community levels</li><li>Increased awareness of socio-economic and gender rights to women</li></ul>Significant long-term impact for our scholars would include:<ul><li>Highly educated and working women contribute and inspire their families, communities, and other women (improved communities)</li><li>Financially independent women leading hugely transformed and enriched lives while contributing to the nations’ growth and changed gender norms (improved gender parity)</li><li>Conducive environment in communities towards women education and employment through behavior change</li><li>Empowered women and mothers will lead to a well-informed future generation, resulting in improved lives of the kids and families</li></ul>For more information visit our website <a href="http://www.devcons.org" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">www.devcons.org</a>

Support the education and future of three bright Indian girls!

India has over 355 million menstruating women and girls, but millions of women across the country face uncomfortable and undignified experience with Menstrual Health Management. (Source: Spot On! Improving Menstrual Health and Hygiene in India, 2014)In India, menstruation is surrounded by myths and misconceptions with a long list of “dos” and “don’ts” for women. Hygiene-related practices of women during menstruation are of considerable importance, as it may increase vulnerability to infections and diseases. Poor menstrual hygiene is one of the major reasons for the high prevalence of infections and diseases in the country and contributes significantly to loss of lives. Most of the adolescent girls in villages use rags and old clothes during menstruation, increasing susceptibility to infections and diseases. At least 42 per cent of girls in India use cloth rather than disposable sanitary napkins. (Source: UNICEF)About 43 percent of girls drop out before completing secondary education due to household responsibilities, marriage, child labour, limited relevance of education for employment and employability, distance to school and/or lack of sanitation facilities at the school. Menstruation disrupts the lives of girls in India in ways that are unimaginable in many other countries. 
 Development Consortium (DC) aims to take the necessary action to achieve the following:<ul><li>To increase awareness among adolescent girls on Menstrual Hygiene</li><li>To increase access to and use of high quality sanitary napkins to adolescent girls in rural areas.</li><li>To ensure safe disposal of Sanitary Napkins in an environmentally friendly manner.</li></ul>To deal with the challenges and issues related to menstrual hygiene, DC works on spreading awareness for sanitary pads usage in the intervention states under DC’s Project Sampushti to promote a healthy lifestyle. To meet the demand-supply gap, DC requires support in the distribution of sanitary pads in most remote rural &amp; tribal areas of Uttar Pradesh where access to sanitary pads is limited/unavailable. In short, DC aims to eradicate the issues related to availability &amp; affordability to maintain menstrual hygiene. DC seeks your support to save more women and girls who are suffering from hygiene related issues due to unawareness and unavailability of Sanitary needs.DC aims to distribute a menstrual hygiene kit which contains sanitary pads for 3 months (45-60 pads); soap, detergent powder (500g), a small pamphlet with key information and instructions for pad disposal, and a bag to contain all of the above. 
 A single contribution towards menstrual hygiene can do wonders for a change that matters with effects across all domains of human existence:<ul><li>Education: Many studies argue that inadequate sanitary facilities affect girls’ experiences at school, causing them to miss classes or even drop out.</li><li>Health: Studies have found that giving out sanitary pads to girls leads to a significant reduction in sexually transmitted infections and bacterial vaginosis (Benshaul Tolonen et al. 2019; Phillips-Howard et al. 2016). </li><li>Gender Equality: Promoting menstrual health and hygiene is an important means for safeguarding women’s dignity, privacy, bodily integrity, and self-efficacy to create a gender-equal environment.</li><li>Economy: Improving menstrual hygiene and providing access to affordable menstrual materials can help improve female’s access to education, opening more options for jobs, promotions, and entrepreneurship. </li><li>Environment: Disposable sanitary products contribute to large amounts of global waste. In India alone, roughly 121 million females use an average of eight disposable and non-compostable pads per month, generating 1.021 billion pads waste monthly. (Bhor and Ponkshe 2018; PATH 2017). Ensuring women and girls have access to sustainable and quality products and improving the management of the disposal of menstrual products, can make a big difference to the environment.</li></ul>

Gift menstrual hygiene kits to the marginalized adolescents!

We have witnessed a surge in the spread of COVID-related misinformation and fake news  over the last few months. Vulnerable sections of the population lack the tools and resources to access and understand reliable information, meaning that they are less likely to follow behaviours which reduce the risk to themselves and their communities and ultimately the country. The impact of this “infodemic” can therefore be disproportionately higher for low-income groups, particularly given that they are likely to access substandard and overwhelmed health care facilities if they do fall sick. Inability to contain the spread of the infection can have a negative snowball effect on the rest of the country through increased infection rates and related deaths. 
 We will<ul><li>reach up to one crore people on behalf of the Maharashtra State Government Information Education Communication Bureau (IECB); our 3 lakh existing programme users; populations requested by other state governments as the opportunity arises (partner discussions are ongoing)</li><li>send SMS messages to 70,000 ASHAs on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19 on behalf of the Maharashtra IECB. These messages will nudge ASHAs to disseminate government approved messaging in their communities</li><li>use state of the art adaptive testing techniques to optimise the timing, content and frequency of messages to be maximally effective for encouraging COVID-19-related behaviour change in India. Share these actionable findings in real time with other state governments to assist them in optimising their own mass messaging campaigns.</li><li>utilise the research to improve the effectiveness of mass messaging for immunisation. This will be valuable for ensuring that a COVID-19 vaccine is taken up universally when one is developed.</li></ul> 
 We will ensure vulnerable people receive, understand and act on government messaging about coronavirus through mobile reminders such as mass SMSs and voice messaging. These digital tools act as evidence-based behavioural nudges to encourage health-promoting behaviour (for example SMS reminders increase vaccination rates by 7 percentage points on average). We will also harness behavioural science research to determine the optimal messaging for appropriate behaviour change and share this as real-time guidance for policymakers. Resulting behaviours will prevent the spread of COVID-19 and act as force multipliers in halting the spread of infection in the country.