Ramesh Dewan welcomes the digging of 190 tube wells for rural sub poverty women in India.

On publication of the 2009 Annual Report for Srijan (Self Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action), Ramesh Dewan as Trustee of The Dewan Foundation thanked Srijan to achieve the digging of 193 tube wells during the year, using funds supplied by The Dewan Foundation.

The tube wells dug in Vidisha District of the state of Madhya Pradesh in India have enabled irrigation of over 2000 acres (which were previously wasteland). 193 families which were previously regarded as sub poverty level (living on under $2 /day) have been helped through this project.

Ramesh Dewan, who is a Publisher and Commercial Property builder/investor, is deeply concerned with gender issues and praised Srijan for helping women during the year with the following projects using The Dewan Foundation funds.

1. Setting up of a Milk Chilling Unit in Duni District in the state of Rajasthan in India and enabling 253 women to acquire milk producing Buffaloes.
2. Enabling 84 families of acquire Buffaloes in Jaisinagar District of Madhya Pradesh, State of India.
3. Setting up of 718 Agricultural Enterprises by poor families in Vidisha Dist of Madhya Pradesh.
4. Setting up of 174 goatery enterprises by sub poverty women in Vidisha Dist of Madhya Pradesh.
5. Enabling 175 families to acquire Buffaloes and 119 families to acquire Cows in Vidisha Dist of Madhya.

Ramesh Dewan thanks Srijan for enabling The Dewan Foundation to help a total of 2440 families set up micro enterprises in order to feed themselves.

SRIJAN was founded as a professional organization to do the following:

1. Undertake grassroots action projects aiming at livelihood
2. Build capacity of Government and NGOs in rural development programmes especially NRM and SHG programmes
3. Provide policy and project design support to donor agencies and recipient Governments. They have done for the World Bank, DFID, SDC, Sida and WFP in Rajasthan, MP and Karnataka.
4. Conduct research for advocacy for pro-poor policies
   

Target Populations and Geographic Priorities

Currently, they work in twelve districts with 30,000 rural poor (women, dalit and tribal). Six of these districts are in Madhya Pradesh, three in Karnataka and three in Rajasthan. They have deliberately chosen to work with socio-economically disadvantaged, particularly women, dalits and tribal people. Locations of work though determined by thematic priorities fall in resource poor as well as hierarchical societies where poor lack access to common property and entitlements. Regions they work in include water stress areas of south Karnataka, central Rajasthan, and Malwa in Madhya Pradesh, and Bundelkhand and tribal parts of Madhya Pradesh.

SRIJAN is a grassroots implementation as well as support agency committed to promote sustainable and self-reliant models of rural development. Their pledge is to reach and reduce poverty among one hundred thousand rural poor families in India by 2011

Ramesh Dewan and The Dewan Foundation work through several other NGOs in different parts of India and have projects in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Trinidad and the UK.

The Dewan Foundation Ltd is a UK based Charity and has nothing to do with John and Susan Dewan which also operates under the name The Dewan Foundation.

 

 

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