Why Seva Mandir?
- Because it helps people who are among the world’s most deprived: Click here for more details on the need.
- And because the help it offers is very effective. All who know Seva Mandir recognise how impressive it is (click here to read what outsiders say).
- Its work generates real and sustainable improvements for some of the poorest people in the world.
- It is highly cost-effective.
- It is constantly learning, outstandingly accountable, and influential both locally and globally.
- It collaborates with a number of world-renowned academics and institutions to ensure that its work is as effective as possible and shared across the development sector. Click here to see some of these partners.
Real and sustainable improvements
It generates tangible improvements in health, education, livelihoods and natural resources.
It does so by encouraging participatory democracy. This empowerment turns projects into sustained investments, because
- improvements last when the community takes real ownership, and
- the enhanced social capital of fairer communities and active citizenship goes on to create benefits in every aspect of villagers’ lives.
Cost-effective
Money given to Seva Mandir is well-spent. It does not go through the state, governments, officialdom or the powerful, but directly supports the poorest people. Seva Mandir is a modestly-paid organization. A poor family in rural Rajasthan can eat for a year for the money a family spends in a London pizza restaurant in one evening.
Learning, accountability and impact
Seva Mandir is self-critical, innovative, realistic, patient and determined. It is a radically transparent and accountable organisation, renowned for the quality of its self-evaluation. As a result it is constantly learning.
Because it knows its communities very well, it can design really effective programmes for them, maximising its local impact.
It inspires governments, NGOs and academics across the world to engage with its work, focusing global expertise on effective local action.
It takes part in collaborations with world-renowned academics and development experts (three of the economists it has worked with have won the Nobel Prize for economics in the last few years).