Sustainable Strategy for Working with Indian Villages

Karuna-Shechen is tackling the challenge of how to scale our services in India to meet the growing demand.  Just five years ago we helped a dozen remote villages in rural India; today, we are working in several hundred.

We will be implementing a new strategy that will allow us to increase the amount of people we serve while meeting the specific needs and aspirations of each community.

Starting this year, we are appointing local coordinators to help manage field projects. Rooted in the communities and districts they represent, these coordinators will provide their expertise and leadership, communicate with villagers, implement projects, and monitor progress along the way — helping to ensure representation and long-term sustainability.

Our initial rollout of this strategy includes 160 villages in three districts. Collecting feedback and data along the way, we will tweak the processes and then expand this model, enabling us to help additional villages without losing the mutual trust we’ve established thus far.

Our New Strategy in Action:

*Panchayat: an administrative grouping of several small communities.