Community Empowerment

Our aim is to work with farming communities to strengthen their livelihoods and create opportunities for young people to flourish.

In 2012, the Mann region experienced a crippling drought. Kerabai Sagar, an old customer of Maan Deshi Bank approached the bank to mortgage her gold. “You might loan me the money to buy fodder for my animals but how can I buy water? Who will you work with if we all are forced to migrate to cities?” she remarked. Mann Deshi set up a cattle camp. It lasted over one-and-half years and 14,000 animals and 4,000 families lived in shacks in the scorching heat.

Our Community Programme was born. Today, our programme has expanded and we work with farming communities to create localized and sustainable livelihood solutions. We hope to scale by sharing these lessons learned and best practices through partnerships with organizations across India.



To learn more about how our programmes make a difference read our Stories of Change.

WATER CONSERVATION

We have constructed 16 check dams and have rejuvenated 517 wells around the Mann Taluka region of the Satara District.

The dams help

  1. Rejuvenate ground water thus creating year round access to water
  2. Expand arable area and facilitate additional cash crops
  3. Expand businesses like animal husbandry and dairy farming
  4. Enable new businesses such as fisheries
  5. Provide clean water for health and sanitation purposes

OUTCOMES

30,000 people

have benefited from access to clean water.


2x increase

in farmers’ incomes because of additional cash crops planted and new businesses such as animal husbandry and fisheries developed.


1,300 hectares

of land have been irrigated.


IMPACT

Reduced migration away from villages.


Women of the communities spend less time finding and transporting water.


Farmers have held on to their main assets - livestock.

“My family and I used to migrate 300 kilometres from here to find work for four months every year. But the dams changed all that. We no longer move every year. We live here now. Now I have water fifteen minutes away from my house!”

Kalpana Bangar, Goat Herder

“I can grow many different crops now that the water has come. Earlier, the government used to deliver tanker water to us once a week. It was very difficult. The dams have made our community self-sufficient. We don’t depend on anyone.”

Arun Sawant, Farmer

“Earlier people were not willing to marry into our community as we had to work all day to get access to water. Even the tanker water would smell and make us ill. Now everything is different. We have access to clean water. Our pride as been restored.”

Sainappa Lubbal, farmer from Shirtav

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Mann Deshi Champions

We identify prospective outstanding athletes, provide them with excellent sports facilities and nurture their overall physical, mental and social development.

We aim to

  1. Create better opportunities for young girls and boys in rural India to play sports both in and out of school
  2. Create a mobile app to bring talented athletes, coaches and funders on the same platforms
  3. Train local coaches to identify and train talented athletes
  4. Offer financial and professional coaching support for talented young rural athletes to participate in state, national and international competitions
  5. Focus on and increase girls participation in sports
  6. Promote a career in sports

OUTCOMES

7,000 athletes

inducted into the programme.


300 athletes

competed in district, state, national and international level competitions.


In 2011, one of our athletes Sarita Bhise ran the 800 meter at a local event and won. At that time, she didn’t own a pair of decent shoes. Today she is the captain of Maharashtra’s Under-17 team for field hockey. It is an enormous achievement because she belongs to the local nomadic shepherd community and becoming the captain of field hockey team means she is now the primary breadwinner of her family. She is now a role model for all the children here.”

Prabhat Sinha, Founder Mann Deshi Champions Programme



Youth Development Center

Mann Deshi champions youth development center is golden opportunity for girls. Mann Deshi has started career development program for girls of rural Maharashtra. Program provides training for self - defense, personality development, story telling, learning English, driving, interview skills.

Along with physical training and exam training Mann Deshi provideds free library, shoes, sports kits , every day Nutritional and healthy food is given. The objective is to help rural girls to get themselves at the next level of personal and professional development. The program is supported by Rythm Foundation.



Mann Deshi Elite Athletes Programme

This programme, supported by IndusInd Bank, nurtures young high potential athletes - particularly young women athletes - who are economically disadvantaged. They are given training, nutritional support, life-skills workshops and scholarships.

We have excellent facilities at our headquarters in Mhaswad and also use the facilities at the Sanas ground, the Nasik Government Sports School and the Balewadi Sports School. Our athletes participate in a number of sports such as track and field, wrestling, badminton, field hockey and swimming and we work on building their personal fitness regimes as well as their confidence.

We also regularly invite guest coaches and highly accomplished national and international athletes to meet and interact with our athletes, as well take our athletes on field trips and encourage them to share their stories on the Mann Deshi Community Radio, which has over 50,000 regular listeners. Most of our athletes end up playing at the national level.


Meet Prajakta Shinde

Prajakta Shinde is from Dahiwadi village. She is a daughter of single mother. Prajakta comes from an underprivilaged community, for her there would be no other option than getting employed. At Mann Deshi's Youth Development Center Prajakta developed skill set for stage daring, improved her English and understood methods of giving an Interview. Today Prajakta proudly says that she has secured a job at Tata Consultancy in Pune. While speaking at the Mann Deshi Tarang Radio she said, she had never imagined that she would land a job at the place like Tata Consultancy.

Bicycles for Girls

We give girls bicycles so that they save time on their daily commute and can continue going to school even when it’s in a different village. We have seen that this ensures that girls complete high school.

We aim to

  1. Remove distance as an obstacle to education
  2. Save time on the daily commute to school for other activities
  3. Encourage girls to be confident and take an active role in their own education

OUTCOMES

9,000 bicycles

have been donated since 2002.


150 bicycles

on average are donated to school girls each year.

"I remember the case of a student whose father was too poor to buy her a bicycle and because her home was so far from our school, he wanted her to drop out. But because of the Mann Deshi bicycle she was able to continue. She's now pursuing a medical degree."

Chanda Mane, Principal, Gyan Vardhini High School

Farm to Market

We help bring small and marginal farmers together to aggregate their produce and create direct access to markets in order to help them set better and more sustainable prices.

We aim to

  1. Create a collective of farmers in order to have more leverage to set prices
  2. Facilitate direct access to markets
  3. Set up warehouse and cold storage facilities in order to increase production capabilities
  4. Design special loans to mitigate cash flow issues and avoid distress sales

OUTCOMES

1,200 Farmers

from 40 villages have been mobilized to work together to achieve fare pricing.


First sale of 1,700 tons

of farm produce successfully facilitated.


Our first woman-led Farmer Producer Company

was set up with our help in Dec 2018 that aggregated smallholder farmers and facilitating access to inputs, markets, capital & technology.

Healthcare For All

The Agriculture and Soil Testing Lab focuses on providing women farmers with access to scientific knowledge on soil, water and crop health. With the help of this knowledge, we aim to increase farming incomes and yields while also safeguarding soil and water health.

We aim to

  1. Improve primary healthcare, with the hope that it will reduce the need for secondary and tertiary services.
  2. Provide quality healthcare services to last mile women.
  3. Encourage women to save for their health, through our health savings tool.
  4. Reduce women's dependence on men, in terms of money and transport, to seek healthcare.
  5. Provide access to affordable healthcare.



Diagnostic center

We have constructed a state-of-the-art Diagnostic Center which provides radiology and pathology services. This is one-of-a-kind within a 70km radius that charges government rates.This center serves 400,000 people living in Mann and Khatav Tehsil's.



Public private partnership hospital

The Gondawale Khurd Rural Hospital in Satara is led by Mann Deshi, supported by our corporate partners HSBC India and Cipla Foundation, in collaboration with the district administration of Satara.This partnership was begun to help stifle the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic whilst also undertaking research to assess the needs of the communities and cater accordingly to those needs.



Health camps

We have established regular health camps for women and their communities. These started in 2019, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when we realized that non communicable diseases are happening all around us and impacting numerous people. While rates of diabetes and hypertension are high, there are very few people in rural India who know they have these conditions.

At these health camps we carry out health screenings, for diabetes and hypertension. For children we also screen for vision. These healthcamps are aimed at preventative healthcare practices.



Community healthcare workers

We are working to empower women to provide doorstep healthcare services, in partnership with Dvara Healthcare Finance. In this program we recruit women and train them to carry out doorstep healthcare services.

In partnership with GeorgeTown University’s MedStar Hospital and Dvara Health Finance we are working to develop a curriculum to train community healthcare workers that will be shared with the government in the future.



NEEM Health Project

A study of 179 households in rural Satara conducted by Mann Deshi and analyzed by Dvara Health Finance shows households spend a quarter of their monthly income on healthcare. In response to these findings we have started a unique pilot program in partnership with Dvara. At present we have the following components under the NEEM project:

  • Comprehensive screening at the door-step of rural women
  • Those found to be at risk for specific conditions in the screening phase are referred for additional testing/ consultations to the Mann Deshi healthcare center. The price for various diagnostic procedures are significantly below market price.
  • Tailored medicine and nutrition plans are drawn up and monitored by the CHW and remote ‘Digital Doctor’. Access to this service is provided on a subscription basis. A family of 4 has a healthcare team (CHW + Digital Doctor) for Rs. 50/month.
  • Regular savings into a wallet created specifically for health expenditures. In a later stage, we also plan to bring in health insurance coverage.

IMPACT

Over 8,000 recovered in the public private partnership hospital..


Over 50,000 women screened at health camps.


Over 200 crores saved in healthcare costs.

Agriculture and Soil Testing

The Agriculture and Soil Testing Lab focuses on providing women farmers with access to scientific knowledge on soil, water and crop health. With the help of this knowledge, we aim to increase farming incomes and yields while also safeguarding soil and water health.

We aim to

  1. Provide access to modern scientific knowledge to farmers
  2. Reduce costs of production and increase yields experienced by farmers
  3. Provide farmers with crop management and pest management training to be able to cope with the challenges of climate change
  4. Support farmers and encourage them to adopt 100% organic farming

OUTCOMES

Successfully Set-up the first of its kind Agriculture and Soil Testing Lab

We have successfully set-up an Agriculture and Soil Testing Lab. It is fully equipped with a chemical lab and a crop pathology centre. We aim to provide services to over 20,000 farmers per year

Championing Green

We are encouraging our women farmers to take climate action into their own hands, and become “Climate Change Warriors”.

We aim to

  1. Encourage farmers to take climate action
  2. Nudge farmers towards more sustainable farming practices
  3. Provide farmers with solar powered facilities

Creating a value chain for millets


2023 has been named ‘International Year of Millets’. This is because millets; are resilient to climate change, have a low carbon and water footprint, are less expensive and nutritionally superior and can provide nutritional security and they act as a shield against nutritional deficiencies.

Mann Deshi is working to create a value chain for millets, encouraging farmers to grow this crop which is good for the planet and good for them. This is one part of Mann Deshi’s efforts to tackle climate change while also improving the financial stability and livelihood of marginalized farmers.

Solar Powered Cold Storage Facilities


The cold storage facility was built to prevent farmers falling victim to volatile prices in the market, enabling them to store their produce when prices are low and sell it later when the price returns to a higher level. It keeps produce fresh, prevents food wastage and enables farmers to earn a better income.

It is essential to farmers’ livelihoods, however it requires a significant amount of electricity to run and therefore has a negative impact on the environment. For this reason we have sought out funding to cover the cost of installing solar panels for this facility, enabling us to combat climate change without compromising farmers’ livelihoods.

Tree Planting Initiatives


Mann Deshi undertakes tree planting and rewilding initiatives. The environmental benefits include; a reduction in greenhouse gasses in the environment, increased levels of oxygen in the air, improved biodiversity, a return of endangered species, a reduction in soil erosion and improved ground water retention.

We are involving our women farmers in these projects, and educating them on the various benefits for the environment as a whole and them as individual farmers. We are seeing these farmers undertaking tree planting initiatives on their own land, enabling them to combat climate change and benefit from improved crop yields and decreased input costs at the same time (through a reduction in soil erosion, improved ground water retention and improved biodiversity).

Soil Testing


Through the Agriculture and Soil testing Lab we are nudging farmers towards more sustainable farming practices, by advising women farmers on how to build healthy soils that sequester more carbon, have a higher water holding capacity and reduce the need for carbon-intensive fertilizers. Through adopting these farming practices, we are helping them to improve their crop yield without compromising the environment. Our goal is to support farmers and encourage them to adopt 100% organic farming.

Farmers in rural India are facing an increasing number of challenges as a result of climate change.


More extreme and irregular weather patterns are leading to farmers getting low yields and poor quality crops. The result is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for farmers to earn a stable income.