Svayamkrishi Endowment

“The soul of India lives in its villages.” -Mahatma Gandhi

India has 640,000 villages, which saw three revolutions since the 1970s: rice and wheat, milk and poultry. As a result, India is number one in milk production and among the top five in poultry. Smart village revolution can be next in providing holistic and integrated development.

Svayam Krishi Endowment was created to support social entrepreneurs and changemakers to build models for sustainable villages and self-reliance among villagers and to spread the models across villages in India. Sustainability means that villagers are able to meet their human potential and flourish within the village on a long-term basis rather than needing to migrate to cities for sustenance. Self-reliance means that families and individuals within the village are able to meet their needs without external assistance.

The Endowment meets these objectives:

1. through the election and support of Ashoka Fellows whose work strongly supports these objectives and who will bring significant pattern change across India, and/or

2. through enabling young people in the villages to play important roles contributing to these same objectives, first (a) by helping them to dream their dream, build their team, and change their world for the better, and second (b) by enabling them to be role models and to provide active and broad-impact self-reliance leadership.

Dr. Ratnam Chitturi has taken this initiative with the hope that many others will join and contribute to this Endowment to bring a sustained benefit to rural India.

Host/Sponsor: Ashoka Foundation

Partner: Connecting Dreams Foundation

Founder: Ratnam Chitturi

Contact: ajay [dot] kakarla [at] pearlsofindia [dot] org