Messages from our Board Members

Dear well-wishers and friends of SVYM,

Thirty-eight years have now gone by since the founding of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement. From wanting to ensure health care for rural India, to bringing about social change, to building human and social capital; it has been a long, arduous, and rewarding journey. When we started talking about investing in building human and social capital as a theory of change for sustainable human development more than a decade ago, few would have thought that our experiments would bear the kind of results that we are now seeing. Fewer still would have dreamt that words like human capital and social capital will become part of development practice and mainstream narratives embedded in the approaches, programs of Governments and Multilateral Institutions from across the world.

This annual report continues our attempts at documenting and reporting how these efforts are now bearing visible social & economic consequences, both at the individual and community levels. We also realise that we cannot rest on the laurels and recognitions that have been coming our way. While we have developed benchmarkable standards of managing human and financial resources and organization management processes, we still have miles to go in creating similar standards in monitoring our development initiatives. SVYM is also keen on developing practices of social accountability that can build on what we have evolved over the last many decades. All these are our continued efforts to enhance the standards of stakeholder ownership of our programs and we are hoping that these will further improve our organizational efficiency and program effectiveness.

As we come to terms with the demands of a post covid world and a dynamic social ecosystem, we are looking forward to new opportunities that emerging entities like the Social Stock Exchange (SSE) throw up. Now that SEBI has notified it and both the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange are preparing the  ground for actualizing it, it is only a question of time before SSE is fully functional. We at SVYM see this as yet another mechanism to strengthen the sector, access untapped resources, produce social impact and ensure greater accountability. It is also up to larger NGOs and all other stakeholders to ensure that one does not lose sight of enabling smaller NGOs being included in this initiative. As time rolls on, there is also the feeling that a lot more needs to be done. A lot more expectations to be fulfilled and many more development challenges to be addressed. We also know that SVYM is one amongst the several platforms attempting to do our bit, but then it is by sharing knowledge, expertise and experience can one truly grow. SVYM continues to do this through both VLEAD and VIIS and will soon be reintroducing a redesigned program for Development practitioners. We are eternally grateful to society for the support that we continue to get-from other NGO partners, Governments (State&Central), Corporates & philanthropic individuals.
Thanks to all of them for helping reaffirm Swami Vivekananda’s statement that ‘Huge things grow out of small undertakings. This could not have been truer as one will acknowledge going through our annual report that we humbly place in your hands.

The continued presence of the pandemic had led to disruption of a lot of healthcare & other outreach activities across the country. In the regions that we are active, this was minimal mostly to the implicit faith & trust that the people have in us. They responded positively to our communication and participated in all the programs. Staying true to our development paradigm of developing human & social capital, all of our activities have been done with a sense of service & empowerment, which ensures that the dignity & self respect of our community partners is retained. That is the reason why the organisation considers everyone as a stakeholder & does not differentiate between a donor, an employee, beneficiary or even the Government. This is very well reflected in the way the tribal leaders volunteered to be the first recipients of the vaccine which made vaccine acceptance among tribals a smooth process. Individually too, when Mr. Ramesh was being nursed and taken care of at our facility in Saragur, he was encouraged to contribute a small amount to his treatment despite the major chunk being taken care of by the “Yogakshema Samiti”. Latha’s Sani-entrepreneurship or Veerabhadra Swami’s coronation as the Swacchata Saarthi are stories which can inspire many & also well up many eyes.

Although the rural & tribal hinterlands were protected in the first and to a certain extent the second waves of  COVID, there was a steady stream of cases throughout because of the renewed migration of people. VMH played a pivotal role in alleviating this distress & was duly recognized as a “Centre of Excellence” by the Deccan Herald group. As we were addressing the pressing issue of COVID, we have not lost out on the long term focus on Non-Communicable Diseases(NCD) through the EINSTEIN project, where collection & analysis of data were completed with initiation of interventions too during this year. Getting the children back to their schools was a herculean task indeed, but our teachers & other staff were in mood to relent either. The picture of many tribal parents eagerly waiting for their turn to deposit their contribution of the fee to the school is indicative of the feeling among tribals to be an equal partner in their child’s education, and also, the school being accepted as a part of their community. The community radio, Janadhwani played true to its name by being the voice of education & empowerment during these tough & uncertain times, so much so that the district-in-charge minister found it necessary to be a part of a talk show with us. The entire organisation always found a strong footing to stay true to its vision of building an equitable society free of deprivation and strife with the timely support it received from institutional and individual donors, friends and well wishers.

Thank You!

Dear Partners in the Development Journey,

Unprecedented, uncertain, trying & testing times, disruption, resilience, digital transformation, remote learning, working-from-home, new-normal􀀀 these were the buzz words used in COVID-19 pandemic during the last two years. It is indeed very unfortunate that despite our best collective efforts, many lives and livelihoods were lost during the pandemic. However, when one reads through the report, one will notice the value of investing in building human and social capital in realizing sustainable development goals. The communities that we serve not just survived through the pandemic but continued to build their life with hope and confidence through the pandemic. This kind of development was possible because of collaboration and partnership that SVYM was able to build and sustain over 38 years.

Much of our work during the year naturally focused on ensuring the health and well-being of communities that we serve. It was manifested as prioritizing COVID related measures during peaks of pandemic, yet not losing sight of addressing non-COVID health issues. COVID, in a way, was a perfect opportunity to get closer to communities with our work and strengthen the system to deliver to community needs. I must congratulate and acknowledge the work of the entire SVYM team towards this single mission of improving the health and well-being of communities that we serve during the peaks of COVID waves.

It is also heartening that our efforts in ensuring equitable access to quality foundational education to every child is yielding results. Today, the children are not just aspiring but actually pursuing their dreams of higher education. Further augmenting the capacity, we are now focusing on strengthening infrastructure at our Viveka Tribal Centre for Learning and Viveka PU College. On the other hand, empowering communities through skilling and creation of livelihood opportunities is creating rural entrepreneurs in addition to creating jobs locally.

Our biggest realization was that situations like COVID-19 could be the perfect opportunity to renew our energies to build the dream of resurgent India together. We hope to maintain this momentum and grow this development work by many folds in the coming years.