FOOD India is a 20-year-old non-profit organization conducting research on social development and implementing welfare programs in the field of employment generation, poverty alleviation, cost effective housing, education, health, water and sanitation, energy conservation, ICTs, electronic NGO networking, E-commerce, institutional and capacity building for women networks.
Our mission is to foster sustainable development among the poor through social development programmes by advocating participatory approach in implementing programs.
FOOD is registered under the public charitable trust act and registered with the Home Ministry of India and is one of the approved organizations for receiving foreign contribution for its activities.
We are best known for our activities in the field of water and sanitation, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), cost effective housing, rural development, small and micro enterprise development especially for women. The 20 years of experience in development work and networking with local, regional and international organizations is our knowledge bank. The mainstay of our existence and our steady growth over the past 20 years has been mainly due to innovative approach and transparency with our partners.
FOOD considers empowerment and networking of the poor as its major goal and objective. Empowerment can be one of the basics that can enable groups to improve their conditions through socio-economic development programs. FOOD proposes to reach the neglected segments of rural population and target them as a priority by finding our way into remote & rural areas to identify the poorest segments of communities who are normally excluded from development processes because of their isolation, lack of assets and vulnerability.
FOOD proposes to engage the poor in capacity-building activities as a major component in the program and lay the foundation for creating local groups and organizations that can then link with other groups having common interests through federations, coalitions, networks and advance their interests to overcome their poverty.
FOOD is recognized for its role in developing new initiatives, new programs and components of programs, new approaches and new mechanisms to address development problems and issues. FOOD has been in the forefront of many innovations that have provided ideas and models replicated or adapted in other settings and situations. With its generally flexible organizational structure and characteristics - organizational independence, participatory structures and willingness to spend time on dialogue and learning - its been able to experiment on new institutional mechanisms and on different approaches that add value to projects.
FOOD possesses extensive knowledge of local conditions. Sometimes the answer is not innovation, but rather a sober consideration of the normal needs of small enterprises with serious attention to how these needs can be sustainably served. FOOD has long-term experience in processing baseline data and information on the local economy and infrastructure, the existence of self-help organizations and the major obstacles to development.
FOOD sets precondition of active participation by the community in the development process - participation by the community not only in the implementation of programs but also in their conception, design, monitoring and evaluation. Over the years, FOOD has developed highly effective participatory processes to increase the involvement of the poor in its own development processes and analyze to act upon their situations through their own eyes. Many of the participatory tools and methodologies have gone on to be adopted by other development agencies and, increasingly by the governments.
FOOD emphasizes on benefits that go beyond the scope of the project and the issue of sustainability as a key concern.
With these distinct features FOOD is a player in the fight against rural poverty and hunger, in quest of opportunities for collaborative action towards substantially reducing the vulnerability of the poor.
Our target groups include rural, semi-urban and urban slum areas.
INFRASTRUCTURE
We have our own office building in Madras measuring 2000 sq ft. Our office is equipped with modern office equipment with state of the art technology in office automation and communication. Our office Local Area Network (LAN) has 12 computers fully loaded with appropriate hardware, peripherals and software. We have a dedicated Internet server with high-speed data access to the Internet that is online 24 hours. We have 20 telephone lines out of which 10 lines are connected to modems for in-bound data access by our office staff and the rest are available for voice calls. We have a well-equipped library with 20,000 books in printed and microfiche format exclusively on appropriate technology.
Other infrastructure available with us include DSL, inkjet & laser printers, digital multifunction photocopier, 2 flat-bed scanners, data projector, slide projector, video projector, digital camera, and online UPS for all the systems. The value of the fixed assets of FOOD is around USD 125,000.