OUR VISION
Our initial effort has been to look after Dalits, men and women, and help them acquire certain skills and earn at least a subsistence level income with in the village. We have created awareness about available government welfare programmes for the Dalits and the poor, extended them short term credit so that they could acquire some assets that would enable them to practice the skills imparted to earn a livelihood.

We feel that what we have been able to accomplish enables impoverished and unemployed Dalit and poor families improve their living conditions only to the subsistence levels and keep them tied to the villages. In the absence of education and skill acquisition necessary to compete in the modern industrial and service economy of the country, attaining prosperity through social and economic mobility remains only a pipe dream. That makes it necessary for us to rethink our strategy and revise our vision. We believe that the new strategy should help these unfortunate souls to permanently escape from poverty and social and economic deprivation. The rationale and logic behind our vision, which hinges on improving health, education, and skill enhancement of the Dalits, are outlined below.

Though government funded schools function in most of the villages, Dalit children enrolled in them are often discriminated. The school infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired: inadequate class rooms, teaching materials, frequently absenting teachers makes it well nigh impossible for the children from these schools to compete with those from private and commercialized schools in the cities and towns. Even when the schools are well provided for, homes of Dalit children do not provide a conducive environment for pursuing studies: no physical facilities, often uneducated parents, absence of role models, subsistence living conditions that often drive children to drop out of school to work as child laborers and absenteeism due to ill health and inadequate nutrition. In view of the deprivation and degradation over centuries and overt and covert forms of discrimination in school among teachers as well as fellow students, Dalit children generally lack self-confidence and live in a perpetually hostile social and economic environment that lowers, some times irretrievably, their self-esteem.

Though Government-run schools and health facilities are available, the quality of education (as explained before) and health care remains abysmally poor. As the middle and upper classes have the wherewithal to make use of the private education and health facilities now increasingly available, there is no powerful advocacy groups to represent the voice of the Dalits requiring improvement of the quality of services in Government run health and education institutions. As a result, Dalits and other poor are left to the mercy of the poorly run public services. Government policy makers obviously are of the view that over time the benefits of development eventually would trickle down to the Dalits and the poorer classes of the society. However, in view of the rapid pace of development of mass media in its electronic and print versions, poor and Dalits are witnesses to the emerging consumerism and modern consumption patterns but they themselves do not have the resources to take part in it in order to enhance their quality of life. Such a scenario is likely to create frustration, anger, anguish and disappointment among the Dalits because of relative deprivation, though not due to absolute deprivation when basic needs may willy-nilly be met. Our vision is to prevent emergence of such a scenario by first providing them quality education and skill enhancement opportunities so that they can be incorporated into the modern economy. Incidentally we hope that such a strategy would also facilitate our mission work.