We were lucky to catch up with Sunita Palita recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sunita, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
For close to twenty years, from the mid seventies to the early nineties, I had been working with various national and international organisations in the development sector, and was disillusioned with the system. International aid and local fundraising meant that there was limitless resource generation – millions, if not billions of dollars to go around – but the rich kept getting richer, and the poor kept getting poorer.
Add to that if you told anyone in the 80’s that you work in the development sector, you would often hear a remark suggesting that you must thus be earning a lot of money!
In other words, the 1980s was an era in which social development was fast gaining a notorious reputation of being a ‘for profit business avenue’, by the elite, for the elite. An exploitation of resources in the name of the underprivileged masses by the privileged few.
I constantly dreamt of a just and equal society where the gap between the “have’s and the have not’s” would vanish and human beings lived in harmony, sharing resources equitably.
(Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognises that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.)
I realised that within the development sector a paradigm shift was needed!
So I took a risk, and quit my high-paying job in the development sector and decided to start my own organisation that would truly be a paradigm shift in development work.
Thus was born SAHAS.
Sunita, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I started SAHAS (Social Action for Human Aid & Solidarity), as an independent non-profit social development organisation in New Delhi, India, in 1995 with a group of professionals from different disciplines. Our vision was to provide equal access to quality education to underprivileged children and dignified employment opportunities to women – driving marginalised families towards upward mobility – and achieve all this without any monetary donations.
In the last 29 years hundreds of marginalised individuals and families have benefited through the work at SAHAS.
SAHAS India is built on the Vedic philosophical ideal of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ – the world is one family – through a grassroots developmental model that was unique for its time, which is best described as Local Area Networking (LAN) – my own version of ‘crowdfunding’ before the term existed.
Keep in mind that the entire functioning of SAHAS was without any monetary donations. This meant that at every step of the way, for any and all needs of the organisation, someone had to be contacted and convinced to help with the resource required directly. This meant that for everything that the organisation needed to exist – everything ranging from a small little pencil, all the way to the space we functioned in – was received as donation in ‘kind’, instead of ‘funds’.
When on the rare occasion some ‘cash’ requirement arose, it was taken care of through our LAN network – as i already mentioned, my own version of crowdfunding!
However, since 2015 SAHAS has been without active premises for its projects, as the free-leased space that SAHAS had operated from since 1995 had to be vacated at the request of the donor.
For the first 14 years SAHAS operated 3 distinct projects namely NEEV (Novel Endeavours in Educational Ventures), SATWIK (SAHAS Trained Women in Kitchen) and SWATI (SAHAS Women and Tailoring Initiatives).
NEEV which functioned until India enforced the Right to Education Act (RTE) in 2009, sought to to integrate children from marginalised backgrounds with their privileged peers in high-quality education. SAHAS went on to achieve 100% scholarship for these children in mainstream public schools for the entire duration of 13 years of their education and the scholarship/freeship included tuition fee, bus fee, uniform, books, and other expenses.
In other words, once admitted, these children of daily wage labourers, domestic help staff, rickshaw pullers, unorganised sector workers, factory workers – these children could actually continue their schooling for 13 years, and didn’t need to drop out because their families could not pay for the expenses private public schooling demands.
Over 250 children, across 14 years, achieved academic parity with their privileged peers and eventually exhibited higher college attendance rates as compared to their marginalised peers from non-mainstream/ government schools, and eventually continue to achieve socio-economic stability with better employability prospects, well-adjusted socio-psychological development, and an overall healthier life with a self-reported sense of well-being and positive future prospects.
As of today SAHAS continues to run its other 2 projects SATWIK and SWATI:
SATWIK, a program that trains working class women to run kitchens for tiffin delivery services, grew organically from NEEV when we enabled the mothers of our enrolled students to use the NEEV school kitchen to prepare freshly made nourishing meals not just for their own children but also for paying customers in the neighbourhood. This became a source of additional income for women who otherwise earned a meagre living as cleaners and cooks in middle class houses. SATWIK flourished into a tiffin service supplying 100 lunches and 100 dinners cooked by the mother of the children, to the same ‘affluent’ homes they used to work in. The project of course was structured with a head chef, and all other requisite trained teams and structures, and continued to run the tiffin service for many years. It also evolved into a cafe for an interim few years by the name “What’s for Lunch”.
These women were now entrepreneurs and business owners!
Since 2015 when we had to give up our working space the SATWIK project evolved into a scaled down alternative model where the SAHAS women cook-up organic goodies, health foods and superfoods derived from the ancient wisdom of traditional Indian recipes from my own home kitchen. These recipes have a long shelf life, unlike cooked food for tiffins, and thus this is the only model that is currently sustainable.
SWATI, is a program that provides infrastructure and training in tailoring services. The SWATI project grew from acknowledging the tailoring skills already possessed by women associated with SAHAS. To give the best tailoring input to learners, teachers at SWATI were trained at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi, which enhanced their employability at local boutiques and export houses. Today, several women trained by SAHAS run independent businesses, stitching cushion covers, cloth bags, and table linen for individual and bulk orders for offline sales which SAHAS enables through our network.
2015 onwards the SWATI project moved to my home portico/verandah. The pandemic and the subsequent lockdown were extremely harsh on families from marginalised communities everywhere, as also the SWATI women. Quickly contextualising SWATI, machinery and materials were relocated and redistributed to the homes of the women who started making and distributing 3-ply washable cotton masks. Over the three years of the pandemic, approximately 50,000 masks were produced. All masks were environment friendly , re-usable and made as per WHO guidelines. Serving a dual purpose- the masks, a set costing INR 240, generated income for the women making them, and were distributed first to the most marginalised groups such as the homeless and daily wage earners through our networks.
SAHAS dubbed this initiative as a ‘pledge a mask’ drive, and hundreds of individuals from affluent backgrounds made pledges across a few hundred to a few thousand rupees. The initiative was a huge success – especially for the most marginalised as it provided a sustainable monthly income to run their homes.
Since their inception, SAHAS projects have successfully enabled high life satisfaction markers for these women, and their families, across development indices beginning with dignified employment – and thus economic stability and growth, agency, safety, health, psychological well-being and positive future prospects.
SATWIK and SWATI, our kitchen and fabric projects respectively, are functioning at a scaled down version for the past few years due to limitations of space, infrastructure and working capital. Post pandemic we also started providing a platform to SATWIK and SWATI women for selling their products online through our website sahasindia.org
With SWATI and SATWIK both running from my home premises alongside an e-shop that has enormous potential to help many more women multiply their earnings through larger markets, SAHAS India is at a critical crossroads. For the first time ever in its existence, SAHAS is seeking funding to consolidate, rebuild, and enhance its development efforts.
There is a lot more work that needs to be done to equip marginalised children and women with the resources to lead better, more economically empowered lives.
Please come forth and help SAHAS India to continue its mission of scalable development efforts at the grassroots.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Resilience is about weathering storms. But true strength comes not from facing hardship alone, but from rising together. I haven’t faced the same struggles as the incredible individuals I’ve worked with. Theirs is the true resilience, forged in the fires of marginalisation.
However, navigating a non-profit for 30 years, bootstrapping, adapting through the pandemic, and now seeking new paths – that’s required a different kind of resilience. Not solo bravado, but the strength of the collective.
Today, I stand before you, not claiming personal hardship, but seeking your support. Together, let’s empower the truly resilient – those who have never stopped fighting for a better life.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start?
When SAHAS India started in 1995, the Indian NGO sector had acquired some disrepute for misallocating resources more often than not. We were starting work in an environment where a call for monetary donations was likely to be regarded with some suspicion. However, our LAN model of social development was unique. We believed in creating micro ecosystems within residential communities where those with plenty (of material resources, knowledge, or time) would share just a little to benefit those who were unequivocally considered ‘have-nots’. Even the poshest area of New Delhi has a nearby locality of poor people that supplies daily wage workers, and house maintenance staff to these areas.
There is no privileged household in the city that does not encounter poverty-stricken people on a daily basis in the form of garbage collectors, cooks, cleaners, gardeners and more. We see their plight daily, and every now and then we have a spark of a thought to help them in some meaningful way. SAHAS hoped to fan this spark into action.
We ran all our projects entirely and exclusively on donations in kind. There are some incredible stories in the history of SAHAS where we boldly reached out, not just to local shopkeepers, but also to CEOs of big manufacturing firms to get resource donations such as textbooks and pencils for our school, and reams of unstitched fabric for our tailoring programs. When we first set out to start the NEEV preschool with the idea that we would achieve this goal with zero monetary assistance, it took a fair amount of faith and patience to access willing benefactors. The school was set up in a residential apartment donated by my partner. It was converted into an ultramodern learning space at par with the best schools in the city by a top architect who provided his services pro bono. The powerful ideas presented in a document of a few pages and a phone call were enough for him to design the NEEV school for no fee, for which he would have otherwise charged a one or two hundred thousand – a princely sum for that time.
As an architect, he necessarily had to visit the space to take measurements etc. but with him, and with all in-kind donors in the future, I took multiple verbal assurances that if anyone was committing anything to SAHAS, they would regularly visit the project site, preferably unannounced, to ensure that their contributions were being rightly utilised.
When it came to the actual construction of the school our costs for building and renovation looked to be running into a few millions. Since our school was located close to a trader’s market, we reached out to nearby shops, from local brick and sand suppliers to hardware stores, for help, and the support came pouring in. All the construction material, bricks, tiles, sand, cement etc. we needed was donated. The labour costs for construction were borne by my personal savings. It is worth noting that while people were more than willing to help once they understood the LAN concept, we never asked for exorbitant contributions. On the contrary, the wall tiles supplier, for example, who was happy to be part of the movement, was asked to provide only 12 boxes of tiles for the washrooms, which comprised a fraction of his stocks. Similarly, the sand supplier provided 4 rickshaw-loads of sand, the hardware store gave 4 taps, the brick shop provided 100 bricks, and so on. When it came to equipping the school with learning material, we arranged for teaching material and stationery from the shops in the locality. Across the years, with contributors at every tiny step of the way meant that hundreds of people donated their services or material resources.
There has never been any dearth of Good Samaritans in the world but we at SAHAS made sure that the contributions we sought were small enough for the individual to easily part with.
Running social development programs brick by brick, one tiny step at time, was indeed a different way of doing things – some people took time to understand the concept, and sometimes things took a humorous turn along this path too.
In one such incident, I was looking to source 20 boxes of 10 pencils each for our classrooms, but I could not reach out to our local stationery shops since we had already taken material from them, and I did not want them to feel stretched. So, I just picked up the telephone directory and cold called the largest writing equipment company in India. By some stroke of luck, I managed to reach the regional general manager who listened to me patiently, and, inspired by my ideas, agreed to make the requisite donation, albeit after some due diligence – to explain the next steps to me, he needed to know the total pencil requirement of our organisation. I told him we were looking for twenty boxes of pencils per year. Thinking that I meant 20 cartons of pencils (with each carton containing a thousand pencils each), he told me he was happy to provide the twenty thousand pencils I needed! When I clarified to him that we only needed 200 pencils, he was both amused and astonished. He immediately connected me to the relevant supplier with a commitment that made the company one of our many regular donors.
SAHAS India was envisioned as an alternative to traditional development models, which I saw as exploitative and inefficient. The organisation emphasises shared responsibility and resource distribution across society, fostering a more just and equal world. SAHAS India strongly argues that the gap between privileged and underprivileged harms everyone, creating a fractured society. The model our organisation follows emphasises that a just and equitable society benefits all.
Almost 30 years since we started, and for the first time ever, SAHAS is seeking funding to consolidate, rebuild, and enhance its development efforts.
The raison d’etre for why we are moving away from the LAN model of only in-kind donations and creating a large crowdfunding movement is reflected in our plans and vision for the future.
The plan for the next phase of SAHAS is multi pronged:
SAHAS 1.0
Comprehensively document the work done at SAHAS as SAHAS 1.0 through detailed literature and documentary audio visual content all uploaded onto a free to access website, and across our socials.
This would enable awareness and advocacy of the LAN model and seek calls for ‘Start your own SAHAS’ where individuals and families from anywhere who are keen to start a SAHAS like model, would be identified, and provided comprehensive support to start their own LAN model organisation in their locality.
This would come to be known as a social franchise model, albeit with no strings attached.
The idea is to inspire individuals through the SAHAS story, and if they are interested, work with them as partners to set up their own endeavour. Though the set up and running of the organisation is a rewarding journey, it would nonetheless likely pose challenges at every step along the way. And it is here that SAHAS would provide support through its experience and network. SAHAS would provide this support for the lifetime of the new organisation and it would, of course, follow the LAN model and thus would involve no finances.
SAHAS would be an umbrella organisation supporting multiple LAN model organisations.
SAHAS 2.0
To undertake all the steps necessary to emerge as an umbrella organisation including consolidation of the epic 30 year journey, SAHAS envisages its own existence as a well grounded, multi-departmental, and now funded organisation with its own substantial footprint – with a campus built on its own piece of land (crowdfunded), housing within it various social entrepreneurship projects, and a dedicated department for supporting its social franchise model vision.
In line with the above plan in mind a proposal for allotment of land was submitted to the Delhi Development Authority in 2016. As of 2024 we are still awaiting the green signal from the relevant government department and are hopeful for the same to come through in the coming months. If this allotment were to come through SAHAS would be allotted land at a relatively subsidised cost.
The years 2015 and 2016 were predominantly used up to maintain the basic functioning of the SAHAS projects in my home and also draw up the application for the said land allotment. The application process required not only a comprehensive blueprint of the proposed activities with an architectural blueprint for the use of the land, it also required a functional bank account and 10 percent of the estimated land cost as funds in this bank account. So finally in 2015/16 SAHAS opened its bank account, and through the LAN network arranged for its first ever financial donation of INR 200000 (in 2016, if land were to be allotted to SAHAS, it would cost 1/5th of its market value i.e. 2 million out of 10 million – 10% of which was 200000)
The said amount sits in the SAHAS bank account to date!
The years post 2016 up to 2020 went by in a mix of waiting, watching, working from home and consolidating.
Working without formal premises, ever so hopeful that the land allotment would come through any day, every year went by in a sort of breathing space, where the frenetic activity of the past 20 years seemed well worth it, and the plan for the coming years truly one worth waiting for!
Come 2020, the COVID pandemic hit the world and we have had to further drastically alter our working model, by enabling SAHAS beneficiaries to work from their homes.
Although on the worst of days the pandemic spared no one irrespective of their socio economic strata, we all saw the plight of hundreds millions of the most marginalised suffer the most – especially for the want of the most basic sustenance. Countless people died for the want of 1 meal a day.
Amidst the grim scenario, there are countless stories of civil society members and organisations arranging free food distribution for days and months on end.
Across the various lessons learnt from the pandemic, what stood out most was the need for humanity to aspire towards a more equitable sharing of resources.
Thus, the COVID pandemic only reinforced our resolve to further SAHAS plans as the LAN model, the plan to be an umbrella organisation supporting many other LAN model initiatives, is truly in line with the world is one family philosophy which has been at the core of SAHAS since its inception.
It is with this ‘history’ in mind, that we feel the time is right to renew our efforts to move towards our planned evolution of being a catalyst for a collective courage cooperative movement.
We request and invite you to come aboard!
There is a lot more work that needs to be done to equip marginalised children and women with the resources to lead better, more economically empowered lives.
Please come forth and help SAHAS India to continue its mission of scalable development efforts at the grassroots.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sahasindia.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sahas.india/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sahasindia.org
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw8GQVFRzeDlKdoBiE333Vg
- Other: Please support SAHAS India: https://milaap.org/fundraisers/support-marginalised-communities-1
Image Credits
SAHAS India