Hejang Misao is the founder and CEO of Integrated Social & Institutional Development for Empowerment (InSIDE-North East), an organization that works towards the empowerment of children, youth and women in Manipur, under the Gun2Pen project.   Hejang is no stranger to conflict in his state, and it prompted him to start an organisation that would help those directly or indirectly affected by conflict and violence. In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Hejang touch upon the...

The Rebuild Conversations is a series in which the No-Cost Extension team checks in with the Rebuild India Fund Investment Committee members to see how they’re doing, what they’ve been learning and how they envisage for the future of the Fund. Rebuild India’s mission is to provide grassroot organizations with long-term flexible funding that can support them through the course of 5-10 years, without constraints or targets. As of early 2024, the fund has been working with over 142 NGOs from...

Twenty five years ago Vishal Talreja founded Dream-a-Dream as a voluntary effort in Mumbai with eleven other individuals who were committed to working with young people.  Since then, Ðream-A-Dream has become a non-profit that works with close to 5 million children across six Indian states, with a vision to provide transformative educational experiences that impart life skills to children living in poverty. Deval and Vishal have known each other since the beginning of their journeys in the...

Rahima Khatun has been associated with Nari-O-Shishu Kalyan Kendra (NOSKK)  an NGO working extensively with  the rights and dignity of women and children across West Bengal for over two decades.  The earliest seed for NOSKK was sown on Republic Day in 1952 when Rahima’s father started a community library in their village before going on to open madrassas to promote education amongst both men and women.  A strong desire to work for the community was ingrained in Rahima as a child and she...

From selling horlicks in the Burdwan coalmine districts to studying filmmaking, this week’s guest on No-Cost Extension, Yasmin Madan has led a rich and varied life.  After holding various senior level positions at PSI and serving as the Private Sector Lead at Thinkwell, Yasmini joined Co-Impact – a global philanthropic collaborative ‘supporting locally-rooted coalitions working to achieve impact at scale in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.’ At Co-Impact, Yasmin is the Director and US Lead...

Deepa Pawar is the founder and director of the Anubhuti Trust, an organization formed and self-led by women, with the intention to work with youth on developing their leadership so that there are aware and responsible youth in society who can lead change for a more just and equitable world. In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Deepa sit down at the Dasra office to talk about the stigmatization of Nomadic and Denotifed Tribes in India from the time of colonial rule, their...

What is it like to dedicate one's life to working for some of the most under-represented groups? Nandita Pradhan Bhatt is the Director of the Martha Farrell Foundation, an NGO that supports informal, migrant workers, mostly female domestic workers and adolescent children to build their leadership and collective voice against injustice. Nandita has been a civil society practitioner decades, and has worked extensively on gender inclusion and the prevention of sexual harassment against women. ...

After a short year end break, No-Cost Extension is back! In the first episode of 2024, Deval sits down with Deep Jyoti Sonu Brahma, co-founder of Farm2Food Foundation. Deep speaks of his early years growing up and studying in Arunachal Pradesh, the impact the turbulent times in the North Eastern region had on him and later experiences with people led movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan. His journey lead him back to Assam with a desire to work with young people and communities and place...

Revathi Radhakrishnan is the founder-director of the Vanavil Trust, a non profit founded in  2004 that supports children of two Nomadic communities: Boom Boom Mattikarars and Narikuravars, in Tamil Nadu. After 17 years of working with the communities, Vanavil now has grown into an organisation that works in child protection,  health and nutrition, holistic education and livelihoods. As a child, Revathi was a vociferous reader, devouring whatever books she could lay her hands on. She had to...

Season 3 of No-Cost Extension kicks off with host Deval Sanghavi in conversation with Dhruv Lakra, founder and CEO of Mirakle Couriers, a for- profit courier service that employs low income deaf adults thereby delinking charity with disability.  Dhruv grew up in Kashmir before moving to Mumbai for college, after a brief stint as an investment banker he joined Dasra as one of the organisation’s first team members in 2004. He then went on to become a Skoll scholar at the Said School of...

Deval Sanghavi is back with a new season of No-Cost Extension! In this season Deval’s talking to some of the most committed social leaders from India and around the world on what it’s like to work towards the challenging goal of equity. Deval and his guests also speak about what it is like to run organizations post COVID, bootstrapping and entrepreneurship, the work of philanthropy, and what it is like to work with the most marginalized and excluded communities.  Episodes drop November 30,...

How does it all begin? Was there a singular experience or encounter that sparked a desire to work on social change? How do you go from being affected by an issue, to contributing a few times, to the realisation that there is more to this? - that working in social change could be the calling, or the profession, and how do you go from that to wanting to build an organisation and so much more? In this No-Cost Extension special, we combed through our two seasons to bring you inspiring origin...

Over the past two seasons, host Deval Sanghavi has talked about the idea of impact with his guests: what does it mean and what should it mean? How can we further our understanding of social impact?  From the archives we bring you Donald Lobo of the Chintu Gudiya Foundation, Karen Doff of Sharanam Centre for Girls, Safeena Hussain of Educate Girls and Ravi Chopra and Jo McGowan Chopra from the Latika Royal foundation talking about impact and scale and how they look at these as individuals and...

Gagan Sethi is the founder of Janvikas, an NGO that has worked in the space of holistic human development for over three decades. Gagan has helped set up several strategic organizations in the country, like Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan, Sahjeevan, Drishti, Centre for Social justice and the HID forum. In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Gagan talk about disaster relief work, what happens when there’s discrimination in relief work and the toll working in the development sector...

Loren Cardeli is the Executive Director at A Growing Culture, a non profit that believes in food sovereignty for everyone everywhere and works with farmers to ensure they decide what to grow, where to grow it and who to sell it to. Deval and Loren met at a Synergos retreat and found they had much to talk about and bond over, prompting Deval to invite Loren on to No-Cost Extension as a guest.  Listen to Loren talk about his growing years in New York City in a family that loved to argue, what...

We're pausing our regular programming on No-Cost Extension with Deval Sanghavi to bring you this panel discussion from Dasra Philanthropy Week 2023. Deval will be back next week with a new guest! The Going Platinum: Past, Present and Future of Civil Society in India @ 75 report is a collective effort by India’s leading non-profits to showcase and celebrate civil society's contribution to India's development. The conversation at DPW 2023 was based on the report and spanned policy, service...

Sonal Shah has spent her career both in the private and public sector, including stints with Goldman Sachs, Google.org and The White House. She is currently the CEO of The Texas Tribune, a politics and public policy-specific news organization. But before embarking on her illustrious career, many years ago, Sonal and Deval were just two teenagers forced to wake up early and help clean up the Gandhi Centre in Houston, Texas after community events. In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Sonal...

Jo McGowan and Ravi Chopra met in the 70s and fell in love through the post. They got married and moved to India in the early 80s and have since dedicated their lives to serving the communities they live in, albeit in very different ways. From helping set up The Front for Rapid Economic Advancement of India (FREA) to working with the Centre for Science and Environment to setting up the People’s Science Institute in Uttarakhand, Ravi Chopra has spent his life using science and technology to...

How do you begin to break intergenerational cycles of poor health and violence in a megapolis? What evidence based models of urban health interventions can we look to?   Content Warning: This episode contains mentions of violence that some listeners may find disturbing and listener discretion is advised.  In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval sits down with Dr. Armida Fernandez, founder-trustee of SNEHA Mumbai (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action) and the organisation’s...

Dasra Philanthropy Week is an annual gathering of diverse stakeholders and voices from the development ecosystem to convene, converse and continue sustained action towards the quest for a billion Indians to thrive with dignity and equity.  As the 14th edition of Dasra Philanthropy Week 2023 gets underway, No-Cost Extension presents DPW specials: conversations that we believe will be of interest to our listeners.   This episode is a conversation between Suparna Gupta, founder of Aangan...

How can we engage with policymakers in a timely and effective way? What can we do to address the power imbalance between the Global North and the Global South? Why does global philanthropy set aside only 2% of funding for the climate?  In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval Sanghavi has a freewheeling conversation with Alberto Lidji, Founder of the Do One Better Knowledge Hub and Podcast. Alberto talks about his shift from working with private corporations to the world of philanthropy,...

How can we challenge the top-down approach to solving social problems? Can we build bridges between powerful sectors and community organisations? What role does sustained inner work play in serving with love?  Deval sits down with Peggy Dulany, Founder & Chair of Synergos, a global organisation helping dismantle systems that create the most urgent problems of our time: poverty, social injustice, and climate change From absorbing ideas about philanthropy ‘through her skin’ at dinner...

How should funders be rethinking philanthropy in the wake of the pandemic? How can they take their egos out of the equation? How can they operate with a greater sense of urgency, transparency, and trust with grantee centric mechanisms?  In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval Sanghavi sits down with Lior Ipp, the CEO of the Roddenberry Foundation that is inspired by the life and legacy of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry who believed that human potential is remarkable and would lead us...

The Rebuild India Fund will support 1000 small community based organizations in the next decade through flexible funding and capacity building, enabling them to survive and thrive.  How do committees select organizations for funding? What is it like to be on a selection committee? What can we learn and unlearn from the hundreds of small organizations doing meaningful work across the country? What can we do better next time? In this second episode of the Rebuild Conversations, Deval Sanghavi...