We’re delighted to share our first newsletter. We’re a philanthropic trust that aims to aid efforts towards a more prosperous and progressive India. It is an honour to have Hiten Kotak, Neera Nundy and Vivek Gambhir as the Godrej Foundation’s trustees, who guide and advise our mission. Please read more about them here.
In the last couple of months, we’ve refined our ideas about what we want to work on. Broadly, we would like to enable the majority of Indian families to move into prosperity. This will be through two kinds of work. The first will be by backing organisations that aim to directly empower individuals and communities, improving their access to education, healthcare, and livelihoods, and more. The second will be supporting efforts that accelerate India’s economic growth and help strengthen its institutions.
As of this writing, we work with 11 partners whose mission and efforts connect deeply with one or the other of these approaches. We’ve had long relationships with some, but others are rather newer: take GATI, an organisation that aims to enable ethical, legal and productive paths to overseas employment for Indian guest workers, which is just two months old.
Over the year, we hope to bring you stories and perspectives that help acquaint you with the work of all our partners, and their work in securing a brighter future for large numbers of fellow Indians. We’ve started publishing reports about their work here: please do read them and let us know what you think.
We’ll bring you these reports, as well as other news and updates from our work, in quarterly editions of this newsletter. For more frequent news from us, do follow us on LinkedIn.
Before we go, a final call for which we’d love to hear your responses. At the Godrej Foundation, we find ourselves thinking deeply about giftedness, or high potential and exceptional ability in any area of human endeavour, including STEM and the arts. Giftedness is naturally distributed across all populations, and historically plays a key role in widening the course of human progress.
It’s a crucial area of inquiry for us, because our vision of a prosperous future of India is inseparable from the goal of cultivating future leaders, innovators and creators. Our question: how do we get others to join us in thinking of meaningful solutions to the problems facing gifted children from India’s underserved communities, and how do we get more people interested in a productive view of the challenge? If you or someone you know is interested in the issue, do reach out.
Until next time,
Omar and the Godrej Foundation team.
