Clean and safe water has been made available in a village in western Maharashtra, India, efforts are on to make this possible in other villages. Village governance is being supported, toilets are being built, local youths and women getting training in sewing and mobile phone repairs. Grampari is a rural initiative of Initiatives of Change India.

Passion for the Have Nots

Himanshu Bharat is a vibrant bundle of contained energy. Seen as he approaches, moves, interacts, gesticulates he makes one pause, reflect and wonder at his unending source of passion.

He is a young man on a mission, determined to make a difference, zeroing in on the injustices meted out to the marginalized, voiceless, and the thousands who receive the brunt of exploitative greed.

A major feature in the the Economic Times, Mumbai, April 19th, looks at the way that the German multinational engineering company Siemens has cleaned up its act after the scandal which led to the company admitting to several bribery charges and paying around $1.6 billion in fines.

So successful has been the turn-around that another engineering giant, Tata Group, is studying it closely with a view to licensing some of the processes. 

Dahlia Rera Oktasiani bounces with unbounded energy, camera slung on her neck, capturing moments in fleeting flashes of energy.

If there is a secret to this sheer love of life – the well spring is a heart that is innocent, rancour less and shrewd, sizing  up people in seconds and responding  with a fair bit of assessment instinctively.

The team of Leading Change for a Sustainable World conducted a workshop for youth from 18-20 March in Grampari, the rural ecology development initiative attached to Initiative of Change (IofC)’s Asian conference centre in Panchgani, India, supported by Indian Youth Climate Network and other organisations. The workshop was attended by 23 youth from seven states across India, including Jammu and Kashmir. Rishabh Khanna reports.

Suresh Mathew meets a hydro-geologist working with Grampari, the rural ecology development initiative attached to Initiative of Change’s Asian conference centre in Panchgani, India, who aims to avert a disaster on our doorstep.

It was a great privilege to be back in India again 32 years after I had worked there with Initiatives of Change for two and a half years. I saw many friends, some of whom I had first met as students and who are now heading companies employing tens of thousands, or are in senior positions in the financial sector, or book publishing.

The dialogue on Making Democracy Real ended on 12 Jan with 32 people speaking in less than two minutes each, sharing their conclusions from the conference and the actions they have decided to take. Among them were some of the Tahrir Square revolutionaries, representatives of the Arab Spring.

Days after his acquittal on legal charges, Dato’ Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, spoke out about the importance of conscience in politics. He asserted that ‘what is politically right cannot be morally wrong, and what is morally right cannot be politically wrong’, and that one cannot struggle without a moral foundation.

Evgeniya Koroleva and Nastya Sachko, both journalists by profession and members of ‘Club for Young Leaders’ from Crimea (Ukraine), are working as volunteers in Asia Plateau – International centre of Initiatives of Change in Panchgani, India. Their dream to get to Asia Plateau has had to overcome financial obstacles and a few months of what seemed to be hopeless visa procedure. Evgeniya Koroleva is sharing some of her traveller’s notes that still have the smell of Indian spices.