No-Cost Extension with Deval Sanghavi

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, withou...

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...

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 w...

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 a...

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 stigma...

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...

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. H...

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, Re...

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 fir...

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...

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 thi...

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 Lati...

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 happen...

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.  Li...

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 d...

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 Gandh...

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 Sc...

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-tru...

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...

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. Alb...

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, a...

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 i nspired by the life and legacy of St...

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...

When COVID-19 hit, it made clear the undeniable fact of just how vulnerable our poorest communities are. It was a setback of huge proportions, creating a crisis that extended well beyond health to impact on work and livelihoods, education, access to food and nutrition. It exposed how a shock in any one area can snowball pushing communities deeper into poverty. Many small grassroots organizations w...

How can community philanthropy grow organically in a way that serves the community, unlocking its potential? Why do we use the word risk so much in philanthropy? How can family philanthropies involve the next gen meaningfully in their work?   Deval Sanghavi , host of No-Cost Extension Pod sits down with Maya Patel, the CEO of The Tarsadia Foundation , a family philanthropy working both in India an...