Changing lives of underserved populations has long been perceived as the 'State's' mandate and no one else's. The public servant was the one responsible and the private citizen usually went her way, even though she wished she could 'do something' but rarely knew how. This inability to include and engage the talents and skills of private citizens - in villages, towns or cities - to participate in, and support social sector efforts consistently, has perhaps been one of the reasons why development initiatives in the country haven't created the change they should have.

With liberalisation becoming inevitable in the new world order, governments are getting downsized and thereby looking for private sector partners to share the responsibilities of nation building. What is emerging as the prescription for sustainable social change are partnerships: public private pluralistic partnerships where state, civil society institutions and private citizens jointly pool in their strengths to cancel out weakness and play the role of Atlas shouldering the responsibility of taking the nation ahead.

The 2001 census says 1 out of 4 Indians live below the poverty line. While this is an indictment of the country's human development index, it is also the formula to improve it. It tells us that for every poor person in this country there are three others who can help. The leveraging of this help by encouraging social equity partnerships with private citizens and making it work for people that need it the most has been one of the foremost endeavours of Naandi. Building bridges between a willing civil society volunteer and a cause that needs support is Naandi's vision of catalysing successful social equity partnerships for change.
The ability to ignite the spark of giving back to society, to channelise the passion in citizens to improve the lives of their less privileged countrymen finds reflection in Naandi's logo, its credo and its programs.

"You can change lives" is an invitation Naandi extends to anyone it comes across - be they students, factory workers, CEOs, executives, or youth in a village because irrespective of designations and positions, Naandi through its unique Power of 10™ platform creates opportunities for people from all walks of life to do their bit for society.

A contribution of just Rs 10 every month, or 10 minutes of service, when pooled together does change lives. Championed by the employees of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, who continue to be our largest body of supporters till date, this has been proven many times over with volunteers from various fields and organizations making a difference between a child staying in school and dropping out, ensuring the hungry get a meal, supporting healthcare for an HIV+ child, giving a voice to illiterate parents by demanding quality education in schools, the examples can be found in equal measure in both the urban and the rural India programmmes we work for.

Naandi does, and will continue to inspire every citizen to make time for the less privileged, and to make this happen it has a dedicated Civil Society Cell that serves to connect volunteers with underserved communities, pretty much like the aerobridge function in modern airports.

In this task the Civil Society Cell focuses on tapping the energies of two sets of populations. The urban organised sector employees and the rural and tribal unemployed and underemployed youth. In the case of the former, given limitations of time and their mobility, volunteerism is restricted to Naandi’s urban Child Rights programmes. This includes opportunities to contribute towards better pedagogical tools for teaching in government schools, improving school environment, discovering and developing latent talent in children as well as helping weak and low performers with educational inputs.

For the second category, Naandi co-opts community youth to voluntarily contribute time towards community based development programmes that are as varied as running lift irrigation schemes, providing drinking water, and managing early childhood education centers. In most cases, this not only prevents youth from diverting their underutilized energies towards wasteful or anti-social activities but also makes them more employable. Often many of these volunteers find gainful employment within a year of volunteering with Naandi.

That Naandi has more than 1400 volunteers working for social development programs, in different capacities vindicates the belief that India’s civil society is willing and able to join hands in the country's fight against poverty.

This ability to encourage giving back to society through the Power of 10™ across hundreds of citizens has seen companies seeking Naandi’s support in institutionalizing volunteerism as part of their work ethic. A case in point is Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, which created Employee Social Options (Esops they’d like to call it) and engaged Naandi to facilitate volunteering opportunities for their employees spread across the length and breadth of the country. This professional engagement of Naandi as a social investment partner by Mahindra & Mahindra has resulted in the company and its employees being regarded by communities as more proactive and socially responsive because they have gone beyond cheque book charity to participative involvement in a cause.

Inspired by the Mahindra & Mahindra partnership, and the potential of the Power of 10™ Naandi is reaching out to other companies in the corporate sector for what could be the beginning of the “outsourcing of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)” - an outsourcing model that actively encourages the company and its employees to be more involved with the cause and the communities they wish to support. The scope, of course, ranges from designing a CSR framework for a company to lending expertise in solving social sector problems that are close to the company’s vision.

With the expanding civil society portfolio, with enhanced corporate sector investments in Naandi and with an overwhelming number of partnership and volunteering requests being received offline and online every day, we are convinced that India is voting unequivocally for Public Private Pluralistic Partnerships that change lives because the Power of 10™ is an idea whose time has come.