Our Story

The Village Ways Charitable Trust was established as a means to enable a wider spread of benefits to communities beyond those already directly benefiting from the operations of Village Ways.

Since its launch in January 2008, The Trust has been working relentlessly on women’s health issues from 2008. The Trust has partnered with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Ann Inc Taylor and Good Earth to undertake several public health initiatives in Saryu and Pindar valleys of Uttarakhand.

Over the years, with Business for Social Responsibility, as its technical partner, a HERnetwork Project focused on health, personal hygiene, nutrition and menstrual hygiene for women empowerment was successfully implemented. With establishment of a strong HERnetwork through Master Trainers, Peer Health Educators and health committee members from within the villages, critical health needs including personal health and hygiene, nutrition and menstrual hygiene were identified and peer health education delivered to the communities. To ensure sustainability, local women were roped in, trained to deliver the intervention back in their own villages.

Given the dire need for doctors in the remote valleys and absolutely nil availability of even basic primary health care, with support from Good Earth, the Trust has currently taken up the onus of making primary health care accessible to the remote villages through telemedicine.

In Nainital district, in Ramgarh area, Village Ways Charitable Trust, has partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) to enable access to primary health care services to the catchment population through eHealth Centres.

 

About Village Ways Charitable Trust

This is a non-governmental organization, founded in 2008 when a group of passionate and like-minded philanthropists got together to work for community upliftment in the remote and marginalised areas of Kumaon. The functioning of the Trust is overseen by a Board of Trustees comprised of established luminaries of the country including Ms Anita Lal (Creative Director of Goodearth), Mr Pramod Bhasin (Founder and Vice Chairman of Genpact and Chairman of Skills Academy), Dr Vandana Lal (Executive Director of Dr Lal Pathlabs), Ms Ratnamala Kapur, Founder Director of Village Ways, Mr Rahul Kohli (A renowned Pranic Healing Master) and Mr Dinesh Pandey (Founder Director of Village Ways.)

The Trust aims to:

1. Improve community health outcomes in remote marginalised rural communities of Uttarakhand

2. Develop the skills and capacities of rural communities to improve and enhance their livelihood activities.

Specific objectives of the Trust include:

• Support and undertake public health projects to enhance the community health outcomes position for marginalised social groups particularly women in the remote, rural areas of Uttarakhand.
• Focused interventions on leveraging community participation and ownership for sustained project efforts.
• Training and investment in handicraft design, production and marketing, food processing and marketing, promoting environmental awareness and conservation, growing herbs and marketing of the produce.

Over the years, the Trust, thus, moved to a more holistic approach right from physical health, mental and social well-being in addition to socio-economic empowerment particularly of women and children of the marginalised areas of Uttarakhand.