The Gharda Foundation was created in 1996 as a non-profit philanthropic organization dedicated to Rural Development in India. The foundation is a private NGO, administered by a Board of Four Trustees and works extensively in the Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Created with a generous donation of Rs 2 crores (approx. $450000) from Gharda Chemicals Ltd.the foundation relies on both private and governmental sources of funding for its activities.

A small and relatively new NGO, the foundation is already well established with a staff of approximately 50 full time and part time workers. We also run a fully staffed 20 bed rural hospital that are also engaged in public health outreach into inaccessible areas.

Our over riding philosophy is one of participative development. We strive to make villagers self reliant and feel ownership of projects that are implemented. No project is undertaken if we cannot secure equal participation and contribution from villagers. Despite our size we are also committed to holistic development. We believe that we cannot realize rural development if we focus on any one issue to the exclusion of others. For example it is meaningless to talk about developing hygiene and sanitation if villagers have insufficient drinking water!

Thus we try and work on all aspects of village life and base our agendas and priorities on those decided upon by our village leadership groups "The Gram Sudhar Committees".

Our commitment to each village is approximated to be of a 5-6 year duration during which we hope to train local leadership to take over the role of the foundation in each village thus ensuring continuing development.

In addition to our rural initiatives we are also associated with G.U.T.S- The Gharda Urban Trust and Services which functions in the metropolitan Mumbai area and fund projects and organizations as disparate as animal hospitals and AIDS research.