My name is Kate Hartley, I am 24 years old and I live in the South East of England. At the age of 18 I went travelling on my gap year to India, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and Laos. Following this I completed my Music degree at Southampton University in 2009. Whilst continuing with my performing and teaching the harp I started a new job for a Community Interest Company which made films promoting environmental and sustainable education to Primary Schools. In 2010 I embarked on a new more challenging role as the PA and Office Manager for the internationally celebrated artist Alexander...

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SCAD have been working with Women Self Help Groups for over 25 years; they are the backbone of our organisation. Initially the men in the villages were against their wives leaving the house for training and used to argue with them. Now they see the benefit the groups have bought to their lives and villages and they ask their wives to get involved with the groups. Women Self Help Groups are generally made up of between 10-20 women who come together to collect small savings and share their problems once a week. With the money they collect they can open a bank account collectively and also they...

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Trees can help people in many different ways; they help facilitate water, they provide shelter and warmth, food and nutrition and can also provide a valuable income. At SCAD we are planting trees for all of these things. SCAD help farmers with their irrigation systems, especially helping them to perform drip irrigation, which enables the trees to grow in this harsh, almost desert, climate. Good trees can also provide an income for their timber as long as there is a way of making sure that they can be re planted. The people of Tamil Nadu have been experiencing the effects of climate change for many...

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Water is essential for life and every human being must to be able to access clean drinking water. Our vision in SCAD is to make this possible across Tamil Nadu. Trees are essential for water as they hold water in the ground, increasing the ground water storage and bringing more water to wells. They also stop the water from running off the surface of the soil and causing flash flooding and erosion, which is increasingly common in this location when the monsoons do fall. Cletus Babu, the founder of SCAD Charity, says that with all the planting trees that SCAD has done the area now “gets the highest...

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Tuticorin, the region in which SCAD works, receives 678mm of rainfall a year, which is 29% less than the average for the district. The communities who live in Tuticorin are already feeling the effects of drought, soil erosion and water depletion. Monsoon rains matter for crop irrigation and water supply, and people and livestock suffer heavily when the monsoon fails or is delayed. For the future of our communities in India we have started to plan adaptation strategies. To this end we have been planting between 80,000 and 100,000 new indigenous saplings every year since we began working in the community...

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Welcome to Social Change and Development, also known as SCADcharity! We are an Indian Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) based in Tamil Nadu, South India. For the last 27 years we have been doing outreach work empowering rural communities and facilitating sustainable development. We work in communities in many different ways offering services in education, health, financial support, income generation programmes, farming and skills training, such as sewing, weaving and pottery. We also have many initiatives to protect the natural environment and we are dedicated to supporting and empowering...

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