Rural women are usually poorer than their male counterparts, more vulnerable, own no land, are less educated and in poorer health. They struggle because of low paid work and care for the home. The women are often ignorant of their rights, liberties and privileges. Being women, they are likely to have little or no say in the financial matters within her house. A girl child is deprived of schooling or literacy for no other reason than that she is a female and it is this illiteracy that often excludes her from written knowledge and participation in decision making, affecting both the household and the community. SCAD...

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Join Trisha Roberts for a fascinating insight into India - there is no better way to get to know a new place than to share food with local people.  During this colourful two week tour you will visit markets, shop for ingredients, learn to cook southern India food, visit villages, schools and temples and much, much more! During this tour you will gain firsthand insight into how our projects make a real difference to women like Karuppi.  Along with shopping for ingredients and learning to cook 3 or 4 dishes per day, you will also visit some of SCAD's projects including income-generating...

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Murray & Janet Frankland, founders of Salt of the Earth, visit the ‘model village’ Sevalkulam, in the Ottapidaram block to view the new fish culture initiative at the village ooranie (rainwater harvest tank). SCAD have been working with this village for around 20 years and have successfully established: Women’s Self Help Groups, supplementary education, energy management, sports youth groups, vetinary camps, income generating initiatives, health education, micro insurance, nutritional demonstrations, tree plantation, organic kitchen gardens, bio-char trial plots - as a result village...

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At SCAD we are interested in empowerment that takes place when people challenge existing norms and culture to improve their well being and create their own development. Our SCAD Women's Self Help Groups (WSHGs) have challenged social norms not once but twice! In the first instance women transformed the culture of being forced to stay in their homes. Initially when the women gathered together for meetings they had difficulty coming out of their homes because it was not traditional. In the beginning women were scorned and sometimes threatened. With a lot of support from SCAD and internal strength...

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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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