Over the next few episodes we’ll be meeting the grassroots organizations who are part of the first cohort of The Pride Fund, India’s first dedicated LBTQIA+ fund launched in February 2025. 

Sappho for Equality has been working to address the unique, intersectional challenges faced by lesbian, bisexual and transmasculine individual for over a quarter of a century. The organisation has evolved from an emotional support network to one that works in advocacy, public education and sensitising the police, medical professionals and the judicial system. Their repository of colloquial language writing on queer trans rights and experiences is something of immense importance and value. 

You can find out more about the work of Sappho for Equality here: https://www.sapphokolkata.in/

The Pride Fund is led by three philanthropists. Radhika Piramal Keshav Suri, the executive director of the Lalit Suri Hospitality Group and the founder of the Keshav Suri Foundation, and Parmesh Shahani, head of Godrej Dei Labs from the Godrej Industries Group. Read more about it here: https://thepridefundindia.org/about-the-pride

We're kicking off a new season of No-Cost Extension with a conversation with Radhika Piramal.  Radhika Piramal is one of the founding patrons of the Pride Fund India.

Radhika Piramal holds several senior leadership positions in corporate India across various companies and brands and is a charity trustee holding trustee positions at Dasra UK and Give Out - an award-winning international LGBTQ Community Foundation.

A leading LQBTQIA+ advocate, Radhika is one of three Indian philanthropists supporting The Pride Fund, India's first LGBTQIA+ philanthropy fund. In this episode, Deval and Radhika speak about her personal journey, the communities she sought comfort and acceptance in and the need for a Pride Fund in India today.

More about The Pride Fund: Launched in February 2025, the Pride Fund is supported by three philanthropists: Radhika Piramal, Keshav Suri, the Executive Director of the Lalit Suri Hospitality Group and the founder of the Keshav Suri Foundation, and Parmesh Shahani, Head of the Godrej DEI Labs from the Godrej Industries Group. Reach more about it here: https://thepridefundindia.org/about-the-pride

For more about No-Cost Extension Podcast and to listen to previous episodes, visit https://www.dasra.org/nce 

To coincide with the launch of the Rebuild India Fund’s 7th cohort of grassroots NGOs, entirely women led AND assessed by women leaders from within the Rebuild portfolio, we thought we would revisit conversations with power house leaders on No-Cost Extension.

Our first conversation is from earlier this year, with Deepa Pawar, founder and director of the Anubhuti Trust and a member of the Rebuild India Fund Investment Committee. This is a  conversation on the contribution of women in keeping the culture of the community alive, anti-caste feminism and more.

Deepa Pawar has over 22 years of experience in facilitating community-led programs and working with state and local governments on themes of youth-leadership, advocacy, mental justice, sanitation and sexual and reproductive health.

Anubhuti Trust is an organization formed and self-led by women, with the intention to work with youth on developing their leadership so that there are aware and responsible youth in society who can lead change for a more just and equitable world.

About #RootedinHerPower: The 7th cohort of the Rebuild India Fund is a vibrant grassroots movement for community-led resilience, a testament to the power of women’s leadership, and a step toward a future built on inclusion, empathy, and unwavering strength. Spread across 70+ districts, these women-led NGOs are championing change where it’s needed most.

Follow #RootedInHerPower across social media for updates. For more information to go www.dasra.org 

This episode originally aired in February 2024. 

Divya Varma represented the  Ajeevika Bureau and Work Fair and Free Foundation at Dasra Philanthropy Week 2024.

She spoke passionately about India’s internal migrant population who are often forced to move from rural India to its cities due to climate variabilities which have rapidly degenerated agricultural livelihoods.Mired in indignity and invisibility, India’s migrant labour workforce works and lives at the very bottom of the societal pyramid at the mercy of a regulation free environment. 

Listen to her plans for fostering solidarity through unions and collectives and working towards generating more knowledge and research in this space.

Find out more about Ajeevika Bureau here https://aajeevika.org/ and the Work Fair and Free Foundation here https://workfairandfree.org/. For more information on Dasra's work, go to www.dasra.org.

Jackie Jones is the Director, Gender Norms Portfolios and Office of the President at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where amongst many other things she thinks of gender dimensions and how they intersect with solving programs across the many verticals the foundation works across. 

At the Dasra Philanthropy Forum 2024, Jackie shared a story from one of the foundation’s immunization clinics in the Congo where there was low immunization uptake across genders. Find out how one health care worker’s insight changed this.

For more information on any of Dasra's work, or on any of the guests on the show, go to www.dasra.org 

Join Maya Patel from the Tarsadia Foundation, Hechin Haokip from the Centre for Women and Girls, Manohari Doss from the Institute for Self Management and Farida Kathawalla from Circle of Hope in a conversation around women grassroots leaders. 

A small percentage of philanthropic capital globally is earmarked for gender equality, and the funding gap for feminist or women led organizations is quite glaring. Maya Patel, Hechin Haokip, Manohari Doss and Farida Kathawalla share from their lived experiences in running organizations and from championing women leaders at the grassroots. How can we invest in more women led proximate leaders to see large scale meaningful change and break gender norms that exist in the philanthropic ecosystem? 

 For more information on Dasra Philanthropy Week 2024, or on any of the guests on the show, go to www.dasra.org. 

Binoy Acharya is the Founder-Director of Unnati - Organisation for Development Education. Unnati works in the spaces of  Civic Leadership and Governance and Social Accountability, Disaster Risk Reduction and Social Inclusion and Empowerment. 

At Dasra Philanthropy Forum 2024, Binoy spoke of how governments are failing at last mile delivery across the world, and philanthropic support is needed to bridge this gap. 

For more information on any of Dasra's work, or on any of the guests on the show, go to www.dasra.org

Kuldeep Dantewadia is the founder of Reap Benefit, a non-profit based in Bengaluru, India that is igniting a movement of young changemakers  to redefine civic and climate leadership, one action at a time.

At Dasra Philanthropy Forum 2024, Kuldeep shared two stories of young changemakers whose individual actions lead to larger systemic changes in their community and how giving young people the agency and skills they need to effect change can move the needle on apathy. India, he says needs an army of young changemakers and unlocking their potential and change making one abilities one street at a time in not cute, it’s the need of the hour.

We'll be back with new episodes next time!

If you want to listen to more of No Cost Extension, go to https://www.dasra.org/podcast.php where we have show notes, links and more. 

In today's episode, we're bringing to you Dr Arunabha Ghosh's Keynote Address from Dasra Philanthropy Week 2024 held in New York. Dr Arunabha Ghosh is a public policy expert, author and columnist and founder-CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, or CEEW, one of Asia's leading policy research institutions and climate think-tanks. 

At DPW, Dr Ghosh spoke about how we must internalise two important paradigmatic shifts: away from centralised to decentralised systems that embrace local solutions and are embedded in communities, and move our ideation away from linear thinking to non-linear approaches if we are to truly accelerate India's energy transition and climate action. 

We'll be back next time with new episodes! For more information on the show, or any of the guests, go to www.dasra.org. 

We’re taking a break from regular programming with a series of conversations and microtalks from the recently concluded Dasra Philanthropy Forum 2024.

2024 was a milestone year with Dasra celebrating twenty five years as an organisation. At DPF 2024,  Deval Sanghavi, co-founder of Dasra and host of No-Cost Extension Podcast, Boris Siperstein, Global Council Member Dasra, Akruti Desai from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation discussed the organisation’s journey, and the intentional way in which equity has been centred at the heart of Dasra’s work.

Akruti Desai looked back at her own philanthropic journey which began as a Dasra Fellow in 2009 and speaks of the shift from a technocratic approach to the current trust based model that is more rooted in equity. Boris Siperstein speaks of being more congnizant of ground realities, working closely with grassroot leaders, and the Rebuild India Fund model which is built on a foundation of trust and equity. Deval speaks candidly about the early years of Dasra, the vision he and Neera had for the organisation at the outset and what he hopes the next twenty five years will bring. Anannya Chakrabarty, Associate Director, Dasra moderated this conversation.

 If you want to listen to more of No Cost Extension, go to https://www.dasra.org/podcast.php where we have show notes, links and more.