Nirdhan, registered as a Section 25 Company, was incorporated in 2011. It has a board of six directors all with excellent and varied backgrounds: entrepreneurial, legal, IT and commercial (see section on Board of Directors). Nirdhan contracts three part-time consultants and employs a full-time team comprising its General Manager, Jogeshwar Rao who drives the operations locally, builds up the team and monitors the progress of the operations daily. He plans future operations, researches new enterprises and reports to the board members on a regular basis to ensure money is being used effectively. Nirdhan has 6 Board of Directors, 2 Finance officers, 1 Head of Livelihood Programmes, 1 General Manager, 1 agricultural certified expert and also employs 5 field supervisors, 5 Prani bandhus or local vets, 1 goateries consultant and 43 Livelihood Service Providers (LSPs). The LSPs market the programme, assess and register potential home-farmers, complete our Social Impact Assessments and reassessments through a scoring system of the PPI index so that we can measure our outcomes, provide the training, deliver the toolkits (10 one-day-old chicks/ducks, initial feed, vaccinations and medications) and collect payments. All the LSPs come from the villages where we are working and so understand the needs of the home-farmers and are passionate about creating positive social change and relieving their own people from suffering.

Nirdhan was founded in 2011 and its mission is to create livelihoods, boost income and inspire permanent change. Our target group has always been the very poor in Bengal which is India’s fourth most populous state. It is in fact one of the poorest states in India and living standards for the majority are declining.