Vision, mission & values
What we are trying to build, how we intend to build it, and the rules we hold ourselves to while doing it.
Vision
Villages that can look after their own.
A Safidon block where no cow is left to die on a road, no girl leaves school for want of a few hundred rupees, and no family in sudden difficulty has to ask a stranger for help — because the village itself has the means and the habit of stepping in.
Mission
Service, skill and self-reliance.
To relieve hardship among the families around us through direct, verifiable help; to give abandoned and injured cattle food, shelter and treatment; and to turn what the village already has — its cattle, its land, its young people — into work and income that stays in the village.
सेवा · संस्कृति · स्वावलंबन
Seva, sanskriti, swavalamban — service, culture and self-reliance. The three words the Sanstha was started on, and the order in which we try to keep them.
Values
Five rules we do not negotiate on.
Seva before scale
We would rather do a small amount of work that the village can verify than a large amount it cannot. Growth follows proof, not the other way round.
Open books
Audited accounts, receipts for every donation, and utilisation statements for every grant. Anyone who funds us may inspect the records and the site.
No politics
Our memorandum requires the Sanstha to stay away from politics. We do not campaign for, or accept funds from, any political party or candidate.
Unpaid office bearers
Our bye-laws bar office bearers from taking any remuneration for their service, and bar the Sanstha from employing a member or a member’s close relative.
Help without distinction
Our founding document states that the benefit of the Sanstha’s work is available without distinction of caste, religion or class.
Why the cow sits at the centre of our emblem
In a village, the cow is not a symbol. She is an economy.
Milk, dung, urine, draught power, manure for the field, fuel for the stove. When mechanisation made her unproductive, the village stopped feeding her and she moved to the road — into standing crops, in front of traffic, out of anyone’s care. Putting her back at the centre of a working cycle is, for us, both an act of seva and a piece of rural economics.