Shailesh Kumar Pant

S M Sehgal Foundation (“Sehgal Foundation”) is a public, charitable trust registered in India since 1999. Every person across rural India deserves to lead a more secure, prosperous, and dignified life. With that vision in mind, our mission is to strengthen community-led development initiatives to achieve positive social, economic, and environmental change across rural India. With support from donors and partners, Sehgal Foundation designs and promotes rural development interventions that create opportunities, build resilience, and provide solutions to some of the most pressing challenges in India’s poorest communities. The foundation team works together with rural communities to create sustainable programs for managing water resources, increasing agricultural productivity, and strengthening rural governance. The team’s emphasis on gender equality and women’s empowerment is driven by the realization that human rights are central to developing every person’s potential. As an emerging knowledge leader on rural development issues in India, the foundation team engages in participatory research, impact assessment, interactive dialogue, and community media to take informed actions and achieve sustainable results. The team collects, assesses, and reports qualitative and quantitative data across an array of development outcomes, building an archive of evidence-based research that incorporates the voices and views of rural communities and demonstrates the results.