The 2009 ASHS Annual Conference

The M.S. Swaminathan foundation (MSSRF, Chennai, India) is a non-profit research and development foundation founded in 1988-89. The foundation mandates that all programs are pro-nature, pro-woman and pro-poor.  The foundation’s strength is its strategic and participatory research, capacity building, networking and partnership building, based on the principles of social inclusion in access to technologies which help to enhance income and environment. Research and outreach strategies are devised to bridge the rich-poor and gender divides in the areas of information, knowledge and skill empowerment. The talk will specifically focus on the education, communication, training and capacity building program and describe the concepts of village knowledge center, village resource center and bio-village as has been developed in a village in the Union Territory of Puducherry, India.