Socio Economic Development Trust (SEDT) a NGO, was established in the year 1980 with the objective of making a difference to the lives of people. SEDT is based out of Kerwadi village, Palam Taluka, District Parbhani.  We started our work to provide a shelter, home for the children in need of care and protection, its our Dreamland. Swapnabhumi.

While doing this work, we also started looking towards adjoining villages and the community, we started one by one need based activities for them like, immunization, community health with a focus on women and awareness generation with a clear community development approach.

SEDT believes that our role is to act as facilitators for the empowerment of the people. At present we are working with following projects-

• Dreamland: is home for the children in need of care and protection. We are serving to 100 children under this program.
• Child line:  its 24 hrs services for the children in need of care and protection.
• One stop center: All required facilities and help being extended to any woman in distress at one place. 
• Family counseling center: this is operated with the support of DSP office at Parbhani.
• Link workers project:  This project is operated in selected 100 villages, in 9 blocks of the dist. to identify people with HIV and other similar problem. Arranging for their treatments.  
• Prevention and treatments in HIV for MSN community.(Men sex with men) in the district.
• Impowering girls:  in 25 villages. We are training the girls in several issues and skills. From Nutrition -health hygiene to education-self-esteem-and self-defenses etc. we are serving 3000+ girls under this program.
• Women empowerment: since last 25 years. We have 900+ SHGs. Supporting women for financial empowerment, supported for income generation activities in different villages.

We have created “Farmers clubs” in 37 villages, with support from NABARD. there with 1500+ member farmers. We need to work for them.

We have our school “Sant Dnyaneshwar Vidyalaya” up to 7^th std and well approved by government-education department. 

“ Discovery Science center”. We are promoting science through building “ small science center” for schools. (appro.1200-1500 sq.ft area) we are establishing  100 different “inter active exhibits” with informative posters in our science center. This science center is to promote “curiosity” among students. We have established 136 such science centers of schools in different districts. With CSR support (HCL foundation) we have established science centers at Lucknow (UP), Noida (Delhi), Chennai and Madurai. (TN). 

Organizational structure:

A board of directors known as Governing Body manages SEDT. The board consists of nine members.

For day-to-day operations Executive Director has been entrusted with powers and responsibilities to see the smooth management of the programs planned and proposed by Governing Body. There is a core group consisting 6 senior staff members of SEDT, which works under guidance of Executive Director. The core group and the project implementation staff form the executive committee for the particular project. This mechanism ensures the decentralization of the decision-making process.

We initiated our work with to provide a home for the children in need of care and protection. Later we conducted several activities of different projects like community health, women empowerment, child education and child rights issues, income generation for women, development of farmers by improving agricultural productivity etc.as need of the community.  

We are undertaking projects as need of the local community, so involvement of people is implementation is never becoming problem for us. We insist for 100% people’s involvement in any program.We give more emphasis of children, child education and child rights in general. We worked in this from village-district and state level to National level, we were working for 30 years on this issue, still we continue with education for village children.  We always intend to develop capacity of the community to deal with the problem. We deal with following issues:

1. We give more importance to the women. There is serious issue like “women’s backwardness” in this area. Women are treated secondary. We are fighting against this and trying to empower women in general. We adopted a policy “development through women”. So in our all developmental programs we are giving prime importance to the women, she is manager and owner of any business we promoted.  We have registered FPO of women members only.
2. Child development is of a prime important issue for us. We are working from village to state and at National level for “Child rights” issue, right to education, eradication of child labor, against child slavery and so on. Its our nonnegotiable statement that, all children must get chance for better quality of education. We are working with children already, but want to work with all schools in the area for better quality ecuation.
3. Today’s girls are woman of tomorrow, so she must be strong and educated well. We are working with adolescent girls to empower them. There is too much disparity in local community with girls and bays. Girls are neglected for her development. Child marriage is regular practice here. Parbhani district have highest incidences of child marriages in the state. We are working against this practice and whenever there is child marriage, we try to stop it. Sometime we also use law in this.
We are working to support adolescent girls for their bright future. We want that, “all girls must be well educated”. We believe that only education can prevent them from all bad social practices and will help to live better life. So we made slogan “All girls must be graduated”.
4. Sound economic condition can lead for better lifestyle. And with proper agriculture practices,  farmers can be rich and can live better life.  Here in our area, 100% population is depended and related with Agriculture. This is 100% rural area, no alternative menace of livelihood than Agriculture. So we have to develop agriculture practices in best manner. We have established “Farmers clubs” . We are training farmers for better farming and improve agriculture income. Introducing integrated farming for higher yield and income.
5. Income generation is very important for everyone. Unfortunately educated youths are looking for “Service-job” anywhere. Otherwise, they called themselves “Useless”. (BEKAAR). Its fact that everyone can not get job. We want that instead of searching job outside, youths can develop small “Enterprise” at village level and can earn enough. There are hundred and hundred such opportunities, the youths can try. With small capital they can start own business and can earn better amount than any ordinary job.  We want to develop such skills-full cadre in each village. They can be complimentary for each other’s.  The youth -without any work can provide wages for other youths even.
So motivating youths for any business and skills development  for that can be better solution to current crises. We intend to work on this.
6. Instead of curative methods in community health, we want to work on preventive methods with the community to take care for their health. i.e. health education, awareness and training for better health practices including sports and developing nutrition gardens .
7. Scientific attitude is very important in anybody’s life. Developing science centers to promote science education is our one of the important activities. We have developed a concept of “Science center”. Where we are installing 100+ different exhibits with good poster at background explaining the theory science.  All our exhibits are interactive. We insist that students visiting our science center, should touch to all exhibits, play with exhibits and enjoy science.   
We could establish 136 such science centers in schools, in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Noida (Delhi) and Uttar Pradesh.
We are thinking to establish more and more such science centers in different parts of the country.

Most of the Voluntary organizations , NGOs working with support from others, may be individual, community, trusts-foundations  and corporates.

We are working for last 42 years, our experience is, we can get little support from community, little from individual but for major support we have to rely on trusts-foundations and corporations.

Our work is supported by government also, but there are too much limitations. Government have some fix schemes, up to that only funds can be available, but in that again, funds are not sufficient. For example, we are working for “orphan and destitute children” since 1980. We are receiving grants from government. At present grants are available rs.2000/ per child per month. In these 2 thousand, all expenditure are included, like food-residence-medicine-clothing-education and whatever is needed.  We are spending around rs.6,000/ per child/month. (Including staff salaries.) so we have to beg for these matching grants.

Apart from this, just to say that, the government implements many programs and schemes, for the sake of saying only. Government is working with several programs, but its not sufficient. For example, Government working with education, see the situation of our block.

 We mainly work in Palam taluka of Parbhani district, the most deprived block of the state.

1. In this block of 92 villages, 16 of these villages have schools only up to 4th.std.
2. There are 49 villages, having schools from 1st to 5th.only.
3. There are schools from 1st to 7th std, in 3 villages only.
4. schools up to 10th std in 13 villages.
5. And schools up to 12th std is in 11 villages.

This is real situation of availability of education in our block. there is no education facility after 4^th and 5^th std and 7^th std. in majority of the villages. So the education of many boys and girls discontinue here, especially more number of girls. Parents are not willing to send them to other villages for education.  Parents do not want to send girls outside the village for further education from 8th i.e. after the age of 14 years. Here 70 to 80 percent girls' education stops. Along with this, many boys from poor families also dropout from schooling.
There are some private schools in the area, some of them are really big,  having 2-3 divisions of classes-5^th std, 6^th std and 8^th std etc. We visited all these schools; majority of the schools do not have a single computer in the school. No question arises how students can use computer?
In agriculture, we, Parbhani district having “Agriculture university”. District consist of 860 villages. 99% people depend and related with agriculture, its only source of livelihood here. Besides we have Agri-university, Parbhani dist is one of the poorest dist in the country, with lowest agricultural productivity.
How many farmers receiving benefit, training-guidance etc from this university? Not 5% even. There is only ONE SOIL TESTING LAB here.  How 3-4 lacks families can get their soil tested from here?   So in my field we hardly find anyone knowing soil testing. And same about then any guidance in agro-practices.
Secondly government has very limited programs and schemes. It is not possible for government to do everything.  As we are working in this area for long time. at present we are working with 10 different projects, government support is for 3 projects, and 7 projects we have to manage with support from  corporates.  (for that no government schemes are there)
Apart from this, what ever we could touch, Still there are several areas, we need to work or community need support. But we are not able to work because of finance, if finance is available, we can work more.
We are far away from cities, working in most backward and deprived area like Parbhani. Many Corporates are taking interest in city or near to city. So more than enough funds are available there. But organizations like ours are deprived from such funds. We request to corporates to look into deprived areas, backward area- area at long distance like ours, there is much more need to support and work. There is no industry around us, we are 280 km.  away from Aurangabad, 400km. from Pune, 450km from Nagpur.