Muthu as he is popularly called by friends and colleagues is a professionally trained social worker heading the activities of Covenant Center for Development (CCD) for almost two decades. He is currently representing as the organization as the Secretary of the Board. He was the founder President of the organization and served as the Executive Director / Secretary of the organization since 1989.

“I began my career in Social work inb 1989 by addressing the issue of delinquent children in Madurai.These children migrate from rural areas to the urban areas in search of work. Since the areas are very drought prone living in the rural areas is not easy.  It was not easy to repatriate the children to the rural areas even though life in the urban areas often involved living in slums” says Muthu.

“Simultaneously I also started women’s Self Help Groups (SHG) modeled on the local traditional savings system “siruvadu”. In the village the women in the rural areas often keep a “Kalasam” or a pot to which she adds any extra money that she has left at the end of each day. It was a saving mechanism and often the money use was given to It is a pot given to the daughter at the time of marriage. We decided to use this idea and built a group Kalasam in the name of the local deity. The Kalasam was incorporated and managed by the women themselves. Microloans were given to those who would like start businesses. Later the Kalasams came together and formed the Mahkalasam Federation.  Without any external resources and skills, the women created, built and expanded this entity. Today, they are considered an ideal for micro-finance and community enterprise support work by organizations and women wanting to do similar work across the country. “

While working with the rural women, he realized that a high percentage of their savings was spent on health services. This resulted in looking for and promoting traditional home based primary health care, he built a large network of traditional health service practitioners and in the process revived much of the knowledge among the rural communities resulting in setting up of over 21,000 domestic kitchen gardens across the state of Tamilnadu.
It was while trying to maximize the returns from such herbal gardens as well as establish a sustainable income for herb cultivators and gatherers that led to the idea of Muthu is popularizing the value of local biodiversity in village economies, motivating rural communities to leverage this resource to create new wealth. In the process many of the traditional knowledge systems and skills are revived and enhanced. The fulcrum of these community initiatives have been four registered Community Based Financial Institutions with 8,600 women members. His team has also created five community-owned and managed enterprises dealing with medicinal plants and traditional crop resources with its 4,200 members in business for the past five years and a cumulative targeted turnover of Rs 300 million in the next four years.

“Getting an Ashoka fellowship has been extremely beneficial. First it allowed me to rest easy about the expenses required to run the family and allowed me to focus my attention on the social work. Through the Ashoka Support Network I met another social entrepreneur and jointly we were able to negotiate with MNCs for investment opportunities” says Muthu.

Today his firm belief in community based enterprises utilizing local resources and traditional skills as vehicles of development has resulted in CCD focusing in this direction and successful creation of community based enterprises as well as inspiring networks of similar organizations across the country. His team has facilitated the formation of over 250 community based enterprises across the country. His efforts are being replicated by several organizations in nine other states of India. Through these ventures he has managed to build a team of committed social workers today share his passion for community based enterprises.

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