The work with our partner NGO, SCAD, in India is flourishing with increased interest from many quarters. In November Marks and Spencer accompanied two of our colleagues and spent a couple of days with our community there. We were also able to present SCAD with another £30,000 from the sales of electricity to the Indian National Grid. Because of the TCW partnership and the revenue that is donated to them from the turbines, SCAD want to roll out the programme to another 500 villages, doubling their current reach…Our CEO, Wendy reported that ‘although I have known about the work that our partner NGO, SCAD does, it isn’t until you visit the villages and people that SCAD work with, that you can fully appreciate the depth and breadth of support that is needed and provided’.For example, many of the schools only exist because they have been established and are supported by SCAD. Some of the schools are very basic, without electricity and there is an ongoing programme to give them access to clean drinking water. With Richard from Marks and Spencer we visited one such school. It was made all the more poignant because if it wasn’t for SCAD these children would not be in school but working in the saltpans. Many of their parents were in bonded labour, forced to take their children to work with them in the saltpans to pay for the increasing debt they owed. Working in the saltpans is a very harsh environment and children as young as 9 and 10 were dying. SCAD helped set up a micro-finance scheme so that saltpan workers could eventually be released from this and a school for the children soon followed. This whole community approach is what makes SCAD so successful; identifying the cause of why the children were not in school and addressing this has meant that the school SCAD built was more likely to be attended. What a joy it was to see these children excitedly telling us about their school work and a real pleasure to meet the teachers who are devoted to helping all children get access to education.This is just one of the many examples of the difference SCAD is making in rural Tamil Nadu, India. Because your donations are invested in the wind turbines to create long term consistent revenue streams for SCAD, they have been able to start rolling the programme across more villages and it includes so much more like treating cataracts and animals for Indian farmers.We were able to present SCAD with another £30,000 in November from the sales of electricity to the Indian National Grid. Because of the TCW partnership SCAD want to roll out the programme to another 500 villages, doubling their current reach.‘Going forward we hope to support SCAD in helping its community to respond to the impacts of climate change. Sea level rises are already affecting the soils, salinating them and rendering them close to useless for producing food. The weather patterns are less predictable also affecting food crops. These impacts could undo all the good work that has been done so far unless we take account of these factors. We recently visited the Deputy British High Commissioner in Chennai who is interested in our work with SCAD on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Over the coming months we will be working with SCAD to scope this and explore the integration of adaption into their whole community programmes. We hope to bring you more on this in our next newsletter.