KISAN Award

Thank you for your interest in the2015 KISAN Award Fund organized by Save Indian Farmers, a collaborative effort to invest money while making a difference to the lives of Indian farmers and their families.

What is the KISAN Award? Kreative Innovative Supportive Accommodative and Noble (KISAN) Award Fundis a pool of money socially conscious donors will contribute in, to invest in rural entrepreneurs (mostly women) to start/extend small business and support their family. This money is lent to them at an interest rate much lower than what they can get in the open marketplace in India.  Once their loan is paid off, we plan to keep your money and invest it in another family and their small business. In this manner your donation will keep on giving for years to come.

How does this work?

You as a socially conscious investor will donate money to Save Indian Farmers (SIF) organization. In turn, SIF will pool those funds from different investors and use rangde.org Micro-financing platform to select rural entrepreneurs and their impact partners. Impact partners are on-the-ground organizations (NGOs) that submit cases for consideration, disburse loans, monitor progress and collect payments. Borrower usually gets loan for a year term at lower interest rate. Once we get the money back, we plan to invest that money in another rural entrepreneur farmer family.

Why is this an award?

We believe, as donors you can get creative about how you want to make investment. Give us your idea as to why you would like to support certain region or certain small businesses. We plan to recognize outstanding ideas with a certificate or plaque while inspiring others to think about investing in farmers.

How can I participate?

You as a donor will send us money via paypal or by mailing a check. Please do NOT send money directly to rangde.org as we will not be able to track it. Please mention how you would like to invest that money such as focus on certain region, certain small businesses etc. We will invest in families that are rural and from farming background. We want to make impact so that farmers are able to supplement their farm income from these ventures.

What is the timeline?

Once we get the farmer families and their business loans details, we will put them up on our website with a link here and also advertise on social media site (facebook, twitter etc.) Please send us email if you are interested and we will keep you posted. Since your contribution would make such a prominent impact on someone’s life, we expect to run this program on a periodic basis.

Has this been done before?

KISAN award program was done before using different methodology. Participants were encouraged to come up with various ideas to save money and pledge part of that savings to support Indian farmers. The most unique idea was chosen by the peers. We raised $1,500 through this initiative.

Is there any minimum pledge expected?

No pledge is small. Most of the rural entrepreneur women on rangde.org are looking for loans ranging from Rs 4,000 to Rs 10,000. So plan to your donations accordingly. Based on current exchange, 2015 rate of Rs 65 per US Dollar, this is equivalent to USD 125 to USD 155 – think about it! (just 50 cents a day)

I have some questions/suggestions? Whom should I contact?

You can reach us at kisanaward@saveindianfarmers.org We look forward to hearing from you!