The Antara Foundation Blog

Improving maternal, child health and nutrition outcomes in Madhya Pradesh The H T Parekh Foundation (HTPF) is the philanthropic arm of HDFC Limited. The Foundation was established in October 2012 to commemorate its Founder, Shri H T Parekh’s significant contribution towards the development sector in India. HTPF have been Antara Foundation’s (TAF) partners since September 2019, supporting our work in Chhindwara district, Madhya Pradesh. Upahar Pramanik, who oversees the health portfolio at HTPF, spoke with us about the Foundation’s work and their association with TAF. What is HTPF’s philosophy and what causes does it support? We envision an inclusive India where vulnerable communities have equal access and opportunity to survive and thrive. Stressing on the tenets of mutual trust and respect, integrity and humility around giving, we stand as long-term supporters to our partners working to enable marginalized communities in overcoming a range of social issues. The Foundation works ...

Jainetri Merchant. Spring 2018. I was one of hundreds of students sitting in a toasty-warm lecture hall, attending the final semester of an epidemiology class. We were studying a chapter on maternal disease and death. I sat in the glow of a colorful power point slide, which had graphs illustrating the variance in maternal mortality ratio globally. I typed away on my laptop, hanging on to every word the professor uttered. Do you know what a university classroom sounds like? It is the clatter of hundreds of fingers typing simultaneously on tiny plastic keys, synchronized with the hum of the projector. In midst of that constant clatter, I leaned back in my seat, thinking I understood the weight of that statistic through the pixels of my screen. In the two months of my Antara Foundation fellowship in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district, I find myself in a classroom of a different kind. Be it in the labor room of a Community Health Centre or even the lawn of an Anganwadi Centre, I have had the ...