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Azim Premji, renowned in the worlds of both He spoke about the Foundation’s strategic
Information Technology and philanthropy, was engagement with the Government of Odisha in
inspired by his mother and father, He started his the area to map quality nutrition to mothers and
philanthropic journey some 12-13 years back with children. Their engagement with the Government
an uncompromising emphasis on integrity of of Andhra Pradesh focuses on Climate Resilience
character. The Azim Premji Foundation began with Zero Budget Farming with a scaled up objective of
an aim to upgrade the quality of teachers, so that reaching out to 50 million farmers. The Foundation
a child can learn better. He says, “A fully educated also engages with various stakeholders in the
child is a strong national asset as a citizen”. Most states of Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh,
of the organization’s work involves re-staffing Karnataka and Odisha to improve community
with the cooperation of the Karnataka state access to benefits in these states. It promotes
government and reassessing of the curriculum bottom up participatory planning to adopt a
and over all teacher training.
demand driven approach to service delivery. The
Throwing light on the gender composition of main objective is to implement governance at the
the Foundation and the Azim Premji University, community level by working with grass root level
he shared that at least 55% of the total students specialized NGOs and make women aware, enable
are women and scholarship is offered to at least their participation in planning and to generate
70% of the students. The students generally join accountability for delivering on those plans.
the social sector and 90% of the University cost is
funded by the Foundation endowment.

He broadly discussed what philanthropists
bring to the table when they forge strategic
collaborations with governments. Philanthropists
bring in funding, which is crucial for any project
to thrive. Alongside, they bring in various skills
and expertise. Flexibility is also their forte.
Philanthropists also have a major focus on impact
and its measurement, which is ideally done both,
internally and externally.