Mr. Crispino Lobo

Mr. Crispino Lobo is a person well known in development circles for his knowledge and achievements in the fields of natural resource management and participatory watershed development. An alumnus of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics and the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Crispino has 5 academic degrees covering the fields of philosophy, theology, psychology, economics and public administration. Being passionate about making a difference in the lives of the marginalized and under-privileged, Crispino chose to commit himself to working in rural areas. Together with Fr. Hermann Bacher, he organized in 1989, the large-scale and highly successful watershed development initiative in Maharashtra called the Indo German Watershed Development Program (IGWDP).  As co-founder of the Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR, founded in 1993) and the Programme Coordinator of the IGWDP, he has been instrumental in supporting and building up the capacities of 403  NGOs across the country as well as directly touching the lives of over 5,90,000 people.

In 1999, together with the then chairman of NABARD, Mr. Y.C. Nanda, he initiated the setting up of the National Watershed Development Fund by the Govt. of India to take the experiences of the IGWDP and WOTR across 100 districts in the country.

Crispino’s outstanding contribution has been to translate vision and passion into scalable accountability-based, outcome- oriented systems and processes. The approaches and management systems he has developed have been widely adopted across the country and are now being adopted abroad in development projects of a similar nature. He now heads the Sampada Trust and plans to extend its financial and entrepreneurship support services across the country, wherever poor women and youth need a partner in their struggle for betterment.

Go Back