Dr. Marcella D’Souza
Dr. Marcella D’Souza, A medical doctor by profession, chose to give up a lucrative medical career in order to dedicate her life to serving the poor in rural India.
Marcella is an alumini of the Govt. Medical College, Nagpur and also a Takemi Fellow of the Harvard School of Public Health.
Of the almost 21 years of selfless service, 6 of these were spent on the mountains of Peru, South America. Here she organized a large-scale community-led, indigenous knowledge- based health care system across large areas of the South Andes.
As Programme Coordinator- Women’s Promotion, of a large scale developmental program, namely, the Indo-German Watershed Development Programme in Maharashtra, Marcella was responsible for developing a pedagogy for empowering women through self-help group formation and federation at the village level, as well as mainstreaming women into the decision making structures of the village. Over 4082 SHGs involving 54,785 women across 1098 villages have directly benefited from these efforts. The methods she developed are now widely adopted.
In order to facilitate access to financial and technical resources for women, Marcella founded a micro-finance institution in 2002 - the Sampada Trust- which today supports over 65,000 women.
Marcella has big plans. In response to repeated demands, Marcella would like to extend WOTR’s services to the needy regions of Central and Northern India as well as organize large-scale efforts for vocational training, skills upgradation and employment generation, especially for rural youth.