Welcome to the Vihara Foundation (VF), a non-government organization (NGO) with a mission of researching, designing, and implementing new and innovative sustainable strategies for addressing poverty and climate mitigation issues (globally).
VF aims to deliver sustainable livelihoods for the poverty stricken and at the same time contribute to and drive strategies for positive climate actions. Recognizing poverty is a complex socio-economic issue which contributes negative impacts to the environment and climate change, VF mission is to decomplex this issue and provide solutions in the areas of sustainable agriculture, water and resource management and conservation, green and appropriate renewable energy, direct market access, creative financing for development and climate mitigation, education, healthcare, women's upliftment and other major development parameters. Here, innovation is driven to pursue a macro approach to aiding poverty and climate issues using a combination of “creativity through sustainability”, and “creativity in thinking” - two pillars for poverty alleviation and climate mitigation that augment and support present and important efforts by others already underway.
Founded by a team of very experienced and out-of-the-box-thinking sustainable development practitioners and scientists (positioned around the globe), and partnering with other highly professional Non-Government Organizations, academic and industry institutions, VF converge many years practical training and experience in the fields of energy and environment, natural resource management, human resource and business management, health, economics, social planning, and other areas of specialties in support of poverty alleviation and climate mitigation. It is also the strategic intent of VF to support all of the United Nations Millenium Development Goals as it carries out its mission and implementation of goals and objectives.
Our first live poverty alleviation project is The Vihar Project (formerly called Bihar Project), a macro-scale, macro-economic, integrated, sustainable development undertaking that is developing a grassroot level community based sustainable development benchmark for replication elsewhere in India, and globally. One hundred rural villages have been scoped for research and project design and development in rural sector Nalanda, Bihar and Ballia, (Eastern) Uttar Pradesh - one of the most poverty stricken regions of the world. Simultaneously, we are concurrently gearing up to export the lessons being learned to other poverty stricken locations within India, Africa, and impoverished and recent earthquake ravished, Republic of Haiti.
In recognition of the threat posed by Climate Change to the farming regions of India, VF is also concurrently advancing a parallel macro-scale strategy of creative financing to support climate mitigation. This is a proposal with broad global applicability aimed at re-diverting energy inefficiency investments in the global built-sector (40 percent of carbon emissions) into positive climate green finance action. Both The Bihar Project and the Climate Mitigation Finance Proposal are represented by a creative financing methodology termed Total Life Cycle Valuing (TLCv). In fighting poverty, TLCv aims to free farmers and agrarian communities from dependence on development donors, and at the same time with respect to fighting global warming, turn energy-economic-carbon inefficiency into a global mechanism for financing building sector carbon reduction.
Our website is constrantly being upgraded and populated with information. Viewers wishing to see more interactive updates and project photos are encouraged to view our facebook page (below). Nonetheless, we hope your viewing of our website will be an eye-opening experience and will help you relate to how real and urgent poverty and climate issues are, and of the action being taken by VF to make a significant difference. Also, our website will aim to give you a comprehensive understanding into the depth of poverty (using real footage and documentary video, and enhanced narratives of the situations at hand).
We also encourage you to understand how you (too) can play a vital role in supporting this initiative, by putting the smiles back onto the faces of the poor and destitute, and a face of quality of life and equality back into humanity, and helping our planet out of a crisis. We, along with the people of this development project, would be delighted if you would find the passion to loan your help and/or expertise to this important initiative, and/or, make a small contribution towards this humanitarian and environmental effort. Presently, many (like you) have stepped forward to support this cause.
Thanking you for your support.
Ambassador Byron Blake
Chairman of the Board of Directors, and, Former Senior Advisor to the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations & the G77 and China