SIVA Trust: Building relational capital Transforming the resolve of one to that of many

This case study unfolds the evolution of a small and local Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Service Initiative for Voluntary Action (SIVA), set up in 1994 in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, in Southern India—an area in which industrialsation and commercial development have been ignored for a long time. Diving deep into local issues at the grassroots level, the founder Subramania Siva, addressed the needs of distressed, marginalised families directly. SIVA Trust began small, and remained in a hyper-local mode for close to 30 years, but made a disproportionately large impact that helped root a “culture of volunteerism” throughout SIVA and its work.