PRIYA ANAND 

Priya Anand is based in Bangalore, India and is a freelance Development Consultant. A substantial portion of her career has been spent in assessing ground level development work, which includes understanding impact to the community, capacity of the organizations, with specific recommendations to both participating NGOs and funding agencies to maximize benefits accrued to the community.  Such work has helped her to formulate developmental programs, aimed especially at the women and marginalized sections of the society.  She has several years of experience in managing funding grants and provides guidance to both non-profits and funding agencies, which dovetails neatly with a research mindset.  Such efforts have also helped in capacity building of partner non-profits through continuous mentorship as well as structured training programs and workshops.  Her career has taken me across the length and breadth of the country that include rural agrarian belts, forests and urban clusters. 

 

She was associated with Jeevika Trust, a UK based non-profit between 2008-2019. Jeevika supports livelihood programmes for disadvantaged rural women and their families, through NGOs based in Tamil Nadu and Orissa. She also works as a consultant with Vardaan, a consultancy firm that institutes, monitors and evaluates CSR collaborations between corporates and non profits. Priya authored a book titled Profile 500, a compendium of 500 NGOs across India. She has led a team that compiled and produced directories on the voluntary sector - PROFILE 500, a directory of 500 selected Indian voluntary organisations working on a wide range of social and developmental programmes and Consult India – a directory of selected Development Consultants (institutions and individuals) across India.

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She was selected as a 2003 International Fellow by the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society attached to the City University of New York to study Community Foundations and Diaspora Philanthropy. 

 

She is also a blogger, poet, and writer of short fiction. Some of Priya’s creative writing (fiction, poetry, book reviews and travel pieces) have been featured in the Deccan Herald, Spark magazine, Bangalore Review, Literary Yard, The Brown Boat (Raedleaf Poetry India), Reading Hour, Writers E Zine, Bangalore Mag, and Teacher Plus.  

 

Priya is also an avid trekker and has completed nine Himalayan treks in Bhutan, Nepal and India.