Cletus Babu

Founder

Founder of Social Change and Development (SCAD)

Cletus Babu is the founder of Social Change and Development (SCAD) (1985)[1], an Indian non-profit working on rural & agriculture, livelihood and education from Tirunelveli.

S. Cletus Babu is an Indian social worker who founded Social Change and Development (SCAD) in 1985 at Cheranmahadevi in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu. SCAD works with communities including nomadic groups, salt-pan workers, snake charmers, people affected by leprosy, landless agricultural labourers, people with disabilities, rural women, and orphaned children and destitute elders, and has grown into a group that also runs engineering, polytechnic, education and medical institutions.

Career

Babu was ordained a Catholic priest and served for seven years in southern Tamil Nadu before leaving the priesthood to work full time as a social worker. He holds a doctorate in community development. In 1985 he founded SCAD, beginning in five villages around Cheranmahadevi.

With his wife, Dr Amali Cletus Babu, whom he married in 1988, he expanded SCAD's work across Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi and Kanyakumari districts, reaching several hundred villages and organising thousands of women's and men's self-help groups. The SCAD group of institutions includes the Francis Xavier Engineering College, SCAD Polytechnic College, SCAD College of Education and the SCAD Medical Centre.

Recognition

Babu was named Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005 by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Confederation of Indian Industry. He received a Government of Tamil Nadu award for services to persons with disabilities in 2015, the Abdul Kalam Seva Ratna Award in 2015 for work on restoring water bodies, and a national award for education and social work from the Capital Foundation of India in 2016.[2][3][4]

Social Change and Development (SCAD)

SCAD, founded by Dr. Cletus Babu in 1985 at Cheranmahadevi near Tirunelveli, began by working with gypsies, leprosy-affected people and salt pan workers. It now runs community empowerment programmes across some 600 villages of southern Tamil Nadu, spanning women's self-help groups, education, healthcare, disability support and rural livelihoods.

Social Change and Development (SCAD) reports the following, on its own site:

Since starting in 1985, we have helped around 600 villages with a population of around 600,000 with our community empowerment approach.
We've helped to establish more than 3,500 women's self-help groups with a membership of 60,000.