INDORE DIOCESE SOCIAL SERVICE SOCIETY, INDORE

Although India constitutes around 17% of the world's population, it also accounts for about 35%
of the poor and 40% of the illiterates in the world.

Indore Diocese Social Service Society was started in the year 1981 by Father Joseph Tahil with
the hope that he along with other like-minded people can contribute towards the eradication of
poverty and illiteracy. He started the organisation with a small group of 5-7 individuals that has
now turned into a full-fledged organisation. The organisation had initially started with a simple
aim of providing meals to the poor but then started working in multiple domains like education,
sanitation, wellness drives, mental awareness, income generation and blood donation.

The NGO started by reaching out to people who were in need of support. They first reached to
the poor people in the village and extended their charitable support. The NGO started collecting
donations from people to help the needy and the poor. They started distributing the money and
the food and supplies brought through it to the poor. Father Tahil worked solely through
collecting and distributing donations and food supplies. He was then succeeded by Father
Cherian.

When Father Cherian started overseeing the workings of the NGo he noticed that the people
they catered to relied solely on the church’s donations to earn money and to sustain their
everyday life. He felt the need to change this situation and came up with the idea to empower
the people to become self-sufficient. Father Cherian started conducting educational drives and
made self-help groups for skill development so that people could gain employment and sustain
themselves and their families. The vision that Father Cherian had for IDSSS was to make
people independent and to generate employment for them. However as they started expanding
the areas they catered to they noticed that employment did not solve all problems and people
needed other support as well to lead fulfilling lives. Looking at the situation IDSSS slowly
extended their support to the cities where they found that there were many slum dwellers who
lacked basic health supplies, nutritious food and needed special health care. As they slowly
started extending their services to more and more areas and expanded their services, they
onboarded volunteers to help them cater to the growing number of people. IDSSS soon started
gaining recognition as word spread about their good deeds and more and more people started
wanting to work with them and help in the service of the needy.

IDSSS is currently headed by Father Mukesh Machar who oversees the smooth running of the
NGO over multiple domains. IDSSS has created a great impact in Indore, Dewas and nearby
villages. IDSSS currently provides education to children in impoverished areas who can not
afford to go to schools and teaches them spoken and written english, basic maths, soft skills
and more. They teach kids through tuition centres and they also have a proper school where
kids can come on a daily basis and get education for free. Apart from this they also conduct
drives where they encourage parents to send their kids to school instead of sending them to
work and earn for families. They also educate families about good health practices and provide
them with free health checkups. Apart from this IDSSS also provides a telecalling service called
‘Hello Swasti’ wish is a remote telephone helpline number that is aimed towards providing
guidance towards mental health, physical health and grievances related to government
schemes. IDSSS al