Under the leadership of the Chief Minister the State Government of Maharashtra has initiated the Maharashtra Village Social Transformation Foundation (VSTF) to transform backward villages into model villages.
The Foundation envisions a holistic transformation in the villages of Maharashtra that will achieve multiple developmental goals:
- Transform ~1000 villages in Maharashtra, by enhancing development indicators of drinking water access, infant mortality, education index , agri-income to highest level across India
- Bring about wide-scale behavioural change to empower villages towards self-sustainable development
- Build a development model that will be scalable across the state
The overarching objective of the Foundation is to ensure that villages are empowered and change is self-initiated and sustainable.
Looking at the goals which VSTF has set for itself we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Maharashtra Government. Under the VSTF collaboration, Syngenta is supporting 15 Gram Panchayats in Ahmednagar, Buldhana and Nashik and turn them into model villages.
In addition to the above collaboration, we are supporting 3 villages under VSTF with educational infrastructure wherein we are building 8 new classrooms in three Government schools in Nashik District of Maharashtra.