How we work

Despite VST's growth since its establishment in 1979 our relationship with our Indian partners continues to be uniquely personal and informed. Most of VST's trustees have worked with the partners in India and VST's programmes manager makes regular visits. VST also employs an advisor in India who has lived and worked in the area for over 30 years. This gives the partners the opportunity to seek objective advice and provides VST with regular updates on the programmes we support. This has the following advantages:

• A more open relationship with our partners - they can be honest with us about what work they feel is important and do not feel pressured to conform to funders' wishes.
• Our partners can tell us if something is going wrong without fearing that we will transfer our funds elsewhere, by the same token we receive a more accurate picture of what is happening on the ground.
• We can give a more comprehensive picture to our funders because we are better informed.

Being a small charity, VST recognises that it does not have the resources or personnel to support projects scattered all over the world. We therefore choose to concentrate on south India where our expertise lies.

We also know that development does not happen quickly so we offer long term support to partners with consistent priorities, rather than frequently changing our partners and areas of work. We understand that our supporters want as much of their money as possible to go to India so we run a small, cost effective office in the UK, aiming to do almost all our work 'in house'.

ALL THIS HELPS VST TO MAXIMISE THE POTENTIAL OF THE
CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED.