Care leavers and young students
Young people beginning adulthood without a family safety net and students whose education is threatened by a financial gap.
Support may continue for two or three years.
FoundationThe GAP Fund
To provide a little ground to stand on.
A small and reliable amount of money can give someone the time and space to find their footing.
The GAP Foundation provides direct financial support called the GAP Fund to people facing circumstances in which a little money and time can make a meaningful difference. It is built on a simple belief: people understand their own needs and support should be offered with dignity and trust.
Understand the ideaEstablished in memory of Guruswamy Ananthapadmanabhan
01
Why the GAP Fund exists
Sometimes what is missing is quite simple.
One difficult event can change the course of a life. The death of a family member can leave a household without an income. A health emergency can consume years of savings. A young person leaving institutional care may have no family to fall back on. An elderly or homeless person may live without even a small and dependable source of support.
In such moments the missing piece is often a reliable amount of money and enough time to recover, complete an education or rebuild some stability.
Ananth believed that one of the most powerful things we can offer another person in a vulnerable moment is trust. He was sceptical of systems that made people prove their worthiness before receiving help. He believed that people generally know what they need and that even a modest amount of unconditional support can change the choices available to them.
He practised this belief quietly throughout his life. He helped people he encountered as well as communities and organisations whose work he trusted. He did not wait for a formal programme or a perfect system before acting.
“The fund does not claim to solve poverty in the abstract. It exists to do something specific and limited with care. That is enough.”
02
Who we support
Support shaped around a person’s circumstances.
The GAP Foundation supports people in three broad situations.
People facing a sudden economic shock
Individuals or families destabilised by a death, serious illness, accident or loss of livelihood.
For many families one year can provide a meaningful bridge.Homeless and elderly people
People without stable housing, dependable income or a support network including elderly people, migrant workers and others who have been displaced.
Support may continue for one to three years.03
What we do and how it works
₹2,500–₹4,000
direct financial support per person each month
Support is offered for a defined period based on the person’s situation. It may help someone meet essential expenses, remain in education, recover from a sudden loss or create enough stability to consider what comes next.
Identified through trusted relationships
Partner organisations and community relationships help identify people who may benefit.
Circumstances understood
The fund considers existing assistance and whether steady support can make a material difference.
Monthly support provided
Cash is transferred directly for a period suited to the person’s circumstances.
Respectful contact maintained
Contact remains useful and non-intrusive while partners help people seek entitlements where relevant.
The fund provides cash.
How the person uses it is their decision.
Dignity
The way support is given matters as much as the support itself.
Unconditional trust
Conditions should serve the person rather than the comfort of the institution.
Directness
The distance between those contributing and receiving support remains short.
Humility
The fund stays honest about its scale and focuses on doing its work carefully.
04
Where this work began
Before the Foundation was set up, Ananth was already offering support in this spirit.
Sometimes it reached one person through a difficult year. At other times it helped a family or community create space for a different future. These stories are glimpses of that practice and the work the GAP Foundation hopes to carry forward.
01
Sahodaya
Trust without conditions
Sahodaya is a community of around 35 people including 30 children that explores nature-based learning, sustainable farming and local livelihoods.
Ananth’s support helped the community provide better living conditions for its children, use local and organic food, practise nature-oriented farming and organise programmes on local seeds and ecological knowledge. He also helped Sahodaya’s children undertake an 83-day educational journey across organisations working on sustainable living and livelihoods.
Ananth never visited Sahodaya or met its team. He did not prescribe activities or ask for anything in return. He trusted the people doing the work and gave them the freedom to use the support where it mattered most.
02
Lakshmidevi
Support through a sudden loss
Lakshmidevi’s husband Nagabhushana died by suicide in 2018 after accumulating severe agricultural debt. Their two children were still in school and Lakshmidevi had no immediate income. Local custom prevented her from working for six months while her government widow pension had yet to begin.
REDS identified the family and Ananth provided ₹1,000 every month for nine months so Lakshmidevi could meet basic needs while REDS helped her pursue government support and keep her children in school.
She later received the farmer suicide ex gratia and rebuilt her livelihood through sweet lime cultivation and intercropping on her two-acre farm. Today she supports her family through agriculture and participates actively in the Single Women Federation.
03
Nagamani and Rajeshwari
Breathing room for a family in crisis
Nagamani lost her hearing after an accident during childhood and later left school. Her marriage ended after her husband’s family learned of her hearing loss. She returned to her parents and began working as an agricultural labourer.
The family then faced two further crises. Nagamani’s brother sustained a spinal injury and became bedridden. The shock affected her father’s health and left him paralysed. Her mother Rajeshwari became responsible for supporting the entire household.
Ananth supported the family financially for a year. The assistance gave Rajeshwari some breathing room while she carried the responsibility of earning and caring for three family members.
04
Chandini
A steady hand for a working mother
Chandini lives in a village in Telangana’s Mahabubnagar district. She was married very young and is raising five children. After her husband suffered a serious fall at a construction site one of his hands was permanently disabled and he could no longer continue working as a security guard.
With no regular household income Chandini began stitching mirrors onto dresses and blouses. She went from house to house in search of work while continuing to care for her family.
Ananth and Kavitha met Chandini during a visit to Hyderabad and began providing monthly financial support. The steady assistance helped the family meet essential expenses while Chandini continued to earn through her craft.
05
Ramadevi
From surviving violence to supporting other women
Ramadevi experienced child marriage, dowry harassment and trafficking while she was still very young. After escaping she sought justice with sustained support from REDS. The people responsible were eventually convicted following a long legal process.
Ramadevi went on to become a community leader. She now helps women facing domestic violence, child marriage and trafficking reach counselling and other forms of support. Her work and courage were recognised with the Naveena Mahila Award.
Through REDS Ananth contributed financial support toward her livelihood. That assistance formed one part of a much longer journey in which Ramadevi rebuilt her confidence and began standing beside other vulnerable women in her community.
05
Who carries it forward
A light structure. Personal relationships. Responsible decisions.
The GAP Foundation is a volunteer-driven effort carried forward by people who knew Ananth and others who share his belief in direct and dignified support.
Volunteers contribute their time, relationships and experience to help the fund identify partners, understand individual circumstances, maintain contact during the support period and steward contributions responsibly.
Partner organisations bring knowledge built through long relationships with communities. They help identify people who may benefit, remain connected without intrusive monitoring and support access to government entitlements or other longer-term opportunities where relevant.
The fund will grow at a pace that allows these relationships to remain personal and responsible. Its purpose is to ensure that more people can receive timely support without losing their dignity in the process.
06
About Ananth
10 August 1966 – 18 April 2026
Most people knew him simply as Ananth.
The titles tell only a small part of his story.
He was an IIT Madras graduate who used his first month’s salary to help build an NGO hatchery for sea turtles on Chennai’s beach. He taught at The School run by the Krishnamurti Foundation for eleven years. He helped establish Greenpeace India, later led programmes at Greenpeace International from Amsterdam, built Amnesty International’s presence in India and served as the founding CEO of Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives. In his later years he gave his time and energy to Rootbridge, WeLive Foundation and Socratus Foundation.
People remember his baritone voice and the way he could turn a greeting into a moment of warmth and gentle accountability. He could disagree fiercely while listening with genuine attention. He trusted people early and gave them room to reach their own conclusions. He was a gifted facilitator who could hold a difficult room together without drawing attention to himself.
He sang beautifully, read across genres and loved good food. He walked and cycled hundreds of kilometres over the years. He enjoyed sport and remained curious about people, ideas and life itself.
Ananth’s world stretched from the individual to the political and the spiritual. While the development sector often measures impact through numbers he understood it through relationships across age, class and geography.
He gave freely when he encountered a person who needed support and called those who received it his “Dharmakartas”: the people who gave him an opportunity to practise dharma.
Ananth believed deeply in the transformative potential of universal basic income. A small and dependable amount of money could help a person make choices, withstand a crisis and reclaim some control over their life.
The GAP Fund is an attempt to keep that spirit alive through the collective support of many more Dharmakartas.