Problems

Civil society organizations, NGOs, international NGOs, corporate foundations, hospitals and educational trusts all play a significant role in helping to address Asia’s many pressing social and environmental needs.

Yet, many of these organizations exist in a state of permanent financial crisis, struggling from time to time to make their ends meet. One of the major reasons is the lack of capacity and skills to develop a sustainable resource base for their organization. Over dependence on grants and government funding leaves many of these organizations vulnerable to changing priorities amongst the funders in the field of -

Health and Hunger
Almost half of Asia's 1.27 billion children live in poverty, without proper food, water, healthcare or shelter - Report by the global child aid agency Plan. While 80% of India’s 400 million children are poor.
Half of all children under 5 years old are underweight for their age. About one-fifth die before their fifth birthday, and two-thirds of these deaths are related to malnutrition.
2 out of every 1,000 children have some type of autism and in a rate of 5 boys to every girl. Currently there is no medical detection, treatment or cure for autism.
India has 60% of the world’s leprosy patients and 75% of all new cases - the highest concentration in the world.
India has 5.3 mn HIV+ people, outstripping S Africa. (Source: www.bbcnews.com, April 20, 2005)
Old people fail to earn their livelihood due to old age, for which they are treated useless and drain to the family income by the youngsters. No medical attendance is available and they suffer from old age diseases including disease chronic in nature.

Rural Poverty
The majority of the world’s poor are rural, and will remain so for several decades. Poverty reduction programmes must therefore be refocused on rural people if they are to succeed. Poverty is not genderneutral: women enjoy less access to, and control over, land, credit, technology, education, health care and skilled work.
Some 1.2 billion people worldwide consume less than a ‘standard’ dollar-a-day; they are in dollar poverty. 44% are in South Asia, about 24% each in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, 75% of the dollar poor work and live in rural areas; projections suggest that over 60% will continue to do so in 2025
Progress in reducing rural poverty has stalled. In the 1990s, it fell to less than one third of the rate needed to meet the United Nations’ commitment to halve world poverty by 2015. Although three quarters of the world’s 1.2 billion extremely poor people live and work in rural areas, aid to agriculture, their main source of income, has fallen by two thirds

Animal issues
"There are many animal cruelty issues all over the world, Comparing the issues there are not many animal welfare groups working at the local (small) level specially in small towns.
Stray or community dogs are a problem all over India. Stray and feral cats are not very numerous due to competition for food sources from the dogs and other animals. The authorities have been cruelly killing dogs for over 100 years and this inhumane system has brought much suffering with poor results. In the 1990’s the ABC (Animal Birth Control or catch/spay/neuter/vaccinate and release) method was gradually adopted first in the cities of India. While bringing down the number of street dogs in a humane manner the number of cases of human rabies also dramatically decreases.
The WHO at its Fourth International Symposium on Rabies Control in Asia stated: “Elimination of rabies in humans requires control of rabies in dogs” and “Rabies elimination by vaccination of the dog population is the most cost-beneficial strategy." It has also been repeatedly stressed that once the threshold figure of 70% of a dog population being vaccinated is reached, the propagation of rabies is virtually halted. 70% is also the figure at which stage ABC reaches its “critical mass”. An aggressive ABC program not only steeply reduces rabies; it also reduces the number of street dogs. Combined with an effective garbage control system the results are dramatically visible.
Even though a dog is considered a man’s best friend, today, stray dogs are viewed as a major menace – both in terms of hygiene and risk of rabies.