Jonathan Mann Health and Human Rights Memorial Lecture

This year's lecture will feature:

Rajsekhar Budithi
CEO of the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP)

"Peer Lending as an Anti-Poverty Strategy"

May 4, 2012 • 9:00 AM

Double Tree by Hilton
237 South Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Given in conjunction with the National Conference on Hunger and Poverty:
"Beyond Hunger: Real People, Real Solutions."

Sponsored by the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at the Drexel School of Public Health.
You do not need to attend the conference in order to participate in this lecture.


About SERP:
Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) is an autonomous society of the Department of Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh.  The vision statement is as follows: The disadvantaged communities shall be empowered to overcome all social,economic, cultural and psychological barriers through self-managed organizations. They will attain higher productivity with improved skills and asset base and utilize resources to full potential and gainful access to services.

About the Speaker:
Mr. Rajsekhar Budithi is the CEO of the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in Andrha Pradesh, Hyderbad, India.  Mr. Budithi belongs to the prestigious Indian Administrative Service, where he has focused his career on developing innovative systems and institutional frameworks to improve the lives of vulnerable populations, primarily poor women in rural communities in India. He currently oversees the SERP, which supports over 900,000 self-help groups providing employment to over 10 million rural poor women and implementing World Bank assisted poverty alleviation projects. Mr. Budithi has a long history of working to end poverty for rural women and the poor in India. He has worked at multiple levels of government including as the Chief of Staff of the Minister of Commerce and work at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to implement a HIV/AIDS Young People Initiative.  Mr. Budithi has built partnerships with development institutions, governments, NGO’s and research institutions to advance the cause of poverty alleviation in India.  He holds B.A. in Mechanical Engineering from Andhra University College of Engineering, Visakhapatnam.  

Mr.  Budithi is a recipient of the 2011 Eisenhower Fellowship. While on fellowship, Mr. Budithi explored public health initiatives and food security programs, to help him improve the health of vulnerable populations in the State of Andhra Pradesh. In 2011, Mr. Budithi was awarded the Douglas Dillon Fellowship through the Council on Foreign Relations. The Dillon fellowship supports innovators with a a keen understanding of economics with cutting-edge policy research in a given field.

About the Lecture Series:
The endowed lecture series is named after Dr. Jonathan Mann (1947 - 1998), the renowned humanitarian and founding dean of the School of Public Health.  Although he served as the school's founding dean for less than a year, Dr. Mann's vision, passion and leadership forever instilled the values of public health as a human right at the School of Public Health.  Each speaker in the annual series will reflect Dr. Mann's principles.