One never knows where and when the spark will come from. For NAMCO, the genesis was seeded when Mr. C. Jeevanandham, a social worker then, was assigned a responsibility to undertake a situation analysis of women in agriculture, in the district of Nagapattinam and Thiruvarur. Both districts had high concentration of ‘Dalit’ communities, who were oppressed for long by the caste Hindus. They were subjected to poverty, discrimination, abuse, exploitation etc. caused by fellow human beings on one hand and natural disasters pounding them frequently making them poorer and more vulnerable on the other.
For Mr. Jeevanandham and his couple of women colleagues, this was just not acceptable. They viewed this plight of women not just as a social problem, but a deeply connected economic problem as well. They wanted to do something about this. They were confident that they could come together and start a few interventions which will improve the peoples’ situation in the years or decades to come. Thus emerged NAMCO (National Mother and Child welfare Organisation), as a not-for-profit development organisation with its headquarters in Thiruvarur. NAMCO was formally registered in 1992 as a society under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act, 1860.