Dennis Ramdahin, MSc. Founder and Executive Director, Vihara Foundation /Rock against Poverty

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Dennis Ramdahin is an environmentalist and sustainable development practitioner with almost two decades working in supporting the poverty and climate change agendas.

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His experience includes the first active introduction of greening of New York State government (dating back to 1999), with focus on energy master planning, green building design, energy life cycle financial modeling, all aimed at supporting the reduction of greenhouse gases from the dense built sector environment of New York City.

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In 2003, Dennis actively became engaged in sustainable development modelling for poverty alleviation (following his initial trip to North India that revealed the state of abject poverty confronting that region).

In 2006 he engaged the Haitian-New York Diaspora Professionals on “Theoretical Modelling for Poverty Alleviation in Haiti”, and brought this work to the attention of the President of Haiti (but to no political avail).

In 2009, Dennis took the concept of the Haiti Poverty Alleviation Model and applied it in Eastern Uttar Pradesh (North India), which is today one of the largest whole-system thinking business and scientific proposals for scalable poverty alleviation in the world (The Vihar Poverty Project - scoped for 500 sqkm range).

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In addressing creative means for financing scalable poverty and climate mitigation works, Dennis and the Vihara Foundation founded in 2010 the Rock against Poverty initiative, which has steadily grown over the years to where it is now.