Get them young

It has been a long time I wrote a post on this blog - any blog for that matter. The immediate cause of this post has been request from a friend in E4SI to spread the word around about their fellowship program.

Make sure you do visit their site, get more details, join and spread the word. They have some really good and respectable companies as their partners and the list is longer this time.

I came to know about E4SI at the International Conference on Social Entrepreneurship held sometime back in Chennai. Thereon I came in contact with Nitin Rao, the founder. Luckily, he stays in Hyderabad and Badhri n I could catch up with him. An oft discussed topics, nowadays, in regard with the social sector has been the interest that youngsters have shown in the area of social development. This was a big theme at the conference too where I met many young people who were associated with organizations in the social sector. One example I can cite is socialsync.org These organizations, which themselves are quite young have brought in a refreshingly new prespective in the way societal development is looked at.

They are aiming at a paradigm shift from charity and grant based model to one which is profitable and also accountable to its stakeholders. As one friend opined "You do not need to be poor to help the poor". Going to the next step is the understanding of this sector. This again has been a widely debated topic and opinions exist on both extremes. Intentions alone cannot help us in achieving our goal. We need to understand the problem that we are trying to address. In this respect I often cite an example.

Today I am in a helping mood and I say "I will try and help someone'. I see a visually impaired person standing across the road. I dart across the street grab hold of his hand and get him to "MY" (symbolism intended) side of the street. I pat myself on the back and move on. I did not even ask the person if he really wanted to cross the road. To make matters worse, now the person does not even know where he is.

Thus it is very important to understand the dynamics - without complicating and overdoing things. Oppotunities like E4SI try to create that bridge between the willing and those who need the services of the willing, by getting them to "start to understand" the way things work. I personally feel that such initiatives are required so that young graduates with good intentions get a sense of direction. Though I am not very enamoured by the choice of colleges, - the top ones - that is a topic of some other post where I will try to include Nitin's views too.
Readers, do put in your comments, even if you disagree with what is written here!

Child Labour

Most of us may have discussed and thought of how the Child Labour Laws in India are strong enough but leave much to be desired when it comes to implementation of the laws and rehabilitation of the 'rescued' children. A start has obviously been made with the government recognizing the problem and amending the earlier Child Labour Act 1986 and bringing more professions under the purview of the act.

Immediate reason for the post: This article

Like Minded People and a Mine Of Information

I was searching for more information on SABRAS - a company founded by salt pan workers in Gujarat, when I stumbled upon two links.

Think Change India and IndiaCorps

Think Change India, as is clearly mentioned on their website tracks social innovation and social entrepreneurship in India - A topic of great interest to me.

IndiaCorps is a well established organization which takes up social projects in partnership with other NGOs. They also have a fellowship programme for people who want to work in the field of social responsibility.

I am in the process of browsing through the website and collecting useful information but wanted to let you know about these two links. Both these websites link to many more useful and interesting resources.

I find it useful for people in US because both these organizations/groups are centered there. Members over there should see how they can help us in finding our feet.

Follow up on RangDe

Abhishek Khurana and I had a couple of queries which we mailed to RangDe.org. They responded promptly. Reproducing the responses here.

Query 1: When I was searching for borrowers whom I could lend to, I realized that the search for borrowers in UP or J&K did not throw up any results but searching in Tamil Nadu gave quite a few. My query is, are you concentrating on a particular state or group of states to start with? Or is there something wrong in the way I was searching?

Response: Thanks for your support to Rang De. The reason why you did not find borrowers in the states that you searched is because we have not been able to reach out to people in these regions due to lack of resources.

RangDe.Org went live on 26th January 2008 and so far our field partners are from Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu (precisely why you found many from TN). We at Rang De hope that we will soon be able to spread to different parts of India with the help of field partners based in these regions. Our field partners are NGOs and non profit microfinance institutions with a committed development approach and values.

We are now moving to other states such as Karnataka and Rajasthan and the moment we find a credible partner in the states you have mentioned, we will be able spread out there as well.

We now also have the advantage of a full fledged team who will be joining us on 5th of May and we are hoping that they will help us enhance our reach in other parts of India sooner rather than later.

Query 2: "There are a lot of women" in the search results. We really do not have anything against this but were wondering if this is something to do with the demographics of that area or is it that you have a focus on women.

Response: Traditional microfinance is aimed mainly at women. You must have noticed that these are unsecured loans. What typically happens is that the money is lent not to an individual but to an inidvidual who is part of a group. These groups ususally consist of not more than 20 women. These groups are either Joint Liability Groups or Self Help Groups. In both the cases the group has an important role to play. In JLG, if a woman does not repay, her peers in the group need to pitch in in which case there is some kind of a peer pressure that builds and the woman is forced to repay. Research says that this peer pressure can work only with women. In case of the SHG, the group has their own savings, and if the woman cannot repay, it comes from her savings.

In both these cases the key features are responsibility and peer pressure. it is considered these work best with women. However, we at Rang De have not given up on men. We are trying to work out different ways in which we can reach out to male borrowers and we will soon be facilitating loan for our first male borrower.

Disruptive Innovation

Apologies for including a jargon here; but Disruptive Innovation(DI) has always interested me. What is DI and why is it on this blog.

DI is the act of innovating which disrupts/stops the current of way of doing things and introduces a radically new way of doing the same things - for the better. It differs from Incremental Innovation (II)as II aims to bring about continuous and small changes to the existing setup without requiring drastic changes. An example could be. Designing faster trains is Incremental Innovation whereas going from trains to airplanes is Disruptive Innovation.

Why is this discussion here? Most of the problems, that we talk about, facing our society are part of a vicious circle and are intertwined with other equally trying problems. Incremental Innovation may fail to make much headway in this case. Disruptive Innovation would seek to break the vicious circle and proceed.

E.g. Incremental Innovation would seek to increase the size of classrooms every year to accommodate more children. Disruptive Innovation to change the way children learn. Maybe, it will come up with something like internet/satellite based learning which will not require the children to be in classroom to learn. They can learn while they are working or when they are at home. Thus drastically reducing the costs in terms of energy, time and of course, money.

Main reason why this discussion is here. Rangde.org
This initiative seeks to make lenders out of ordinary people and that too at a starting amount of Rs 1000 and their multiples. This money is then channeled to the the borrower. Among other things, it achieves a lower operating cost by using the internet as a medium (it does not do away with the traditional person-to-person interaction), it allows ordinary people to lend any amount that they are capable of lending(of course with a minimum amount which is not prohibitive), it provides reliable avenues for the borrower to borrow. A win-win situation I would say.

I remember reading about such an initiative in one of the Stanford KnowledgeBase mails and fished this link out. Find the site of Kiva here and read the article on Stanford KnowledgeBase.

During the course of my search for related information, I also came across dhanaX. It seems to be on the same lines as RangDe and Kiva. I do not want to speculate more on which is older, RangDe or dhanaX as I do not find it important.

The above discussion was mainly about micro finance lending institutions. I am sure disruptive innovations already happening or waiting to happen in other fields.

One size fits all will not work

Henry Ford created history and employment when he pioneered the assembly plant. When all cars of a particular marquee were the same, they can be made using an assembly plant. Path-breaking without doubt, this concept of production has entered into many realms which are better off without it.

Education is one such area. Umpteen articles have been written about how each child is different and needs to be dealt with differently. What set me to write this post was this article "
Unwilling learners pose special problems". (Read the articles listed under the "Related Articles" section too)

Education in itself poses a lot of questions. A few of them, dealing with the purpose of education in general:

1. What is the purpose of education?
2. How do you define education in light of the answer to the above question?

Coming to the point of the less privileged "street" children.

1. How will education change their lives?
2. Based on the answer to the above question - Is education really required for street children who are already earning or do not want to study?

Most, if not all, children brought up in a normal family environment - By normal I mean where kids start schooling at the right age, they mix with kids of their own ilk, are constantly reminded about the need for better marks - do not develop a hatred-to-the-extent-of-dropping towards studies. Peer pressure and constant indoctrination play a big role. They are sedated so heavily with the rote of "Studies are important" that they seldom think about "Why are studies important".

The other children - street children, as has been said in the article - become independent at an early age. Independent thinking, though, does not necessarily result in correct or insightful decisions. It is in their cases that one has to rub in the importance, more importantly - the necessity of education.

The power of One !

Many times we have contrary views.
Sometimes we say one person can change the world.
Sometimes we feel that nothing less than a movement can bring about the change.

The truth may lie somewhere in between.
A movement to bring about change, but started by an individual.
Why am I saying this and why in this blog?

I read a brief account of Hekani Jakhalu, a youth activist. You can read the article at this link.

What amazes me is that she started from many yards behind the start line. Already standing on the wrong side of fixed notions, she strove to bring about a positive change in the lives of her fellow people. The fact that all through she was guided by the emotions for her home state but took a pragmatic (cerebral would be closer to my intended meaning) and thoroughly-researched path deserves commendation.

Wanted to post in this blog just to re-affirm our faith in the Power of One.
May be next time I can write about the power of five fingers together.

Minutes of the Meeting - 8th Feb 2008

Participants: Aishwarya, Badhri, Shabnam

Date: 8th Feb 2008

Duration: 30 minutes

Topics discussed:

1. Direction of our activity related to RTI: The fact that children should form a focus of our efforts was reiterated by Badhri. So the understanding is we should search for a subject/area which is related, if not entirely focussed, on children.

2. One of Badhri's wandering thoughts: India has so many NGOs for so many years. Do they have a common platform or an umbrella organization under which they come together, share ideas, ensure that they cover all agendas and do not unnecessarily overlap in some other areas.

3. The idea of a guiding hand to help us channelize our efforts was brought up. A person with experience -pertinent experience - can surely help us channelize our efforts. He will also help us get a sense of direction. We should try and search for such a person.

4. Shabnam said she will prepare a chart of issues that are prevalent in the society and need to be tackled. I am really happy that the list has been published before this MoM :)

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan - A start

I was able to start today, our research on Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). The objective, as I see it, is to identify issues with the SSA (especially its implementation) and further narrow down to issues which can be taken up by us. A search on Google, threw up a lot of search results, expectedly. A large part of these search results were government websites - union and state.

This is the home page of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

Here you can find a summary and introduction to the SSA framework.

Quite a few insightful articles can be found at india-together.org. Search for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and/or SSA and you will get some really good articles.

A few points that I noted were:

i. The concept as such is very strong but the lack of implementation takes away its strength.
ii. The parameters to monitor the working of SSA are not adequate, rather they are grossly inadequate. They go by measures such as number of children enrolled. This is misleading because after enrollment a student may not turn up at a school for months together. Also a student is not considered as absent unless he is absent for 3-6 months continuously. If in between he/she turns up for a day, he is not considered a drop out. (Read here).
iii. The quality of education and the availability of resources like stationery, food (as part of mid-day meal scheme) vary from state to state, region to region (within a state) and from school to school (within a region).
iv. An interesting thing that I read was - To calculate the amount funds needed, the price of book considered was higher than the actual cost of the book. So when requesting for funds the books were charged at Rs 150 but they actually cost RS 25- Rs 60. The rest of the amount is allocated but unspent or digested(not sure!).

Something that I heard from my friend, whose father works as an Executive Engineer, overseeing the construction of schools under SSA. As he told me, SSA pays for the construciton of school building and compound. On one occasion, it was found out that the compound and school were built at two different places !

Minutes of meeting - 21st November 2007

Attendees: Aishwarya, Badhri, Shabnam

Summary: The group met after a long time of around 3 months. Concerns/Topics put forward were

a. Meetings should be held more regularly and frequently
b. There has been no activity done in the past 6 months since the group was started
c. Priya put forward her opinion on the nature and langugage of the blog posts
d. There has been no meeting where all the members have got a chance to get introduced to each other. This meeting will have to be on phone or voice chat since members are in different countries/cities.

Agreement and action items at the end of the meeting on the following:

a. Badhri will introduce Aishwarya and Shabnam to Rukmani (who works in Synopsys). Rukmini is closely associated with Anand Bharthi. After meeting Rukmani, Aishwarya and Shabnam will take forward the Anand Bharthi case and explore the possibilities available.

b. Shabnam will contact Subba Rao and get on update on the presentations that were suggested by Subba Rao

c. In light of Priya's suggestions, we will try and ensure that the posts are:
1. To the point
2. Easy to understand
3. Without long winding sentences
4. Without using difficult and complex sounding words

d. One of the objectives for the next 3 months is to come up with ideas regarding the focus of the group. Badhri's opinion is "Awareness" should be the focus of the group i.e. when we take up an activity we should ensure that the activity is able to raise the awareness levels of purpose or cause for which the activity was taken up.

e. There is no harm in evaluating a project. But a project will be taken up only after ensuring that everyone's opinion has been evaluated and taken into consideration.

f. The group will meet and communicate pro-actively.

Thoughts after our meeting today

A few things that I felt are really important for our initiative to achieve its objectives.

i) Considering that this group will necessarily consist of people who are from varied backgrounds and having different thought processes, differences in opinion are inevitable and are, in fact, required. I would request everyone to feel free to express their opinions, their reservations about others' suggestions/opinions. Good ideas will only come out of exhaustive discussion. We cannot adjust our opinions and come out with solutions.

ii) We will need to be open to others' view points, however DIFFERENT, it may seem.

iii) We will need to be open enough to accept opposition of our views. Accept it - Not all our opinions may be correct.

iv) Work will need to be shared. It is all about team work.

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Minutes of Meeting - 15:00 to 15:45, 5th October, 2007 @ Whitehouse, Hyderabad

Attendees: Aishwarya, Badhri, Shabnam

Topics put forward for discussion:

1. What are the contents that can go on the blog

i. An ancillary blog was started to store any information that we deem important for our endeavor. Visit the blog here.
ii. It was agreed upon that we need to update the blog on a regular basis to ensure that it does not get mothballed.
iii. It was decided to update the objectives and guidelines section of the blog to ensure that new and potential members get a clearer understanding of our objectives.

2. Discussion on Anand Bharthi

What is Anand Bharthi?
It is an NGO-cum-school whose primary objective is to target the girl children of economically deprived families who missed out on early-stage education and ramp them up on education along with some vocational and extra-curricular courses to open up more remunerative options.
At least that is what is known of them as of now.

i. It was decided to gather information on what are the objectives of Anand Bharthi, what are the problems it is facing, what are the ways we can help to improve things for them
ii. It was decided that Badhri will follow up with people at Anand Bharthi to get an appointment for a visit to their place. He would also let them know of the purpose of our visit.

3. Plan for activities that we need to take up

i. Shabnam put forward the activity of conducting sessions for government college students and the IT schools (run by Satyam Foundation) The topics would be communication, interview and group discussion skills, primer on customer care or BPO jobs and resumè preparation.
ii. Badhri's suggestion, which was agreed upon by everyone, was that before taking up this activity we, ourselves, need to be prepared in terms of what is background of the target audience and gauging their interest levels and a template of what aspects of the aforesaid skills the sessions will specifically target.
iii. Shabnam is responsible for finding relevant information from Subba Rao (Satyam Foundation) regarding the background of students at IT schools, the curriculum at the school, what are the type of jobs they get after training and how useful this session will be to them.
iv. Some of us will be visiting the government college in Old City to interact with the students there. This interaction will aim to find out the background of students there and their interest in such a session. For this interaction, we will need to prepare a preliminary presentation (not necessarily computer/projector based) which will tell the students of the highlights of the course, the take-away and how it is going to benefit them in getting jobs or admissions.

Views expressed (is open to individual interpretation; individuals are free to edit their own opinions)

Badhri:
The activities we choose should always conform to a specific framework (example, spreading awareness) and the solution the activity offers should address the problems defined in the framework.
To the extent possible, we have to ensure that the activity should be applicable not only to the specific beneficiary, but also be applicable and repeatable to a different beneficiary at a different point of time.
The time and effort an activity might ask for should be measured up against the value it adds to the core objective of improving the standard of living. This should be an important metric to consider while deciding or choosing or rejecting an activity.


Shabnam: We need to get going on some activities. This will enable us to get a clearer picture and help us in charting our course of action. At the same time we need to ensure that we do not jump from one activity to another which will just result in token work amounting to nothing.

Aishwarya: We need to maintain a balance between thinking and doing. Both are equally important. Reactive steps or activities will lead to loss of focus and reduce our potential output. It will also delay any existing activity that we have taken up. At the same time, we ourselves need a clearer picture and for this we need to be "among the works". We may not lucky to be first-time correct. Iterations will bring out a well-shaped product/plan/solution.

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Shrug off the garb of Designer Social Work and "get your hands dirty"

Thanks Badhri for including me here. I would like to see the creation of this group blog as the first step towards our "walking the talk" resolution. I would start this blog with one of the very few pieces of introspection that I intend to put here. Otherwise, our intention is to put real good ideas and work, and to be sure, all serious things need not be done with a serious face. Humour is an indispensable part of a happy life. Back to the current topic.

Badhri and I have regular discussions on the state of affairs in our country. Lots of opinions and ideas are generated out of these discussions and there is always a healthy difference of opinions between us. Last night for a change we concurred on the fact that it is high time we made some noticeable efforts and brought about REAL change, which may not necessarily be big. This set my thought rolling on the thought process that goes inside an individual's mind when he/she tries to "contribute to the society". Are we heading towards a concept of "Designer Contribution" where we work towards social causes only to get rid of our guilt, embarrassment and to gain respectful glances from our fellow beings.

Of late this entire concept of social work and volunteering has gained a lot of popularity in terms of media and mind space. People have started thinking about it more often. My analysis, which I agree may not be totally correct on this is:

Most of the youngsters today in the age group of 23-27 have a job which pays them a decent salary. Many of them experience this "shock factor" when they come face to face with real people who are embodiments of what they thought exist only in the distant land of documentaries and Doordarshan reports. They see the boy begging outside their offices and on busy roads, they hear and see kids who want to study but are not able to due to lack of financial wherewithal. They see such deviations from the ideal society and feel embarrassed for being the right side of the deviation but not doing anything for those on the other side. This feeling is primarily responsible for the initial rush shown by we, the youngsters.

Now here, we need to make an honest assessment of our abilities and willingness. To what extent are we ready to go?If we can contribute only monetarily so be it. Be a regular contributor to a good charity. At the same time, disabuse yourself of any wrong notions of active contribution to the society.

Once you have identified your stand, you have go the whole mile in fulfilling it. If you choose to get associated with only events that require minimal effort and no deviation from your normal course of event, then it is your choice. In my view and from my limited experience, I can come to the conclusion that only a handful of the hundreds of sparks in out young minds actually translate into a path lightening torch. It is for us to choose - do we want to exact our rights from the society and then lodge ourselves safely behind the tinted AC glasses (from where we can still give thousands of discourses of a degenerating society) or do we want to get our hands dirty by making contributing to society a priority in our scheme of things. All the best to you, Badhri and me !

Members

Krishnakanth















Shashi














Priya













Ranjit














Shabnam
















Dhaval
















Srinivas














Aish













Badhri

Objectives and Guidelines

The initiative: Targeting the roots

Core belief: Standard of living in a society can be improved only by the people who constitute it. If they don't work towards better living standards, nobody will.

Purpose of the initiative: To strive for improvement of living standards in Indian society.

Objective of the blog: This blog forms a rallying point for our initiative. Please DO NOT mistake the blog for "the initiative". The blog is, but, a part of our initiative. Through the blog we intend to:

1. Build a forum which will provide a platform for authors to:
i. Introduce their ideas and views on issues or ills prevailing in current Indian scenario.
ii. Discuss/Deliberate/Argue their ideas and views on topics introduced by other authors.
iii. Formulate cohesive (well integrated) and coherent(well planned) targeted initiatives/solutions, which will follow the above two steps.
iv. Form a consensus to prioritize activities, decide on future course of action for a particular activity or for the initiative as a whole

2. Build a dashboard of information on updates on current activities, start of a new activity, addition of a new member, etc.,

3. To initiate a knowledge center where interested people can introduce a social problem and opine its root causes. Suggest, analyze, debate, form a consensus and prioritize solution(s) and execution strategy.

Guidelines for authors:
1. Will express their perception of social problems, put forward their take on what they believe are its root causes.
2. May propose solutions and execution strategy if they have any.
3. Are expected to actively participate in the discussions that ensue such proposals & assist in the execution of the strategy discussed.
4. May use this blog to promote/share their own initiatives/experiences that they may have any, take help or pass on some useful suggestions to drive it further..
5. Other civic rules apply - Personal, inflammatory, racist and other derogatory remarks strictly prohibited.

Note of caution:
· This blog is just an interface that keeps the team and the general public informed and updated. The objective is to do meaningful work at the ground-level.
· Anybody from the public domain is welcome to be an author in this blog. Choice to be or not to be an author is totally voluntary.
· Posts by authors are not moderated, but will be monitored for strict compliance to civic guidelines.
· Comment from readers and authors are moderated.

Sister Blog: This ancillary blog is meant to act a resource storehouse for the the large amount of information that will be required for any of our activities. Reason for having it separately was to ensure that this blog does not get cluttered.