Focus on delivery methods

During one of the sessions I attended in Centre for Social Initiative and Management (CSIM) I had a discussion with the visiting instructor Dr. Vishnupriya, a freelance educational consultant. She said that she deals research and consultation for organizations dealing with educating school students.

Given that our team has interest in child education, I briefed her about our teaching module and expressed to her that there are quite a few "teaching modules" that are packaged as science kits that can be used, but our module is different in that we concentrate more on "how to teach" to the students using the teaching module, rather than just disseminating the module to be used by the children if and when they need it.

Basically the discussion with Dr. Vishnupriya and later on with Aishwarya crystallized to the following fundamental point:

Focus on delivery methods is more crucial to achieving the goals of the teaching module we are putting together than the infrastructure we use for the same.

On an aside, she has said that she is open to further investigating our idea, our current delivery methodologies and the schools we target and provide us with consultation. However she has made it clear that this may come at a fee since she is a professional as against a social worker. The fee would depend upon the duration for which she is associated with us and our affordability.

Is targeting the poor alone always efficacious?

With my on and off involvement with centers close to social development, I find one attitude that may have to be changed for better efficacy of social initiatives. Let me have the first stab at defining the attitude.

"A social initiative will produce a better impact when it is targeted towards the economically poorer sections of the society. The richer the beneficiaries are, the lesser social impact it has.."

While in general this point has a validity, it has to be revisited for every specific case. Here is an example. A team of my friends and I conducted a science demo in a private school nearby. When I talked about this, "Don't you think your initiative would be more useful to students of government schools?" was one question that popped up universally. My answer is "In my case doing it in *this* private school is likely to have a higher social impact" . Why?

1. This private school doesn't have a lab infrastructure in spite of the students paying a nominal school fee (Rs. 200/- per month).

2. The students here do have a capability to read, listen to and understand English, Telugu and Hindi which provides us flexibility in our implementation. So, it gets easier for us to get more students to start "thinking and reasoning science" - a better success rate at our initiative. On the other hand, a government school on which we are working on the ability to grasp English is lesser providing us with challenges (lesser number of teachers from our office)

Much more importantly, access to better education sure is relatively much more difficult for the poor. However, schools that fall in the economic category of the one that we are working on also face problems faced by government schools (non-availability of teachers, labs etc.). In addition to that they also suffer the ignorance of NGOs that rush to help poor quality government schools. It is almost as if these students are paying Rs. 200/- per month to be ignored!

Thankfully, in our case, we need to ignite as many minds to think and reason (in science and others..). In our eyes, whether the students have the ability to pay Rs.200/- or not, if their inclination to reason is lacking, they are equally poor! Only the former is equipped with a skill (English language) that offers flexibility for us to make a better impact.

A society, apart from being categorized into economically richer and poorer, can also be categorized into rich and poor based on other criteria. And the economically richer need not be richer (or have better opportunity) in all the other categories. Social upliftment, one must remember, is not only the upliftment of the economically poorest, but the upliftment of the society as a whole.

SE session 11: Social accounting and auditing

Today’s session was on an interesting topic called social accounting and auditing. Financial accounting and auditing are tried and tested methods for tracking and verifying the financial status of an organization and finding out if the financial goals are met are violated. Social accounting and auditing is a parallel concept developed on the lines of financial accounting and auditing in order to measure and verify the social goals of a social enterprise.

In case of a business enterprise, when a project is taken up, one sets a financial goal for the project. As the project progresses one tracks certain financial metrics of the project that will help assess the financial performance of the project when financial audit is done.

However a social enterprise has a double bottom line of financial profit and a social impact. So, when a project is taken up in a social enterprise, similar to having a standardized financial accounting procedure that can be used for enterprises catering to different sectors, one may have standard social accounting procedure that can be used be social enterprises irrespective of the sectors they are catering to.

In social accounting, one will set a social objective that complies to the mission of the enterprise, and plan activities that achieve the social objective, while upholding the values of the organization. For each activity planned, social metrics has to be measured that provides feedback about the social impact of the activities when a social audit is conducted. This is the basic idea behind social accounting and auditing. One difference between financial and social accounting is, for the former, quantitative metrics will suffice to accurately assess the financial performance of the enterprise. But for the latter, the both quantitative and qualitative measure has to be captured to assess the social impact.

Social accounting has three steps

1. Getting ready: Social accounting is process that has to be assimilated as an inherent part of the social activity and is effective in giving a measure of social impact only in a long term (3 years). So, it is important for the members of the enterprise and stakeholders to understand the importance of the accounting. Steps have to be taken to get everyone’s approval to adopt social accounting as part of the enterprise’s initiatives.
2. Social, Economic and environmental planning: We went through a case study of a social enterprise called Good Crafts that trains women from a Mumbai slum in employment related skills like making baskets, wall-hangings, soft-toys etc., and procures their products to sell it in overseas markets and shares the profit with the women. From the case study write-up we identified the

1. mission statement of Good Crafts that addresses the purpose for which the organization is formed

Example: Good crafts aims to empower women and thus build sustainable and self-reliant communities in slums of Mumbai.

2. the values it has to uphold in the organization as it strives to achieve its mission

Example: Being non-discriminatory to the beneficiaries (slum women), etc

3. Objectives that are aligned towards the mission statement and the activities that achieve the objectives

Example: To empower women through training and creating of employment by

a) Providing relevant skill training

b) Encouraging and supporting self-employment

c) Providing crèche facilities for the working women’s children

4. Metrics that measure the effectiveness of the activities

a)      Number of courses provided (quantitative)

b)      Number of self-employed women (quantitative) and how satisfactory to the women is the quality of support provided (qualitative)

c)      Number women whose kids are enrolled in the crèche.

During the exercise we learnt that

-         the mission statement should be specific, clear and should remain the same through the completion of the project

-         each activity taken up must  be tied to a specific objective. This is because; the metric that we measure should provide us feedback about the efficacy of the activity in achieving the objective.

3. Social Economic and environmental implementation: This amounts to ensuring that relevant metrics are measured and qualitative data collected during the activity. Standard ways of collecting qualitative metrics are focus group discussions, questionnaires, surveys, and analyzing the minutes-of-meetings and status reports
4. Social, Economic and environmental auditing: Once the data is collected, a social auditor may audit the accounted metrics to analyze the social, economic and environmental impact that the social enterprise has caused and provide feedback on how much the objectives are achieved.  Based on the inputs the implementation strategy may be modified for the better. Then the social audit may be repeated the next cycle to measure the efficacy of the modified strategy. So, the minimum recommended period for the audit is two years.

Benefits:

1.      It’s a standard auditing based on a proven model. It can be applied to all sorts of social enterprise, irrespective of their area of interest

2.      Scalable: Can be applied to a whole organization or just one program of the organization

3.      It is a process. It can accommodate other tools of measurement like “Social return on Investment” within itself to make social auditing complete.

4.      Can  be used as a strategic tool; can sell the results of the audit to stakeholders and to generate more support (money or the like)

Snag:

1. Need to allocate time, finances and resources
2. Inaccuracy of surveys or scanty response to questionnaires
3. Long term project, needs change in business model to accommodate the process

SE session 9: Project Management

I have been attending a certification course in social entrepreneurship in CSIM and have been posting on the proceedings of each session in my personal blog. I think it is more appropriate to post it here, so will do so from this post on. For earlier post, please visit my blog!

I would like to start off at the last! My take home of the day! (more of a suggestion than a rule of thumb though)

Identify what your beneficiaries need, sensitize the beneficiaries about their need and your solution, involve the beneficiaries of the social initiative to participate and if possible manage the initiative.

Project planning should be approached from a mixture of top-down and a bottom-up approach. Top-down, as in using "from the book" ideas like management and leadership principles, business models etc. Bottom-up as in getting to know what the beneficiaries (or end users) want and forming strategy based on that.

The class started off with some basics about project management. It is not only a science, as it involves rational thinking, data analysis and decision-making, but also an art since it involves getting the job done using your wits.

We moved on to a brief analysis of the difference between a program and a project.

Program: Long-term or on-going activity, continually funded and has regular allocation of budget. Example: National literacy mission

Project: Usually short-term, one-time funding. Usually a program is made up of a lot of projects that achieve the purpose of a program

Following this, we discussed a questionnaire, answering which one may have planned an entire project well considering all aspects and would be ready to hit the road. This took us all the way up to the break and formed a very important learning session of the class (so, don't skip the link!)

During the second half of the session, the instructor presented the way his initiatives in eliminating rural poverty made an impact in the livelihood of the rural society. He devised and designed various initiatives for the benefit of rural poor in various sectors like agriculture, education, micro-finance, health, income generation.

He talked about the federated model of self-help group (summarized by slide-3 of the PDF doc) in Andhra Pradesh, which was a run-away hit in the whole of the country. The success of the model was summarized by the fact that about 42% of all the money allocated by the Indian government is used by AP, while the repayment rate is 98%, unmatched by any other SHG anywhere else. Delegates from other states and even countries like Vietnam visit AP to study the SHG model.

Since this post is not about singing the praise of AP's SHG models, I move beyond to aspects that are common to all the government projects (including SHGs) that he was involved.

• All project involved formation of Village organizations (VOs) which essentially is a representative body of the village. They were legally registered as co-operatives. All SHGs and VO are composed of women from the village
  
• The relevant govt. representatives train and sensitize them about the need of the co-operative. (If it is agriculture.. training is on retaining profit and eliminating middle-men during procurement... if it is micro-finance, training is on how important savings is etc..)
• Once training is done, the initiative is implemented and the outcomes are measured!

The model of sensitizing and involving the beneficiaries in various levels from management to volunteering has largely produced good results (will be evident from the slides of the session that I will post once they are available to me). But few do fail to scale up after initial success.

The whole session was finally summarized by the discussion titled "Why do projects succeed?"
highlighting the points user involvement as a participant, continuous funding, Clear understanding of goals, effective planning and setting realistic expectations of scope, quality and time involved.

By the then, we were about half-an-hour past time and we didn't even realized it. (I was especially mesmerized by the facts and figures he presented by the success stories of SERP's rural development initiatives). But he left us with a mention that goals should be SMART

Specific: Well-defined and clear to project managers
Measurable in terms of qualitative parameters
Agreed upon by all stakeholders
Realistic, as in set within the availability of resources
Time-based

Brief Profile of Mr B. Ravi Shankar 

Mr. B. Ravi Shankar has completed Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and also in Management (Rural development) from Xavier’s Institute, Ranchi.

Earlier he worked as a project officer in the Society for Rural Industrialization, Ranchi, Jharkhand, as a Community Coordinator in Girijan Cooperative Corporation, AP, and as a Project Director of Leather Industries Development Corporation of AP. He also has the experience of working in IT sector for sometime. Presently he is the Project Manager of Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), (IKP-VELUGU project), AP.

Building your own lab each year!

We may all remember the post that I did on Teaching module. Well it may seem to be sleeping, but it is only moving at a snail's pace. I was discussing this with my third-level manager today and he gave his ideas on it. One idea which made my bulb glow was this statement of his:

"You have people working on preparing science experiments anyway. You are doing it right out of their books anyway, why don't you prepare a set of labs for the entire academic year for the kids and donate it to them? Better still, you can sell it to the school district by which it reaches all the schools in the district instead of just one school"

That is a good idea which was so near yet so far from us. One thing that these kids government school lacks is lab. If we can work on each chapter and come up with a set of labs, it would set up a lab for them for the whole year. But better still, if we can fully document the way using which the models are built, we can make the students build their own labs year after year instead of just giving them the  experiments preset. An activity based learning. So, the teaching module changes thus...

Teach kids to make their own notebooks.
How does this help?

• non-availability of free notebooks @ govt schools
• potential means to earn

Teach kids of appropriate age about technologies related to clean energy like solar energy

• How tap solar energy
• How the market is growing etc

How does this help?

• creating experts in a market of demand for the future

Setup a model to allow kids to construct the labs themselves
How does this help?

• Sets up a lab for themselves
• Does incorporates activity-based learning.

All the soft-skills appreciated in a corporate environment

• committing to a task of reasonable difficulty and completing it on time

• being regular with work taken up and establishing proper communication about updates/possible delays

How does this help?

• time-management, probably study better while being good at extra-curricular
• develops proper attitude and work-ethics and improves job-prospects

Safety

• Basic fire-safety
• First-aid and emergency response
• Details of phone numbers, addresses of hospitals in vicinity.

How does this help?

• Duhh......!

Community activity

• Some kind of an activity that sensitized them to importance of sanitation, public health, environment etc.

Field visit to Bhumi

In this session, we made a field visit to Government High School at the heart of Rasoolpura, known as the largest slum in Hyderabad (some say in AP). This school was adopted by Bhumi, an NGO that aims at large scale, holistic, sustainable transformation for the slum (and for the larger society in a long term).

Bhumi's members Sai and Pallavi (one of CSIMs students too!) greeted us and gave an outline of their flagship Dhronacharya and Ekalavya program (DNE) in which Bhumi trains and deploys volunteers to mentor the school children on a weekly basis on academics and extra-curricular activities. The program seems to spring from the notion that kids in the slum study better when they are exposed to an "elder-brother-cum-role model" who can inspire and provide them a regular learning environment.

Abdul Mujib Khan, one of the founding members of Bhumi, provided a brief account of their history. Rasoolpura, like any other urban slum, faced multiple interlinked problems. Poverty resulting in child labour, in turn resulting in low academic performance and high dropouts. Poor conditions resulting in poor health problems, in turn resulting in loss of wage which compounds the problem of child labour and education. Further, the cynicism of the slum dwellers towards the "outsiders in Proline T-shirts" posed another layer challenge.

To address the first problem, Bhumi has divided its task in Rasoolpura into four domains viz., Livelihood, Education, Healthcare and Water & Sanitation. Then it adopted the then dilapidated Govt. High school. and with funding from Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan and Hyderabad Round table, they renovated the school, hired teachers and got the school back up and running. This automatically helped Bhumi address the second problem too as the promise kept acted as a good testimony to their commitment to area. With more kids in school on a regular basis, the DNE program was launched in an effort to improve the pass percentage (then a dismal 13%) among 10th std kids. To improve the livelihood, Bhumi used the trust built to constitute about 6 self-help groups among the womenfolk (headed by a slum-dweller named Razia).

A crucial aspect that needs addressing in improving this society, they said, is the mentality slum-dwellers towards the SHG in general and using the loaned money in particular. As expected, the primary modes of income to people in the slum are fruit and vegetable hawking, house-help, working as a driver or running an autorickshaw. Since the livelihood is always hand-to-mouth, the mentality to save and planning for the longer term was lacking and took repeated counselling to attain a decent awareness level present now. Further, when Razia tried to spread the idea of forming a "group" the first question they usually asked was "How much money will I get?".

Bhumi is also involved in improving the other dimensions of the problem that affects education. Health. One school of thought suggests that children brought up with inadequate nutrition till the age of 5 show learning disabilities that affect them for the rest of their life. They took the initiative to bring in some students of medicine to conduct "Bailey's test" and found that about 20% of them fail the test. However, since medical treatment needs to be sustained over a long term for improvement, it is challenging to keep the respective families interested.

With the slum-dwellers increasingly placing their trust on them, Bhumi is also working on slowly training and transfering the control of their initiatives to the local slum-dwellers, though this seems to be a long objective.

A few other takeaways from the field visit

• Their initiatives, especially with respect to education, are modeled in such a way that it can be "sold" to the government to adopt as an accepted model of education (am a bit confused about this, asked for clarification, will update!)
• Bhumi seems to have extensively used the help of CSIM, who I have found myself are larger directory of contacts than "YellowPages" if you are a social entrepreneur. They have also helped Bhumi is redesigning their DNE mentoring program.
• Most of their successful initiatives have been field tested on a smaller scale (say, applied to a smalller section of the slum) and then have been scaled up. Probably a good point to remember.

Overall, Bhumi provides quite a few lessons to learn the easier way. The biggest lesson of it all is probably the way they have conquered the trust of the slum-dwellers by delivering on the promise of renovating and bringing the school alive, which seems to have had an immediate effect on families the students hail from and those who live in the adjoining areas.

In conversation with NGOpost

Today I arranged a phone call with Parul Gupta and Nitin Gupta, the founders of NGOpost and I found something that amazed me.

They felt that NGOs working on the same social issue rarely talk to each other with to share knowledge and exchange best practices. From her prior experience working with various NGOs related to education and women's development, Parul feels that there is a pressing need to enable such an exchange of information between the various entities of social sector to combat the social problems effectively. Does all this sound at least vaguely familiar? Well, this precisely what we at Targeting the Roots set out to find out too (as one of our objectives). In NGOpost, we have a credible testimonial that supports our understanding.

When asked about their opinion about the idea that we, Targeting The Roots, one (distant) day conduct a conference that woos NGOs of feather to flock together and share best practices, they had differing views (from what I perceived). Parul opined that, though it would be monetarily and logistically very difficult for a small team to successfully conduct such a conference, the idea will be productive. Nitin on the other hand highlighted the possibility that NGOs may actively participate in such a conference, but soon would forget the about the discussion and continue with their business as usual once the conference is over. Parul, agrees with Nitin's opinion, but felt that it is a matter of sustained "drilling down" into the NGOs mind and eventually such an initiative will move them to see that adopting best practices from their peers will prove to be more effective in fostering social change.

Who among the two is right may be just a matter of opinion. But I found that the idea of "NGOs talking to one another" no longer needs to be verified. The question is no longer seems to be "If knowledge sharing will be effective", but "How to make knowledge sharing effective".

Parul said that though such conferences among NGOs do happen, they are relatively rare (her estimate was about 10 per year all over India), and they are not usually well publicised. I have asked her to intimate me when she comes across one.

Hitting the Road: Teaching module - Draft 1

Idea generated for schools so far

• Teach kids to make their own notebooks.

How does this help?

• non-availability of free notebooks @ govt schools
• potential means to earn

• Teach kids of appropriate age about technologies related to clean energy like solar energy
• How tap solar energy
• How the market is growing etc

How does this help?

• creating experts in a market of demand for the future
• All the soft-skills appreciated in a corporate environment
• committing to a task of reasonable difficulty and completing it on time
• being regular with work taken up and establishing proper communication about updates/possible delays

How does this help?

• time-management, probably study better while being good at extra-curricular
• develops proper attitude and work-ethics and improves job-prospects
• Safety
• Basic fire-safety
• First-aid and emergency response
• Details of phone numbers, addresses of hospitals in vicinity.

How does this help?

• Duhh......!
• Community activity
• Some kind of an activity that sensitized them

• Community activity
• Some kind of an activity that sensitized them to importance of sanitation, public health, environment etc.

"Let there d.light!"

A picture says a thousand words. So...

What are we waiting for?

Here is an outline of what has been happening over the last few months.

• OUR OBJECTIVE is officially posted on Targeting the Roots
• Aish, Badhri, Jagan, Ranjit, Shashi, Shabnam, Dhaval agree to it.
• Priya, Sarathy, Krishnakanth have officially taken a "sabatical" for their current personal commitments
• A comprehensive teaching module aimed at imparting the following to underprivileged kids was proposed and agreed to by the members in general (any disagrements by the members welcome!)
  
• academic education based on demonstration filling up the void of lack of labs
  
• civic sense and commitment to the society
  
• (other ideas! The link to UNICEF will help in this regard.)
  
• Shiva Narayan, of India Sudar, an experienced person in education inducted into the team
• Badhri sent his initial draft of science demo material to the group
  
  

After months of enthusiastic discussions, distractions due to personal commitments, feeling lost mid-way an objective is commonly agreed upon. The time has come to move to the next step. Implementation. What are we waiting for?

Here is "one" for Standard of Living

Hyderabad a very "liberal" attitude when it comes to answering natures calls. Almost everyone seems to think "As long as it is out of your body, it doesn't matter where it goes" :).

Aishwarya and I stay in an apartment adjoining a stream of sewage. Right on the main road, is a long compound wall and a relatively well constructed pavement. These are very attractive places for the "Filled-up and the Restless" :) to relieve themselves. There is also a constructed and decently maintained Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation's (GHMC) public toilet. They have strategically constructed such toilets at various locations in Hyderabad close to such places that are used as public toilet. However, the GHMC toilets are clearly not used properly. I think it is because of the one-rupee that is charged for use. Now this is a problem statement. The solution to conceive a way by which the use of this (or any public) toilet can be enforced.

1. Aish and Shabnam (or anyone who visited hyderabad), do you think the cause the one-rupee charge?
   
2. If, so, is that the only cause?
   

The questions that remain to be answered is
1. Should we take this up as a task?
2. Whether we do or do not, it is probably still worth investing some time for suggestions. Do you have any suggestions?

On my part, since I feel the money is the problem here, we (or the org. concerned) can create a public fund (whatever that means!) of one rupee coins and allow (meaning persuade) "the Filled-up and the Restless" to use money from the fund for the toilet instead. That is the theory. I do understand practical considerations.

• How to collect the money?

• How to safe-guard and disburse the money (vending machine?)

• How to advertise the fund and advertise against the use of compound wall or sewage.
  

But before all that

1. Do you have any alternative/better/easier/more sensible ideas?
2. If not at least do you think that this idea can be modified/improved?

Please try to answer the numbered questions (and not the bulleted ones!). While trying to answer the question, please keep in mind that the idea may have to be implemented at different places in Hyderabad and elsewhere. This may be a farsighted consideration, but I think it is important nevertheless!

I think this is directly related to Standard of Living, though the benefits can not be easily with the naked eye (intangible!)

Do NGOs talk to each other? iCONGO

This post is the first attempt to find out if the NGOs working on the same social concern talk to one another. Is there an umbrella under which NGOs of similar objectives come together to share knowledge and best practices so that they improve their reach to their beneficiaries? For example, an NGO called Project511 has a programme to train school drop-outs so that they can take sales jobs in retail outlets. Dr. Reddy's Foundation has a programme that almost exactly works on the same. Yet, the former doesn't know of the latter's programme. (I talked to a project co-ordinator of Project511).

So, they may be training too many people for retail sales job requirement and not even know about it. This problem is hypothetical (This is not a subject of discussion) just to point out that, proper interface between NGOs is probably necessary to effectively achieve their individual proposes.

To see if such a initiative already exists, I looked at an organization called Indian Confederation of NGOs (iCONGO) that Aishwaraya Mishra pointed out. I grabbed some time to go through their website to find out what they are upto. Here is my pseudo-research and conclusion

iCONGO: Indian Confederation of NGOs

Purpose:

In their own words "iCONGO is poised to be like the CII or NASSCOM for the NGO sector". Their objective is to help all the NGOs in India (irrespective of their area of concentration) work in an effective manner so that it benefits the beneficiaries to the maximum possible extent. For that, they strive to bridge the gap between two ends, the givers (individuals who donate money) and the takers (the NGOs).

Explanation of Purpose:

Individuals:

A few people give money to NGOs out of sheer emotion, a few donate to NGOs that market themselves well (but retain a larget % of money for their upkeep rather than using it for society). On the other hand a few keep from donating despite their willingness because they don't know how effectively the NGO is using the money. iCONGO strives to ensure that the individual gives the money with full knowledge of what the NGO is doing, how it uses the money (what % goes to the cause). In other words, it wants the individual to "invest" not "donate" for a cause stated by the NGO.

NGOs:

To help individuals to "invest" rather than "donate", iCONGO seems to enlist NGOs that pass certain tests like transparency, accountability, uses less than 20% of the contributed money for its upkeep. This gives the necessary pieces of information to an individual to contribute money to an effective, but less known NGO that works on an issue that is closer to his/her heart (say child education).

Futher it claims to have pioneered certain processes like "direct selling" and it seems to make available to NGOs its infrastructure like direct selling agencies, retail shops, discounted media rates, cause related marketing ideation etc.

Bottom-line:

I have gone through the website to the extent possible in the last two hours, but found nothing that iCONGO does to make sure that NGOs working on a similar issue talk to each other, share knowledge to improve their collective reach to the beneficiaries.

Targeting the meet - 4

What: Targeting the meet - 4
When: Sunday, Feb 10, 9PM - 10 PM (IST)
Where: Skype
Agenda
1. Past meet round-up: Are we drifting? - by Badhri
2. Round-table: Past week(s) updates
3. Discussion: Answerability
5. Next week goals - team and individual
5. Wrap

Targeting the Meet - 3

What: Targeting the Meet - 3
When: Sun Jan 13 9pm – Sun Jan 7 10pm IST
Where: Skype
Agenda:
1. New member intro
2. Previous Fortnight goals update
3. Discussion: RTI, fightcorruption, X-factor..any other?
4. Next fortnight goals!
5. Wrap


Minutes of this meeting - and all subsequent meetings can be found at:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d55f4vs_2kxbm2w

Minutes: Targeting the Meet - 2

Attendees: Jagan, Krishnakanth, Shashi, Badhri

Agenda:

1. New member intro

Krishnakanth (KK): Chartered accountant, Pricewaterhousecoopers, UK

2. Have you thought about factors affection Standard of Living?

(KK)

• Concern: Members @ different countries, busy work life, how to sustain initiative?
• On SOL:
  
• SOL is generic term. Need to choose our focus. (eg. under-privileged, children etc)
  
• Western lifestyle at UK, lack of traditional values (like family living) affects quality of living, India getting there. Can work on retaining "non-westernised" living as a preventive measure in India
  

(Badhri)

• KK's concern:
  
  
• Meet on a regular basis, update the groups without fail if
  unavailable for meeting. Feel answerable to the rest of the team, the
  momentum will be automatically maintained
  
  
• On SOL:
  
• Awareness! (again! :) )

(Shashi)

• On SOL:
• Concentrate on children. Changing one generation is all it takes!
• Climate-change, global warming related awareness
• Also endorse Aish's idea of improving youth-related affairs (interview skills, choosing career path etc)
  

(Jagan)

• Interested as much in spreading awareness to literate people

3. Why not start with a social ill?

• Filing RTI:
  
• Members may read up, understand RTI and should discuss when more members are around, take a decision
• Seeking the help of someone experienced:
• (Badhri): May contact owners of http://fightcorruption.wikidot.com/start
• (Jagan) : Hold on. May have to discuss with the larger team. *will send a mail to the group on this*
  

4. Next fortnight goals!

(Badhri)

• Find out issues for which RTI can be filed
• Procedure of filing RTI petition
  

(Shashi, KK)

• Read up more on RTI for next week's discussion

(Jagan)

• Read up more about RTI
• Send mail about contacting/not contacting owners of fightcorruption initiative
  

5. Wrap

Wrap! :)

Targeting the Meet - 2

What: Targeting the Meet - 2
When: Sun Dec 30 9pm – Sun Dec 30 10pm IST
Where: Skype
Agenda:
1. New member intro
2. Have you thought about factors affection Standard of Living?
3. Why not start with a social ill?
4. Next fortnight goals!
5. Wrap

Stuck at X-factor. How to more forward?

We have been talking about Standard of living, searching for factors affecting them, arguing for and against awareness
and a dozen other things. But let us admit to ourselves. Awareness is the only factor that we have at hand so far and we are still looking for the elusive X-factor(s)! That makes me think. Is this the only angle from which we can approach the whole initiative? Let us step back and think about it. How else can we approach? Let us see...now we have started thinking of the X-factor and have hit road block (Cul de sac! At last a usage for the word I learnt recently! :)) How to get past this? The only way is to think NOT in terms of the factors affecting SOL for a while. How about things that we need to know to start working on any initiative irrespective of what the X-factors are?

For example, we are trying to address social ills. And we know about the oft-talked-about Right to Information Act. It is likely that sooner or later we will end up filing an RTI petition. Why not pick up a social ill at random (or for some reason) and file an RTI petition right now? This will give us a feel of what filing RTI petitioning is all about? After all there is no dearth of social-ills! :) May be this will give us some insight into the X-factors too! And this is just an example! There may be other things that we may need to know.

Also, we are all beginners. Honestly to goodness, we have more text book knowledge about the problems we face than field experience. I sometimes wonder if that knowledge is knowledge at all or just some illusion. So, why can't we hire an experienced person's help? (hire for free that is! :) )Some relative, who is a social worker or an employee of an NGO or at least just an entrepreneur who knows the insides of how our social system works.

Hope I am clear and hope this post is in English! :)

Pro of this idea: We can keep moving towards starting to our objective, as against getting stuck at the X-factor
Con of the idea: We may possibly forget about the X-factor (Remember it is still important!)

What say you? Merry Christmas, by the way!!

Minutes:Targeting the Meet - 1

Attendees: Aishwarya, Badhri, Jagan, Priya, Sarathy, Shabnam, Shashi

Introduction

Aishwaraya: Software, Pramati Tech., Hyderabad, India
Badhri: Electronics Design, Synopsys, Hyderabad, India
Jagan: Telecommunications, Muscat, Oman
Priya: Ph.D student, Texas, Biosciences, USA
Sarathy: Energy, California, USA
Shabnam: HR, Pramati Tech., Hyderabad, India
Shashi: Electronics Design, Synopsys, Hyderabad, India

Understanding of Purpose

(All)

• Improve standard of living (SOL), don't wait for others to do it

What is instrumental for that?

(Badhri)

• Awareness
• Other factors play vital role too..but what are they? Open to debate
  

(Priya)

• How are we planning to execute the projects?
  

(Aish and Badhri)

• Form a framework of factors affecting SOL, choose projects to implement if they fit in it.
  
• Research to know what the beneficiary is looking for (not what you want to give them).*
• Research and brainstorm to find set up a system that serves the need continuously.*
• Try not to give a temporary solution, unless it is done to gain the trust of the beneficiary.*
  

• Choose projects that target different areas. (primary education, medical awareness)
  
• Will ensure that most the components that contribute to SOL is covered

(Aishwarya)

• Don't be rigid about framework. Choose project on merit, then try to modify and fit it in the framework

(Priya)

• How do you think NRIs can contribute?

(Badhri)

• As an NRI, you see the difference in SOL day-to-day. Share it!
  
• The group has to stay connected regularly to brainstorm what is shared.

(Shashi)

• Meet once every 15 days! (agreed by all!)
  

(Sarathy)

• For NRI to do field work, start with your school, stress importance of non-academic learning (like safety). Influence friends to do the same
  

Miscellany

(Shashi, Priya)

• May consider a limit on the number of people in the group in the future.

(Priya)

• Make blog more appealing, give only relevant information and make it more explorable and inviting.

* Didn't mention the very point during the meet, but gave an example of a preliminary negotiations with Ananda Bharati, an NGO at Hyderabad. The example meant to deliver these points.

(Please feel free to make changes or add points in case I have left out anything important. I have a copy of the version currently posted for back up. But do mention the changes made in the comment field)

Targeting the Meet - 1

Now that there are sizable number of like-minded people ready to contribute for the blog and the objective, it becomes imperative that we talk and get to know each other. I have proposed conference meet.

What: Targeting the meet (A conference net-meeting)
When: Sunday, December 16th at 9 PM Indian Standard Time
Duration: 1 hour
Who: All invitees
How: Using Skype (Get it here)
Agenda:

1. Introduction of the team members
2. Discussion:
• What is your understanding of "Targeting the roots"?
  
• What is instrumental in improving the standard of living?
  
3. Wrap
   

To do:

1. Download Skype and sign-up for an account if you don't have one
   
2. Send in your Skype ID
3. Add the rest of the members to your contact list (don't wait till all the IDs are in. You can always search for IDs)
   
4. Arrange for a microphone
5. Do some ground work for the discussion session (see agenda)
   
6. DO IT NOW! DO NOT WAIT TILL SUNDAY!
7. Log-in about 15 minutes before the scheduled time. Remember! For quite a few, the conference is after nightfall! :)
   

Updates:

• Krishnakanth wouldn't be able to attend the meeting since he will be in transit then.

(Please propose any changes to the contents of this particular post in the comments)

"Define...Remember....Refine..." dubbed to English

Well, I have never felt more naked before! :) Now, here is the dubbing in English of "Define, Remember and Refine"

"Improving the standard of living" is very broad objective. I have commonly seen one of the two scenarios in a group like ours trying to achieve an objective.

- "No projects to do"
In this scenario, when two days pass by, the group gets desperate looking for an activity to do and feel that getting started somewhere than just keep talking.

- "Too many projects to do":
Here, I have seen that projects are chosen primarily based on how strong feel good factor is.

Both are cases that belong two different extremes, but they yield comparable result. The group ends up executing projects after projects that don't align with the initial goal. Soon, the objective is lost.

So what is the solution? In my opinion, there has to be a criterion or a set of criteria based on which we can choose to do a project or reject it. This criteria should be defined in such a way that, when we decide to do a project based on this criteria, it should improve the standard of living (which is the goal!) of the beneficiary of the project.

Now when we execute such a project, we should always remember the criteria that we used to select the project and analyze if the project meets the objective. If it does not, we should analyze why. If we find that it is because our set of criteria is flawed (because of bad reasoning) or incomplete, we should refine them and use them to choose the next project.