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.

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!)

Conversation with Mr. Raghuraman

Met Mr. Raghuraman K. (Head – L&D, OD & Corporate Communications of DRF) on 1st April 2008. Few of my inferences listed below, after our conversation:

1. The last batch of LAB school was at Abids, which got completed. Also got a clarity that they target the BPL group who are incapable of earning a livelihood.

2. There are currently no LAB schools in the city. Mostly because they are not getting enough aspirants.

3. Also, we were discussing on how do you trust people if they are below poverty line since; it’s easy for anyone to trick and prove that they are BPL and avail the benefits. Ironically these days, whether they can afford a square meal or not, they must possess a cell phone. Priorities in life have changed for them in the urban area. He cleared that they have to believe them through the word of mouth unlike the government which checks on the credentials through income certificates etc.

4. The focus of DRF is shifted from LABS to rural livelihood programmes to decrease migration and inculcate more opportunities in the rural area. This would help in a way to provide ample opportunities in rural area and help the families there; not get separated from their children especially boys who move out to cities in search of lucrative offers leaving them deserted and distressed. (*Quite a thoughtful point I must say).

5. There’s an Integrated Livelihood Programme called ILP run by DRF which is of a similar objective to Anand Bharati that he brought to my notice.

6. He also said he would introduce me to Ms. Mridula someone who is heading the ILP department so that we can pay a visit to one of the schools sometime and get an experience.

7. Apart from this he said we can visit their primary English medium schools called Pudami too which are built in the slum areas for again the weaker sections.

8. Last week of April with DRF, as head of the committee there’s an NGO meet and Conference for the abilities Mela, which is being conducted at the IAS Officers’. ( I remember last year I had visited one of this and that’s where I met Subba Rao, from Satyam Foundation). We can be a part of this Mela too, some kind of volunteering activity that we may expect out of this. The nature can be discussed later.

Standard of Living

The single common indicator used for Standard of Living in India is purchasing power parity-adjusted gross domestic product. Thats a big term with a lot of words. I tried reading up on it so that I could sound smart when I write this post, but I still couldn't understand. Economic terms have always scared me and they still do. So I looked up the measures that help define that standard of living at an individual level. Essentially, defining the standard of living at an individual level is the same as measuring the quality of life for an individual in the following areas:
housing
food
education
clothing
transportation
employment opportunities
medical care
Of course that is not an all-inclusive list, but certainly covers the basic necessities that affect the quality of life. Other measures that I would add would be psychological and social support. Perhaps, also civic sense. But, irrespective, of what the measures we use to define STANDARD OF LIVING for our purposes, the basic ones would still need to included. Hence, the question that I asked at this point was what do we do with these measures of SOL? The first answer that came to mind was to target each of these measure and help bring about a change for the better. That led to couple follow up questions: how do we go about bringing a change for each of these measure? who is our target population(the population with which we work)? I dont know the answer to either of these questions. My suggestions for the target populations are as follows:
children in orphanage
children in a slum
children in a particular school
children living on the streets
children of sex workers
children of prisoners
I hope the group members discuss the above points as we have agreed on the objective and there is a need to decide:
the definition of SOL
how to change the measures that affect the SOL
the target population
The above are my personal thoughts. It is my hope that it will generate a fruitful discussion on the definition of SOL and how to fulfill our objective.

TARGETING THE ROOTS: Our Objective

The following are the criteria that should help us define our Objective:
1) It should be aimed at undertaking projects that help the children of India, who are the future of India.
2) It should be aimed at SOL (Standard of Living).
3) It should be simply worded so that everyone can understand.
4) It should be broad so that we are able to cover all the entities that affect the SOL of those children.

Here's how Aishwar put it:
OBJECTIVE:
Our aim is to improve the standard of living of children in India

IF the group members differ or disagree with the above criteria and/or objective please speak up. IF NOT, then we should move beyond and start taking up projects that are adherent to the above objective. This is a very sincere request. Please... please agree or disagree.

Agree: 6members
Others didnt disagree. Per above statement, they did not need to if they AGREED with the OBJECTIVE.

Final Word: Please let this stand as a majority agreement on OUR OBJECTIVE. Words until believed in and worked towards will be just that-words. IF we can unify behind and believe in the above words, the strength of our characters, dreams and abilities will also unify to produce a strong team that will do everything in their power to help the Children Of INDIA. For the dreams and aspirations of those children and for a better future of INDIA, let us stand unified.

My thoughts..!

Guys it may be too lengthy but trust me i couldn't edit it more :-)

Post interactions I understand we had successfully zeroed on children/Women as our target group which needs support or rather our services, but how is what needs to be defined effectively! It's clearly understood that our main objective is to raise the standard of living of people who are below the poverty line, as that's the section which is most deprived of isn't?? It's indeed necessary that we have a good brainstorming session on this but before that I guess we should have the facts in hands before we venture out into something of this big a challenge… It's very essential to have our facts and figures in place as this may involve a lot of legal and non legal affairs in the upcoming times as and when we progress hopefully. And I guess our efforts in whatever ways are not going waste, as we indeed should research this well in advance before plunging into it blindly! Such initiatives always help when it's well researched, aggressively thought and discussed with its pros and cons.

Now I came across this link which is very informative http://www.wakeupcall.org/about_us/about_us.php (Visit this page, which may help us connect with them at our current situation)........... http://www.wakeupcall.org/administration_in_india/world_class_governance.php (the whole site has to be explored well…yet another informative & interesting page) …not sure how many of you would have come across but, request you all to study this carefully and please think and then come up with your ideas as to how we can constructively frame our OBJECTIVE and achieve them.

My take on the whole Objective is pretty clear as in we intend to bring a change in the life of an individual by helping him/her get a better standard of living through the means of education, better livelihood ! He should feel one amongst us. The next move is not clear as in how to start off and where to start from…?

A few queries strikes my mind mostly and they are -

* Are we heading towards building another NGO? If yes, then we need to interact with a few NGOs and understand the challenges they face, how they capture projects...how much funds are required etc etc etc. We need to build a project on this itself if we intend to form one.

* How much time and efforts or homework we need to invest per day / per week / per person to drive this religiously?

* Should this be treated as a priority in each one of our lives since it's at such a nascent stage…?

* Should we build contacts and seek projects..?(What kind of projects that needs to be addressed… http://www.wakeupcall.org/Future_Projects/Projects.php )

* Should we seek some advice from people who have deeper experience? I think we should…as it may open up a lot of our doubts in mind.

* Asking again that we as in the members of this initiative need to identify each one of our strengths to be put in use for our cause!

That's all for now!

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.

Trip to one of the Dr. Reddy's Foundation's LABS (Livelihood Advancement Business Schools)

Date and Time: 7^th March 2008, Friday @ 11.30 AM.

Place: Dr Reddy's Foundation (DRF) LABS at Abids

Aish and I headed towards an impromptu meeting to abids; where DRF vocational course is running or rather coming to a closure for this particular batch. A handful of guys and gals were present who were undergoing the sessions there. Mr. Devi Prasad (PRO at Reddy Foundations) accompanied us all the way and the interaction begun with the aspirants’ (Reddy Foundations prefer this name for the students joining LABS) brief introduction. With this we got a fair idea about the aspirants’ background…where they are coming from, their family background, what they intend to do next after their programme and how did the course help them so far. Mostly their family backgrounds were financially weak is what I could infer and each one of them were thriving to hone their skills there at LABS center…but, remorsefully the strength of the aspirants was too low.

After this introduction we introduced ourselves and our purpose to visit them. Aish had neatly laid down the links about Anand Bharathi’s kids and their chances of being a part of Reddy’s livelihood plan. He also explained that our visit was also to develop a relation with them informally and see how we can help each other mutually.

Well we didn’t know what to talk about next and what not...but we ended up discussing and motivating them that they need to work upon their grey areas, be consistent in their efforts, improve their communication skills, read and create awareness, and move forward and do something on their own & shape their careers and build a beautiful future for themselves.. Also, we had set a few examples and explained that they could be a part of that league too, where they can set examples in future. Not just this but we encouraged them to spread this amongst their peer members … so that many more like them can benefit a life out of it.

Overall it was a good experience …and there was indeed a good deal of change that we observed in them. Sheer confidence, hope that they would earn a living for themselves and raise the standard of living for themselves and their families too. Some of them were already roped in for some jobs that of a hardware engineer and Data entry operators and rest were in the process of getting placed.

Few things that I guess I extracted out of the whole affair were,

1. If any one of us in our vicinity is aware about anyone who needs an assistance of this kind or an opportunity… we can guide them to take up a course like this though LABS.

2. Try to spread this programme as much we can. I don’t mean that we would sell on behalf of Reddy’s Foundation but just create awareness in the sense that…recently I had discussed about this instance with my home-maid who was enthusiastic for her kids, as she is finding it tough financially, for her girl child is going to some nearby English medium school and she made her plans to stop sending her to the school.

3. Visiting such aspirants once a while can motivate them to an extent. Not sure even if it does but can keep trying until we make an impact J

How to look up, build and sustain a NGO?

most of the ngo databases provide contact information for various ngos.

http://www.ngosindia.com/
a database of ngos. u can do a statewise search for ngos

http://www.propoor.org/search.php
another database to search for ngos in india. they have 13719 in their database. u can do a search based on keyword and states.

http://www.indianngos.com/
u can search ngos based on issues and state districts

http://www.indiserve.org/NgoBrowse.php
u can search database based on ngo name, area of work, state and district

http://pcserver.nic.in/ngo/
breaks down ngo based on issues, states, districts at the same time providing a table of the breakdown of number of ngos based on issues, state and district with providing the ngos they consider valid. excellent resource.

http://www.cafindia.org/
an excellent resource that has increased flow or resources from high net worth individuals and corporation to ngos.

http://www.idealist.org/
a ngo dreamer's dream come true. they teach u how to start and sustain an ngo.