Detailed analysis of "Empowering the underprivileged through innovations"

I attended the workshop on Empowering the underprivileged through innovations, not only as an alumnus of CSIM, but also as an editor covering the event for ThinkChange-India.

I have presented a detailed two-part analysis of the event in the portal. Here are the links

Part-1: Pre-lunch session

http://www.thinkchangeindia.org/2009/05/27/csims-workshop-on-empowering-the-underprivileged-through-innovations-an-analysis/

Part-2: Post-lunch session and conclusion

http://www.thinkchangeindia.org/2009/05/29/csims-workshop-an-analysis-continued/

Environment: Mandates and processes need of the hour!

I have come across enthusiastic appeals to contribute towards saving the environment by modifying the way I go about my everyday life.

For example, I find it very difficult to avoid using plastics. I buy juice in a carton as against a plastic bottle, only to find that even the cartons use plastic linings to make it waterproof. After little research I come to understand that there is no alternative water-proofing solution to plastics that is affordable to common man. Similarly, I am piling up dozens of used batteries simply because I am yet to find an environmentally safe way of disposing them, even after actively searching for a recycling plant or safe-disposal facility close to Hyderabad . The same predicament applies to anything that can be connected to electricity from cellphone chargers to television sets.

On the other hand even when solutions are available for an environmental problem common man is not effectively sensitized. Consider the case of disposing kitchen wastes. Composting them to manure and using them as manure for plants is a tried and tested solution. However, the process of composting or the fact that such small compost bins are available at affordable prices are known only the to environmentally conscious.

So, good intentions of appeals to be environmental consciousness not withstanding, a tangible impact can be achieved only if proven alternatives are easily available for common man use supplemented by processes and mandates for sensitizing him on the issue.

Helping without hurting!

Vinay, one of the founding editors of ThinkChange India (TC-I) made a casual visit to CSIM Hyderabad on January 10th. We had also invited Rubina Mazhar, a social entrepreneur and alumni of CSIM for an informal chat. His co-editor of TC-I Aishwarya Mishra (who has expressed his willingness to join the SEOP session that starts the February) also joined us. Very soon we slid into a discussion on wide range of topics concerning social equity and development. Though it is next to impossible to capture all the points discussed, quite a few perspectives that may not be taught in any educational center have surfaced during the discussion. I will try to highlight at least one of them in this post.

Aishwarya Mishra, through the Teach India program, volunteers as a tutor in Government High school, Rasoolpura, adopted by Bhumi, outlined their flagship Dhronacharya-Ekalavya (D&E) program. D&E program mainly works by assigning a mentor who acts as an "elder sibling" or a role-model to each of the children that Bhumi covers, so that the child looks up to the mentor and learns to become a responsible person as against growing without a role-model.

While recognizing Bhumi's work on Rasoolpura, Rubina Mazhar pointed out a potential risk that may be ingrained in the mentorship approach in general. She opined that a mentor who is not from the same background as the child (all the children are from a slum and most, if not all the volunteers are not) cannot be "unleashed" on the children without proper training about their culture and way of life, since the mentor's belief system usually consists of a lot of ideas that doesn't fit well with the belief system of the child society. For example, Rubina cited that in a typical family from the lower economic background, the general mentality would be to proscribe girl children beyond a certain age from going out on her own without the oversight of the family. A volunteer from an upcoming middle class family with no or inadequate training about the social psychology of the girl's family, may try to instill "modern ideas" of independence, which may cause her to "revolt" against her parents and face undesired consequences.

While one may or may not subscribe to her quoted example, the general point made is not only valid but also extremely relevant to social development. An initiative for social development should be carefully crafted and implemented so that the existing social fabric (to use Rubina's own words) of the target group doesn't get disturbed. This further lends credibility to why a social initiative should consider a beneficiary as a partner rather than a receiver - a point made in earlier post in order to emphasize sustainability.

This point also shatters another common, but wrong belief that some social initiative is better than no social initiative. On the contrary, a social initiative should be a learning process carefully adjusted to ensure that it helps and doesn't cause another damage elsewhere in the process.

How to ensure sustainability in social sector

As a continuing subscriber to social change and a student of Social Entrepreneurship Outreach Program (SEOP) offered by CSIM (Hyd), I have come across a few important ideas for sustainability time and again.

Malcolm Warwick Chair, Resource Alliance shared his opinion on sustainability earlier this year when he visited India, which reemphasized during my coursework in CSIM. The traditional approach to NGO, though a commendable democratic movement has a lot of scope for improvement when it comes to sustainability and financial independence. Mr. Warwick said that this is mainly because of their "paternalistic top-down approach" which looks at the beneficiaries as passive receivers rather than making them active participants. The alternative is to trust the beneficiaries to knowing what they need and involving them in the process.

His idea definitely seems to be very sensible considering the success stories of various social enterprises. As suggested by Mr. Warwick, Rural Education and Development builds libraries in Nepal and India by involving the local rural community in planning, conception, construction and maintenance of the libraries. As a result, the local community seems to understand the need for the library and value in maintaining it. This shows from the fact that all the libraries thus constructed are not only functional, but also generate profit.

During one of the sessions held in CSIM by Mr. B. Ravi Shankar, project manager in Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, he quoted numerous success stories that resulted primarily because of involving the beneficiaries in running the project. For example, to get better profit for their produces, SERP convinced the female members of the farmers to form an organization to compete with middlemen to procure the produces of the farmer and selling it in the market, thus netting the profit that would otherwise have gone to the middlemen. Further, they also learned how to weigh the produces and measure the moisture content of a certain grain (which would determine the pricing of the grain) so that loop holes in ensuring profit is eliminated.

Finding examples that support the same point from totally independent sources convinces me that the only way to ensure maximum and sustained benefit to a beneficiary is to trust him/her to know what he/she wants and involve him/her in the process rather than just a passive recipient.

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.

Look beside you for faster social change

I have been associated with the movement for social change in my own small way, both at my work place and outside. I have interacted with NGOs catering to the same "social sector" (say education, public health). Each of the organizations I have worked with have numerous achievements under their belt and undoubted credibility. However I find one critical aspect missing. Probably THE critical aspect that prevents the respective interventions in the "social sector" from adding up, synergize and emerge into a global movement. The missing aspect I am talking about is "sharing best practices".

To put my point into context, let me elaborate my observation. Hyderbad, a fast growing tier-I city in India, has around a thousand government schools and a large percentage of such schools ail from shortcomings such as poor basic infrastructure, lack of teachers (good or bad) and poor attendence rate. There are also quite a few NGOs working with the schools to mend these problems. Many of these NGOs have come up with very similar initiatives (for example taking volunteers from corporates to teach Spoken English in schools to improve job prospects). Yet, when I speak to the representatives of each of these NGOs, they are completely ignorant of the initiatives of the other.

This leaves a lot to ponder. If there are 1000 schools, and 10 NGOs doing the same thing, and if each of them cater to 70 schools, that leaves 300 schools with absolutely no help and nobody would know! Further different NGOs may use different models to deliver the same services. One model may be more efficient than the other. This provides for an opportunity for other NGOs to learn from their peers to improve their operational efficiency. But only if they spend some time and resources to research the whos, whats and hows of their peers. But sadly that doesn't seem to be happening in a scale that is required.

There are a few initiatives like NGOpost that work towards encouraging peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. But even they have a few limitations. Though the participation in the forum is very encouraging, often the purpose of the initiative is misunderstood.

In my opinion, looking beside at your peers, knowing them well and co-ordinating your efforts to achieve a common social goal are critical aspects to achive a tangible social change in a much shorter duration.