Note from Brianna

Hi all,
      This is a quick post, from me at least. I am posting below a note written by Brianna, who visited LSS in April of this year (2012). It tells of her impressions of our work in microcredit, women's empowerment, and youth technology education. I have added some photos of her visit, along with captions, just for illustration. I think it is important to have outsiders visit the organization and give their impressions, since it gives an unbiased window into what we are doing. I know we are doing important work, but it is nice to see it put into words by someone else. Thanks for taking the time to write this post Brianna! I hope you enjoy the post.

I had a wonderful experience visiting LSS.  From the start, Rohitash, Gopal, and Shyam were welcoming and kind.  I got the impression that they care deeply about the work they're engaged in.  It was reassuring and heartwarming to meet people on the opposite side of the world who are so dedicated to a worthy cause.

Brianna with Rohitash and Gopal at Mohan Gujar ki Dhani.

During my visit, I had the opportunity to sit in on a self help group meeting and on multiple computer literacy classes.  I really like the model the self help groups are built upon--empowering community members through microcredit loans.  I realized during my visit that the groups are much more than just microcredit finance groups, however.  Because they meet on a monthly basis, they also serve as a place for people to come together to discuss community issues.  I was impressed that the majority of the self help groups are groups of women, and I think the support they find in those groups is particularly important for them.  I was particularly heartened by an example that Rohitash relayed to me: when one of the communities was not getting an adequate water supply, the women discussed this issue in their self help group and decided to approach an official about it.  When the local official dismissed them, they went to the next higher official, who fixed the issue for them.  Though approaching an official about a problem may seem small, it struck me as an incredible example of how the self help groups are empowering women.  I was also impressed by how organized and democratic these groups were.  There are records of all the microcredit loans, and they decide who should receive loans using a democratic voting process.  That democratic process reinforces the empowerment of women since it emphasizes that they all have a voice.

Brianna with microcredit group members and their kids in Kukrella

Brianna in Kukrella. You see the fields that are staples of the livelihood here.

I was also glad to have the opportunity to visit several of the computer literacy centers.  Since computers are so ubiquitous in the US, I was a bit taken aback by the realization that most of the kids in these villages have never touched a computer before in their lives.  The excitement at each of the centers was palpable--these kids are definitely eager to learn, even if there are twenty other kids sharing one computer.  I was thrilled to see that at the first computer literacy center we visited, the girls were just as eager as the boys.  At that center, girls were actually in the majority.  Boys were in the majority at the other centers we visited, but I'm hopeful that the gender ratio will even out over time.  Rohitash, Gopal, and Shyam seemed genuinely concerned when we showed up to centers where the balance was less than equal.  Derek explained to me that, ultimately, parents are the ones to decide whether or not their daughters can take computer literacy classes.  He emphasized that "This is why the microcredit groups and all that we do to promote gender equality is so important: it is slowly changing this culture."  That there were at least some girls at most of the centers and a great number of girls at the first center I visited demonstrates that progress is being made.  I wouldn't be surprised if that progress was a direct result of the microcredit work.

Brianna at Mohan Gujar ki Dhani's Youth Technology and Leadership Group (YTLG). This village has the best gender ratio and overall attendance.

Brianna at YTLG in Amloda. The gender ratio is not as good in Amloda. More work to be done, but we are diligent and will work to get an even number of girls going forward!

One question that passed through my mind a number of times when I was visiting the computer literacy centers was, How are computers going to make these villagers' lives better?  I've conditioned myself to ask this question since I've grown up in a society in which we often fail to think critically about the impact of technology on the quality of our lives.  On the whole, I did think that computer literacy would improve the lives of people living in the villages LSS is working with, but I was still curious to hear Derek's response to that question.  His response was practical, thoughtful, and compassionate.  For one, computer literacy is a gateway to both education and jobs.  Without that computer literacy, villagers are at a distinct disadvantage.  LSS's computer centers are striving to correct that injustice.  Furthermore, LSS hopes that teaching computer literacy to villagers will "stanch the flow of villagers to the city, where they often end up in slums."  Computers could potentially allow villagers to work from more rural areas. I found his response to my more philosophical concern about the dangers of technology so spot on that I think it's worth sharing in full: "You have to have faith in the communities you work with to know how to deal with [technology]. I think that's what we're all doing as human beings and we should not treat the people we are working with any differently. They deserve the opportunity to make technology work for them and we are there to facilitate that."

YTLG member getting Brianna's email. Maybe they can become pen pals!

On the whole, I was very impressed with the work that LSS is doing, and I look forward to hearing about the positive impact LSS makes in the future.

Possible land donation, foreign contribution registration, 2nd year audit, and more

Hi all,
    Been a bit since my last post, so let's get started with the latest news from Rajasthan.

    First of all, we have two exciting things going on that will help propel our organization forward. The first one is that someone has contacted us and wants to give us a plot of land for our NGO office. We currently pay rent at an office in Khora, so this would help us establish ourselves more permanently in the area. The deal has to be approved by the local gram panchayat (village council), so we will wait to hear from them. Regardless of the outcome, we are excited by the offer, as it shows the belief in our work coming from the community. We'll cross our fingers and hope for a yes.

Gopal, Meg, Derek, Rohitash, and Grant on the roof of our current office in Khora

    The second thing is that the field workers are currently meeting with a man from Delhi who is an expert in applying for the foreign contributions registration (FCRA). As I mentioned in the past, in India for the first three years of operation you have to have an oversight organization monitor your work. For us, that organization is NSS. NSS does good work, but they also take a hefty fee for it, roughly 17.5%, so we are very excited to be starting the process to strike it out on our own and to be able to use all of our funds for operations. The extra money will allow us to hire Shyam Singh on full time (here is currently half-time), and do a few other things currently out of reach. Additionally, without the fee we will be able to fundraise much more aggressively because donors do not get turned off by the fee. This should allow us to expand our current operations and finally start the environmental work that is part of our organization's mission. It is exciting to be starting this process.

 Shyam Singh facilitates an SEG group meeting. With our FCRA registration we will be able to hire Shyam full time and expand the scope of our work.

    An important piece of applying for our FCRA registration is the audit of our 2nd year's work, which I have posted below. We are committed to the utmost transparency so that all who give to us can trust our work. Please take a look at it and see all of what goes into our work.

    Finally, a few more loose ends. We continue our microcredit work, including adding more groups. Everything is going very well in this area. We are currently converting the bank accounts of the groups to conform with new government rules, so that has taken time, but it's getting close to being done.

SEG meeting receives training from government agricultural officers

Shyam Singh facilitates an SEG meeting

SEG meeting with Gopal and bank staff. We are currently converting the bank account of the SEGs to conform with new government rules.

    As for the computer groups, they are currently less busy because the coming of the school year, but there are still students practicing on the computers when they have time. We are currently getting the data collected and analyzed from their exams and surveys. I'll post that data as soon as I have it. Below are photos of the students working on the computer and taking the exam. I think the photos show the environment we are working in and why this work is so important. We will work to keep improving this program, including integrating the results of the surveys and exams into future work. We will keep you updated.

Student practicing with a typing game in Barwara.

Students taking computer exam in Mohan Gurjar ki Dhani

Students taking computer exam in Pando

Well that's it for now. Exciting things are afoot! Have a most lovely rest of your summer.

Progress of the Summer Computer Program

Hi all,
    Well, the summer computer program is wrapping up and I must say that we are very happy how it has gone, though there have been hiccups. In the next couple weeks I will give some reports on how everything has gone. For now, I'll start by discussing my exciting phone conversation in which I talked with Rohitash, a field worker, and also with the computer teacher and one of the students. All were very excited about the program.

Girls working on the laptop in Barwara

  
     Let's start first with what the teacher and student said. When I asked them whether they liked the program and thought it was useful, they both said that they liked it very much and thought the students were learning useful and necessary skills. Indeed, the teacher said the program was important because jobs these days require fluency on the computer. Both said that the students had learned the programs of MS Paint, notepad, Word, and Excel thoroughly. They also reported that the students had all greatly increased their typing speed with practice. I find this very gratifying because I think it is basic comfort with the computer/typing and crucial applications that will give these students the opportunities they need in the job market and for college (depending on which path they choose to follow).  As I've said before, the one of the overarching goals of this program is to provide rural youth (and rural people in general) with the same opportunities that are available to those in urban areas. I think the progress shown thus far is a crucial step towards this goal. We will work to continue this progress.

Students working on laptop in Barwara

   A few more notes on my conversation with Rohitash. A quick anecdote to start things off. Rohitash told me that sometimes the power goes out during the day and they cannot use the computers for the class (power outage is a common problem in India, especially in rural areas). Nonetheless, he knows the students continue to learn because when he rides by on his motorcycle on the way home at night, he sees them huddled up around the computer in the classroom. You could tell this made him smile, and it sure makes me smile. I think we have really built something the people really believe in and we will work to keep it going. This anecdote reinforced the rest of our conversation, in which Rohitash re-iterated what was said by the student and teacher above. Namely, he said that the students and villagers are very excited for the program and that they are now basically fluent in all the MS programs listed above. Indeed, when the teacher and Rohitash told them the other day that they would work on MS Word again, the student responded by saying, "No, we already know everything there is to know about Word." I think that's great.

Students work on the computer in Pando

Rohitash with the students in Barwara

    So, the qualitative evidence of success of our program is very satisfying. However, we want to be a more rigorous in accessing our programs, so at the end of last week we gave exams on the course material and survey assessing the students' perception of the course (did they like it, could it be improved, how could it be improved, etc.). We will be analyzing the results in the weeks to come and will be sure to post the results here. Also, with the end of the course we will be looking at trying to recruit some of the students to help around the NGO, especially with the computer program and other computer-related work. I will also keep you updated on this.

Rohitash with the students in Pando

Alright, well as I said, very exciting stuff! We are very happy with the progress made during this summer program, with the students becoming basically fluent in a suite of important MS programs and increasing their typing speed. We will be posting more analysis and information as we have it.

Have a great day!

Youth Computer Program, US visitor, FCRA registration

Hi all,
     It's been a bit since my last post and much has occurred, so I shall not delay in getting to the progress of the last month or so.

     First of all, we had a visitor from the US, Brianna Balke, who came to see our work during a trip to India. We have many photos from that visit, which you will see below as I discuss our work. Thanks for coming Brianna!

     First and foremost, we have had lots of progress in our youth leadership and technology groups. Building on the progress and enthusiasm from the last year, the students have been learning MS paint, word and excel, as well as working on their typing speed. Excitement is high and they are rapidly learning these programs, which are, as we all know, essential programs to know for jobs and for college. Turnout is excellent, with 15-20 students per group, which is basically the capacity of each group given the space and number of computers available. So, all in all we are very happy with the results this year. Here are some photos before I delve into details about metrics we plan on using for measuring progress.

 Brianna participating in the discussion with the YLTG in Mohan Gujar ki Dhani.

Brianna amongst the group in Mohan Gujar ki Dhani.

Brianna, Rohitash, and Gopal with the YLTG at Mohan Gujar ki Dhani. Good group photo.

Youth practicing on the computer in Mohan Gujar ki Dhani

Brianna participating in discussion in Kukrella YTLG.

YTLG in Kukrella working with the computer teacher

YTLG member getting Brianna's email. I assume this was not under duress!

Brianna observing the YLTG in Amloda.

Rohitash discussing with male members of the YLTG. Notice the goats on the right. Very typical setting for our work in rural RJ. We're trying to bring computer education to these very rural areas.

A very good photo of Rohitash's niece Priyanka working on the computer at home. Shows how our program is building interest in computers in many ways. Just the presence of the computers for all to use in the village area is a huge step. We are working to make sure the villagers get the maximum usage out of the computers.

    Alright, well, as I mentioned before we are very happy with the progress our computer work is experiencing. Excitement and interest are high, with all the villages buying into our program, which is very crucial. Additionally, the students are progressing rapidly in learning the key programs mentioned previously. They will also start learning about using the internet starting in June, which is obviously a crucial component of the program, since we want to the villagers to have access to things via the internet that they wouldn't normally have, e.g. agricultural and other information, job and college applications, etc. The question now becomes, how do we measure our progress in bringing computers to the village area? We think we have developed the means to do this, though we are of course always open for input and our approach will evolves as experience teaches us what works and what does not.

      Let's start with the short-term part of measuring progress. The first thing we will do is give a short exam at the end of the course that tests what the students learned during the program. This will give us valuable information about how much they learned, what they didn't learn, and what we can improve in our instruction and program generally. We are additionally going to give a survey to the students to assess their opinion of the program and how they think we might improve it. It will include questions such as: what did you know before the class? what did you learn during the class? Was the class useful? Was the class exciting? Do you want to continue learning about the computer? Is there any thing you would change about the class? We are going to try to see how much they knew coming into the class (probably just what they learned in last year's class), how much they learned during the class, and how we can improve the class to make it more exciting, engaging, and educational. After this we'll assess the situation and adjust our plans for the coming year with the new supply of data. We will keep you updated on this process!

      Ok, well that's the short-term, but we also want to be able to measure the progress of our work over the long-term after our students get jobs and go to college. This may be a bit difficult as the students move around, but I don't think it will be too big of an obstacle because it is unlikely their families will go anywhere so we should be able to contact them to get the necessary information. To this end, we will also survey the students after they leave the program, asking questions such as: why did you know before the program? What did you learn during your years in the program? How were those skills useful for you in your job/school? Did our program give you the ability and comfort with the computer so you could learn new programs? If so, what new programs have you learned? Would you participate in the program again knowing what you know now? From this we will ascertain the efficacy of the program. Obviously many other questions are possible and we will develop this aspect as time goes on. We will track the number of people our groups have trained and what sort of benefits were reaped by those former members. This will give us a good idea of how to shape our programs in the future. We are all excited and interested to see how this all goes! We'll keep you updated on all this.

Our donated laptops are beginning to wear out and could use replacement. Please donate your old laptops, or get friends to donate them. They are invaluable to our work. Email me at derek.vigil@gmail.com if you are interested in donating your laptop.

We would like to make a plea for old laptop donations again. We are very thankful to Denny Vigil, James Arnott, and David Quan for their generous donations of their used laptops a year back. However, we all know these things wear out, and this is especially true of used laptops in a place as hot and dusty as RJ, where additionally there is no AC to speak of and all places are pretty much open, even if they are "inside." So please, if you have any laptops please email me at derek.vigil@gmail.com if you would care to donate them. Please also check with friends who are looking to upgrade from/replace their old laptops. This would help us so much in continuing the progress of these youth groups. I will be going to India in December, so any time before that would be fine. Let me know.

Let's transition and talk a bit about our microcredit groups (SEGs). They continue to be a linchpin in our work and to work excellently, as was shown a few posts back with the data table detailing the level of activity in the groups. They are important to our functioning as an organization because we rely on constant input from the group members to improve all of our programs. There's a neat photo below showing where the SEG group members are interacting with the computer. As mentioned previously, the talking with the SEG members has given us invaluable insight in how to structure our computer program so as to achieve success. The importance of these groups cannot be overemphasized. 

Brianna participating in group discussion in SEG at Kukrella

Brianna with SEG members and their children in Kukrella

Again in Kukrella. Notice the surroundings here. You see the livestock and the fields that are staples of the livelihood here.

SEG members interacting with the laptop

Brianna during some free time with the SEG members.

Alright, well this has been a long post so let me finish up with a few details. Rohitash and Gopal will be meeting with a man from Delhi who is very knowledgeable about applying for our registration to receive directly foreign funds (FCRA registration, in Indian government lingo). As I've mentioned before, all Indian NGO's go through a three-year period where they cannot directly receive foreign funds and must have an oversight organization monitor their work. We are nearing the end of that period and so will be applying to receive foreign funds directly. Once this is done we will be able to receive the funds directly and, more importantly, avoid the sizeable fee (17.5%) charged by such oversight organizations. This will allow us to fundraise much more effectively since we will get rid of this overhead, which donors do not like to see (and neither do we, but there is no choice during this three-year period unfortunately). We are very happy to have the aid of knowledgeable people during this process so it can go as smoothly and as easily as possible. We will keep you updated on this.

Finally, a note about the weather and crops in India right now. It is the blistering hot time in the summer before the monsoon. Temperatures range from 40-50 C, or 100-118 F, so it's pretty scorching. Farmers - which means nearly everyone, including our workers, where we work - are starting to plant tomatoes, chillies, and eggplant, all very tasty parts of the Indian diet.

Chillies, tomatoes, and eggplant are all crucial summer crops in RJ, although the growth of chillies is not ideal because they take up so much water and RJ is very water scarce. Nonetheless, people like to eat them, so the farmer's grow them.

Well, that's it for now. Have a great memorial day weekend!

Newpaper scan

Hi everyone, I just wanted to follow up and post the news articles from Rajasthan Patrika and Dainik Bhaskar here. The scan of the articles is given below, followed by my translations:

Upper one (from April 9th version of Rajasthan Patrika)
 The Start of a Computer Literacy Center
       On Wednesday in the village of Kukrela in Gram Panchayat (village cluster) the sarpanch (village mayor) Dholaram Khatik ceremonially opened the a computer literacy center. The sarpanch said that computer knowledge is very important for today's youth. He said that Lok Sahabhagi Santha is a volunteer organization. In the Viratnagar block (county) LSS is starting a pilot computer literacy center.  NGO worker Rohitash Kumarmeena said that during the summer vacation the students will be taught basic information about the computer. NGO workers Gopal Singh, Shyam Singh, and others were also present at the ceremony.

Lower one (from April 9th version of Dainik Bhaskar)
 Students to Learn About Computers
     In the village of Kukrela in Gram Panchayat Bhamod on Wednesday the sarpanch  Dholaram Khatik ceremonially opened the computer center of Lok Sahabhagi Sanstha (LSS).  Sarpanch Karthik said that computer education is of great importance for today's youth. During the summer vacation students will learn about computers at the center.    


Anyways, no photos made it, but I still think this is exciting stuff. We will work to continue our progress. Have a great day!

LSS makes the newspaper, starting of summer work, and lots of photos!

Hi all,
    So, super exciting news here. The opening of our village information center in Kukrella attracted two of the bigger regional newspapers, Dainik Baskar (http://www.bhaskar.com/) and Rajasthan Patrika (http://www.rajasthanpatrika.com/). Rohitash tells me that stories and photos about our work have appeared in both newspapers and that he will have scanned photos to post on the blog soon. This is another important step in building our program, since getting this type of name recognition will make fund raising in India much easier. We have had the mantra that in our first three years of operation we just wanted to build strong programs, and then we'd focus on fundraising after that. I think this choice is working nicely for us and the support we are seeing reflects the strength of our programs. We will work to ensure this remains the case!

    Alright, we have started our second year of computer work in earnest. The youth leadership and technology groups (YLTGs) have started up in three villages (the other villages' students are still in their examination period, so we cannot start there yet). We have also opened our village information center in Kukrella in a ceremony attended by the sarpanch (village mayor, in India's system) and the newspapers. As detailed in previous posts we will begin by reviewing what we learned last year (basics of the computer) and then will go on to MS Word and typing skills. There will definitely be a good stream of posts as this work develops. For now, enjoy the photos below.

The poster for our village information center

Gopal with the village sarpanch (mayor) at the village information center opening  ceremony

Gopal with student at opening ceremony

Teacher with students in Kukrella

Same as above

Students on computer in Mohan Gujar ki Dhani

Students working on laptop

    Finally, our microfinance work continues unabated, with the women and their families enjoying the benefits they have to offer. These are a cornerstone of our work/operational philosophy, so we always work to keep them strong. Below are some photos.

Woman filling out documentation in Mohan Gujar ki Dhani

Meeting in Barwara

    Stayed tuned for some scans of the newspaper articles. Have a great day!