Microcredit group and website updates

I'm back at it again quickly after my previous long hiatus. This will be a short post, however.

I just wanted to have a post updating you about the current size of our micro-credit program, since it's recently expanded. Here is a table summarizing all of the groups we are currently operating and the amount of loans that have been taken out in each group:

There is a lot of information in this table, so I'll point out a few features. We have the total number of loans given, which for some of our older groups you can see is quite large. We also have the total amount loaned in the last column (in Rupees), which is also significant for our older groups. For reference, it takes a few thousand rupees to buy each of fertilizer, specialized seeds, and goats. So, this table really tells you that our program is working very well, with many people taking loans, most likely for the aforementioned agricultural purposes. Also, you can see that the majority of our groups are for women. As is well-documented in this blog and on our website, we believe that these groups are crucial for women as a vehicle of social change, empowering them as economic actors and decision-makers in their households. So, we are happy with the progress shown in the above table. Note that we do allow the groups for men as well because that can provide concrete economic benefit as well. Our main focus is on women, however. I'm very happy with this table! We will continue to work to expand and develop this work, improving our services in whatever ways we can. We also plan on passing control of these groups over to the women within a few years, once they are comfortable with the administration. All in due time.

In case you forgot, here's some of the women who have taken loans from us, along with the product of their loans:

A women in Kukrella who has taken a loan to buy a goat. The milk will be used in the family or sold.

A women in Barwara who has taken a loan to buy fertilizer for her millet, or bajra, crops. They grew nicely. The millet harvest was harvested in October. Villagers use millet to make bread and as a feed for livestock. It is a crucial crop in rural Rajasthan. Notice in her left hand the pink booklet. It is the booklet where they record their monthly contributions to the group's central fund as well as details about loans they take and pay back. 

A women in Barwara, also in her millet field. Notice the pink booklet here as well. 

While we are on numbers, I would just like to mention that we will again be operating summer computer education groups in 5 villages, with 1 village also serving as a pilot for our village information center model. If last year is an indication, then the groups will have at least 20-25 students in the classes. We look forward to seeing all of our students progress this summer.

For those interested in India, right now is the time of the harvest of mustard, wheat, and chickpeas (or surso, gehu, and chana in hindi) in Rajasthan. These are all critical crops in the area for eating, for giving to livestock, for selling, etc. I always mention things like this because this is one reason why our staff is so good at what they do: they are farmers like the people they work with, so they understand all the relevant issues. Some photos:

 A mustard field behind a meeting of a male microfinance group. Beautiful, I think.

Chickpeas are eaten whole in India, as well as used for flour and to make pre-made foods like mungori. They are also very tasty when roasted.

Wheat is commonly used to make chappatis, which are like tortillas and are used to scoop up the main dish that is being eaten.


Finally, I would like to mention that I updated the website, so that I think it contains much more information and has a better layout than previously. We will continue to put more information on here with time. Please give feedback on this, we really need it! We want to attract people to our work using the site, so it's very helpful to get feedback to make it better.

Thanks so much for your attention again. Have a great day and keep India in your heart!

Youth Technology Education Round II, and another visitor

All,
    It's been far too long since I've written anything here. What can I say, my research has kept me extremely busy over the last several months so that all I could do with respect to my work in India was maintain contact with the field workers and plan our coming work. I'll be posting more in the coming months.

A female in Mohan Gujar ki Dhani practices the computer during winter break

   Alright, so the big news is that we're going to be entering our second year of youth technology education. We've learned a lot in the last year about what will it takes to make such a program work in terms of meeting places and locations, with the cooperation and input of the villagers in the villages in which we work. It seems that we've got even more buy-in this year, as the students and their parents are already starting to see the benefits of having computer skills. Indeed, over their winter break they were using the computers and re-hashing the skills they learned last summer, while also learning about Google and the information you can get from the internet. This is heady stuff for people who had never touched a computer prior to our program.

     The most important period is coming up now, because the students' summer break is coming up (April 15th-July15th). We will again be bringing in a computer teacher to teach the students specific skills on the computer. We have a timeline laid our for our work: in April we will review the skills learned last year, in May we will learn word and practice typing to get good speed on this, in June we will introduce Excel and the internet, and in July we will review everything and give an exam over what was taught over the summer. We think this subset of skills contains the most important things for these students to learn in order to be able to function on the computers, be ready to learn more, and to have useful skills for an employer or for going to college. We are very excited to see how the students progress in the coming months. More details to come as they develop!

Me at one of the computer centers last year. On my right is the computer teacher and field worker Gopal Singh. We will be bringing in a computer teacher again this summer.

       Also, for this summer we will also be introducing our village information center in Kukrella, which we view as a natural way to integrate the whole village into our computer program. As I said in an earlier blog post, the purpose of this center will be to provide a center for various types of literature on agriculture, government policy, etc.; to provide newspapers for people to read; and to allow for better usage of the computers we currently have for the YLTGs when the students are in school. The idea for this latter point is that the computers will be available for the wider village to use for job applications, school applications, looking up information, or whatever use for which they need it (that will surely develop with time!). Larger towns in the area have such centers, but thus far the villages where we work do not have them and that puts the villagers at a disadvantage in terms of jobs and educational prospects, as well as information needed for their livelihood. We will be working to expand access to information through technology and traditional means. This combines one of our core missions of spreading technological literacy in village areas with the key goal of equalizing access to information and resources for villagers. We will continue to refine this idea and I will keep you updated as this progresses!

Our previous visitor James at a microcredit group meeting in Berki. A friend of his will be visiting LSS in April

     I am happy to announce also that we will be having another visitor to LSS, and she is a friend of James Arnott, a previous visitor. He liked his visit so much that this friend decided she wanted to come see it as well during her trip to India and Nepal. I encourage anyone else who wants to come visit to please do. I think you will find our work fascinating and inspiring. That more people are wanting to see it is a testament, I think, to the sound fundamentals we have been working on building over the last couple years. We will continue to work hard to improve our programs. We will be very happy to have our new visitor. I will give her name as soon as I confirm that she's ok with that. 

    A few odds and ends to tie up here. We now have three field workers. In addition to Gopal Singh and Rohitash Kumar Meena, who have been the steady hands in the field for the last couple years, we also have Shyam Singh, a very experienced field worker as well. We are lucky to have Shyam on with us as we expand our computer program and our microcredit program.

Rohitash and I talking about the future of LSS. Once we have our FCRA registration and can directly receive foreign funds, we think things will be looking very bright.


     Also, we will be applying for our registration to receive foreign funds directly soon since we are approaching three years as an organization. This is the period mandated before you can receive funds directly under India's Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). This will be nice because no longer will a portion of the funds go to the organization that currently provides oversight on our work (NSS). NSS has done an excellent job, but since we have yearly external audits this is not really necessary. Anyways, once we get this registration, it will be much easier to fundraise since we have very little overhead in our programs so all our overhead is currently in our interface with NSS. So we are very excited for this registration.

    Finally, I will have another post soon with some updates on our microcredit work (hint: we are expanding it :) ).

    Hope you all are well. Have a great day and consider coming to India to see LSS!

Heartening update, India audit and strategy for next year

Hi all, I hope you had a most enjoyable holiday season and are starting to get back in the swing of things at the beginning of this year.

I am writing this post as a bit of an update on past things I have said, especially with regards to your Youth Leadership and Techology Groups (YTLGs).


First of all, in December we held some informal computer classes in the villages where we set up computer centers last summer. This was during students' winter vacation, hence why they had the time to come. The results were very encouraging! When I spoke to Rohitash he said they had good turnout for the meetings and that the students had retained nearly everything they had learned over the summer. Moreover, they were very excited for the winter classes and were enthusiastic about our plan for further work during the summer. I have to say I found this quite gratifying, because sometimes you are uncertain as to how well your work is going. To get this kind of positive feedback really gives us a boost and lets us know we are heading in the right direction. We will keep working to make sure this program is a success, but we are quite heartened by the winter break results. Enjoy the photos below with the students working on the computers. A fun game for my computer donors: can you recognize which village your computer is being used in?

The two above pictures are from our computer group Mohan Gurjar ki Dhani.

 The top picture is from Pando and the bottom picture is from Amloda. We also have groups in Kukrella and Barwara (not pictured).

As for our strategy this upcoming year with the YLTGs, it is exactly how I outlined in my last substantive post (not the one on donations): we are going to have an intensive period in April-August when the students will come very frequently and will learn about the computer from our workers and a hired computer teacher. We will be setting the curriculum soon, but it will most likely consist of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and perhaps doing research on the internet. We hope with the skills from this established, we can get weekly meetings with the students set up after this time during which they can work on their skills. I will keep you updated on this.

The above two photos are from our two new men's groups established in Barwara (top) and Mohan Gurjar ki Dhani (bottom). The beautiful yellow fields in the Mohan Gurjar ki Dhani photo are mustard fields. One of the best parts of being in Rajasthan during January.

 

One of our women's microcredit groups from Barwara. These groups are our standby. The work done in these groups is so critical, in so many ways.

 

Our work with the microfinance groups (or self-empowerment groups, SEGs) continues to go very well. We have added some groups in the last month or so, including a few for men. Although we strongly stress the social and economic importance of these groups for women, and hence make women's groups our primary focus, there are also time when it is appropriate to have them for men as well. Below are some pictures.


I'll finish off with some technical details. We had our books in India audited by an outside party for our first year of operation. The audit is posted below for all to see. I hope this will give confidence to anyone considering donating to us and those who have donated to us. I am proud of our organization and how it is run, and I hope you will agree. Finally, I have not quite finished the analysis of our village survey data, but I will try to do so shortly, and make a post about it. The results will surely be interesting.

 Our audit report from our book in India. Feel free to peruse. Sorry for the weird layout. That's the issue of the website.

My best wishes for a great start to 2012!

Holiday Donations

Hi all,
     I hope this December finds you in a good state as the holiday season is among us. I know there is a lot of pressures associated with the time of year and I certainly do not want to add to that. However, I would like to suggest, if you interested, that you consider giving some small donation to our organization, either as a gift to someone (in which case I could email you a brochure that explains our work to give to the person) or just as a bit of holiday giving. You can give by sending a check to our US office:

Friends of Lok Sahbhagi Sanstha

2541 Dana St. #2

Berkeley, CA 94704, United States

The check can be made out to Friends of Lok Sahbhagi Sanstha. 

Consider supporting our work in microcredit and youth technology education. The loans provides vital help in bringing in agricultural income. Technology access is sparse in the rural areas and we are working on changing that.


    There are many deserving causes out there and I (Derek) encourage giving to charity for the holidays, since it feels good and helps people out. As for LSS, every dollar given to us really counts, whether it goes towards having training meetings for new women's microfinance groups, or towards needed computer equipment for our programs geared towards expanding access in rural India to computers, or towards the salaries of our dedicated and hard-working field staff, Rohitash, Shyam and Gopal. Please consider us for a donation during this holiday season!

    As I've mentioned in past posts, during the first three years of any NGO's existence in India it has to have an oversight organization monitoring its activities. For LSS, this organization is Naman Sewa Samiti. For this service, they charge a 17.5% fee. This fee does not directly go towards our work and I feel responsible to report this to you if you are considering donating. There is also an unavoidable fee of about 1-2% when you do money transfers overseas. With that said, I hope you will consider us for a donation. I hope everyone has a very happy holiday season and that I see some of you soon!

Strategy for next year for computer programs

 An overarching question of this post is how to get these students practicing on the computers during the school year. See below for our ideas.

Hi all,
    Another update on the progress of LSS. The field workers and I have been having good conversations about our strategy for the upcoming year, especially about how to measure progress and how to overcome hurdles that have already been encountered in setting up the youth leadership and technology groups (YLTGs). 

   First, let's talk about the hurdles we've encountered with the YLTGs. The main issue is that during the school year parents want their children, understandably, to focus on their studies. So, this leads them to not let their children to come to work on the computer. Exacerbating factors are the long distance that many of the students live from the center, even if they're in the same village (things are spread out in rural areas, obviously) and the intermittent electricity in the village area. Our solution: have an intensive period during April-July when the students tend to have less school (because it's so hot in India, the students get out at 1 pm or so) and use that to build the students' skills. Also, we will work to get them engaged during their other school breaks. Our hope is that once the parents see the skills their children are learning on the computer, they will allow us to have them out once a week for a couple hours to continue the learning. This is one example of adapting to the local culture and conditions to get community buy in. This is essential in any NGO's work.

A picture of one of our YLTGs from the summer. We will have a similar program next summer and will work to get somewhat less frequent meeting during the school year.

   So, we will work to be ready for that intensive period in April-July, when we plan to teach the students word and excel. We will come up with a timeline and curriculum for what they will be learning in the coming months. On a shorter timescale, we will get the groups together during the students' winter break and get them working on the computer again. Pictures to come from that!

 Discussion with the members of SEGs about our programs is one of the crucial ways that we receive input about and improve our work. That is one of their critical functions. This was shown in our computer work. See paragraph below.


   A few more notes along this line. First of all, the process that led to our solution for obstacles encountered by the YLTGs embodies our approach and shows the importance of the women's microfinance groups (SEGs) outside of the strictly economic benefits they provide(which are large as well). So, we knew about the problem with lower attendance starting in August, with only a handful of students showing up, generally those that lived nearby. We discussed the issue amongst ourselves and tried to figure out how we could improve the situation. Additionally, the workers discussed the issue with the women in the SEGs and got their input on how to improve community buy in and how to make it easier for the students to attend the groups. The genesis of these discussions was the plan I have given above, with an intensive period in April-July to build skills rapidly, and then further work, less frequently, during the heart of the school year, to maintain skills. This shows how our organization is cooperative within itself, with all of us discussing matters and coming up with a solution. Additionally, we are always soliciting input from the communities in which we work, especially from the women in the SEGs. In this way, our work is very informed by local conditions and can improve to fit the contours of the situation. It is a model we believe in dearly, and we think it is a cornerstone of our success. Finally, I would like to mention that we hope to get the students the needed skills and comfort with computers so that the high schools that have computers will allow the students to use them. The teachers don't currently let the students use the computers because they think they will break them. We hope our work will allow the teachers to trust the students to use the computers, thus further advancing technological literacy in the village areas. This is more of a medium-term goal, but one we will keep our eye on.

  We will be starting a village information center in April to widely disseminate information on government programs and policy and agriculture. We will also allow access to computers for, e.g. job applications. See below. 

   Onto another topic: we are going to start a pilot community information center in the village of Kukrella in April of next year. The purpose of this center will be to provide a center for various types of literature on agriculture, government policy, etc.; to provide newspapers for people to read; and to allow for better usage of the computers we currently have for the YLTGs when the students are in school. The idea for this latter point is that the computers will be available for the wider village to use for job applications, school applications, looking up information, or whatever use for which they need it (that will surely develop with time!). Larger towns in the area have such centers, but thus far the villages where we work do not have them and that puts the villagers at a disadvantage in terms of jobs and educational prospects, as well as information needed for their livelihood. We will be working to expand access to information through technology and traditional means. This combines one of our core missions of spreading technological literacy in village areas with the key goal of equalizing access to information and resources for villagers. We will continue to refine this idea and I will keep you updated as this progresses.

  As an overarching feature of all of this computer work, we will be developing metric to measure our progress during the coming year. We will most likely develop a survey that probes how much various people in the village, especially the youth, have learned and benefited from the presence of our computers and programs. From this information, we will further refine our programs. When this survey is available, you will be the first to see it!

We will be developing a survey to gauge the success of our computer work (see above paragraph). Additionally, we have carried out surveying of the area in which we work to gauge educational and socioeconomic factors and the analysis of this data will be available in December (see paragraph below).
 
    I know this post has been a bit long, but I've got just a couple more very short points to add. One is that we have undertaken surveying work in the area in which we work, to figure out the educational and socioeconomic status of the population. This is a VERY complex subject that deserves it's own blog post, so that will have to come later. The bottom line is that we want to target our programs and work to the needs of the community. To do this, we need to know what the conditions of the population and sub-communities of the population are. Issues we will look to address are education, gender, below poverty line families, and caste-related issue. Again, all very complicated, but I will discuss it in due time. At the beginning of my holiday break I will be analyzing the data and putting it into reports. I will post them here for you to read.

Shyam Singh sitting at left at an SEG meeting in Barwara. He is a new staff member of LSS.

 Finally, we have taken on another worker at half-time. His name is Shyam Singh and we have worked with him in the past. He will come on full time as funds are available, most likely in 2013 when we have our registration to receive foreign funds without having to put them through an oversight agency that takes 17.5% off the top. That will free up the funds needed to hire Shyam full time. He is every bit as experienced as Rohitash and Gopal, he is also local to the area, and he also has a very nuanced understanding of the needs of the local community. He will be a tremendous asset to LSS going forward and we are most happy to have him.

Organization Bank Account and Website

Hi all,
     So it's been a bit since I last posted, but progress has been going steadily. Most excitingly, we have developed a formal webpage to tell our organization's story and to raise funds. Please do visit it and give feedback:

https://sites.google.com/site/loksahbhagisanstha/home
 
     The site is still under development, but is an important step for us as an organization. To couple with the new website, our sister American organization, Friends of Lok Sahbhagi Sanstha, now has an organizational bank account so that we can directly and transparently take donations. This account will be audited regularly and relevant financial information will be posted to the website annually. This makes me feel good because I think it will make people much more comfortable in giving to the organization. I'm very happy about this development. A big thanks to Richard Johnson from our board for driving some of the recent work in establishing this sister organization.


     Other things have also happened since I last posted. An audit of LSS's account for the Indian financial year of April 2010 to March 2011 (our first year of operation) has been carried out, with details to be posted on the webpage soon. Additionally, brochures for our organization are going to be printed shortly for dissemination within India, and we have decided on expanding the number of microfinance groups in the last few months of the year, since that work is going very well and we want to expand our reach. We are marching on with our progress, so that's great.

     A few interesting things of note from the last month as well:

1. There's been a small hiatus in microfinance group meetings because it is time for the millet harvest. Millet is a staple in India, important for both human and animal consumption.

2. I am super excited for the announcement of a $35 table being made in India for the rural poor:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/05/indias-35-tablet-is-here-for-real-called-aakash-costs-60/

We have already talked about this within LSS and will be looking to use these tablets for our work. Stay tuned for developments with this. This could be game-changing and very exciting!


3. Rohitash and Gopal have been collecting data from the field area, which they will send to me for analysis. From this we hope to better understand the population we are working with and target our work to their needs.

4. We will be re-gearing our approach to the youth leadership and technology groups. Since the students are quite busy during the year, with both schoolwork and farmwork, we need to make better use of the computers dedicated to this program. We want them to still be available to the students when they have time to learn about them during the school year, but we are also moving to create Village Information Centers where the whole village can use the computers. The idea would be to use them for online applications, which are becoming ever more common in India, and other such uses where not have a computer seriously handicaps villagers. We will be strategizing about this new model over the next several months, with an aim to implement it starting next year. If you have any ideas for how to make this work better please let us know.

That's all for now. Have a great week!

1st Loan Recipient Photos

I have some exciting things to share today, namely photos of some of the first loan recipients from our microfinance groups (or SEGs). I think these photos really bring home the fact that this work is about the bread and butter of rural people's livelihood and supporting them in their efforts to secure sources of income and economic growth. They really bring a swell of joy to my heart.

A women in Kukrella who has taken a loan to buy a goat. The milk will be used in the family or sold.

A women in Barwara who has taken a loan to buy fertilizer for her millet, or bajra, crops. They have grown nicely. The millet harvest will be in few weeks. Villagers use millet to make bread and as a feed for livestock. It is a crucial crop in rural Rajasthan. Notice in her left hand the pink booklet. It is the booklet where they record their monthly contributions to the group's central fund as well as details about loans they take and pay back.

A women in Barwara, also in her millet field. I'm not sure if she took a loan to buy the seeds themselves or the fertilizer. I will inquire. Notice the pink booklet here as well. Looking good.

We are getting ready to launch the website in the next week, so be on the look out for that. In the future we will post the photos of the women taking the loans with the outcome of their loans in a special "Loan of the Month" section of the website that really highlights this work and its importance. For now, it just brings a smile to my face to see these photos. Truly heart warming. Below are some photos showing a women doing the book-keeping for a group an a women filling out the form to take a loan. The cycle goes on! Look out for more photos of our loan recipients soon. Happy Labor Day!

A group member in Barwara filling out the form to take a loan.

An SEG group member doing the book-keeping for the group, recording who has given their monthly contribution to the central fund and who has taken a loan that month, if anybody.