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!