AID-India Conference 99, Chennai |
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Ask not what America can do for You, Ask what You can do for India | ||||
Sudhakar Adivikolanu, Deeptha Thattai, Ravi Ramachandran, Kiran Kumar Vissa |
Fist Sudhakar will talk about how we review proposals and work with projects. I will talk about volunteers in the US and what kind of work we can accomplish. Deeptha and Ravi will talk about a chapter’s activities. Sudhakar: I just want to quickly go over the different aspects of projects that we support. We try to do projects where the most needy people will benefit. Our approach is holistic. The projects concentrate on health, education, environment, women’s empowerment, human rights, vocational training, people’s movements, and rural development. Though we take these up separately, we also are guided by the AID Plan. We try to learn from things currently going on and also to initiate efforts ourselves. These merged well in one significant project we have in IIT Kanpur. AID volunteers were directly involved with the starting of a school in Lodhar village. We also work through already existing organisations, which we try to get to know when volunteers visit the groups. Logical extension of all this for AID to be present in India, is for AID volunteers returning to live in India, working for AID either part time (evenings/weekends) or full time. Financial support to projects in India: Over the past 7 years we have worked with about 40 organizations in 16 states across India. We are still trying to reach some of the poorest states. In 1998 we supported 30 projects, involving expenditure of $65,000 and substantial non-financial support also. How we get projects – mostly through word of mouth. When volunteers visit villages in India they come to know of a good organisation there and meet the people, keep in touch with them. Or volunteers might hear of a group in the news, etc. Also social workers working with many NGOs help us get in touch with organisations. Review Process: all the review is done by volunteers. We regularly meet every week in something called Community Service Hour (CSH). In Maryland we meet every Saturday morning for 2 hours. Similarly other chapters may meet once a week or every other week. When we get a proposal, 2-3 people read it, visualise the project, think about the effectiveness, and how much people’s participation is there. They present it to the group, which generates questions to find out what is the best way we can support this project. We don’t only evaluate monetarily. It is not just to find out if they are honest but also to establish a relationship and find out how our talents and resources can be used to be a part of this project. We try to visit every project during the review and also during the implementation. The CSH is a very broad meeting, many volunteer activities are part of this meeting. In Maryland, we also have a projects committee. Projects Committee meeting concentrates only on projects. Of course it is a very difficult task to discern success of projects, we are still learning what is the best way of assessing these things. We try to have both short (1day) and long (at least 1 week) visits by our volunteers to the projects. They bring back photos, newspaper clippings and write about their visit – all of which we keep in our files for other interested volunteers to look at. Another important aspect is non-monetary support. Sometimes volunteers get directly involved. One volunteer bought 25 videos on different aspects of health from WHO. We are requesting some NGOs and movements to review these videos and we are trying to get them translated into different languages, based on their review. We also collect educational materials like toys. We definitely need a lot of ideas and procedures for doing these more effectively. Another form of non financial support is making cartoon books, writing articles in a simple form on scientific topics, letters to newspapers on issues people’s movements are working on. We have started creating web pages about social development work going on in India (whether we are financially supporting the group or not). A lot of people don’t know what are the different works going on in India, and how they can participate. So suppose someone is browsing the web they may find that yes, this is a group I want to work with. There is tremendous potential for this. Since in the US there is access for so much information, we plan to get relevant information and tune it to the projects we are supporting – translate it, illustrate it, make into flash cards or booklets, etc – whichever way it is useful for the projects. We also have been getting into providing software support. Not only web pages, we develop many tools for awareness. Volunteers create posters and brochures, write articles for magazines. We also show videos and documentaries on development and other social issues. All these help to get people involved in social development issues in one way or another. We also plan to get more organised in terms of internships. Our volunteers have recommended books and videos to be purchased by the local public or university libraries, so this makes the alternative analysis and perspective available to more people, and presents a different picture of Indian society than what is generally available in the US, even for Indians. We publish a newsletter every month on AID projects and chapter activities, this also discusses development issues. 3000 people across US receive it by mail. We also distribute in grocery stores where Indian people come so that they cannot miss our newsletter. We also want to get more articles in the media, TV etc. Now Deeptha from Cincinnati chapter will tell you more. Before I go I want to pass around our project proposal form on which I would like to get your feedback. Deeptha:
Ravi: Being in the US, doing some of these projects gives great satisfaction
to all of us. Well doing mistakes is the best experience, and this
was very evident in our first project, which was a failure due to coordination
difficulties. So I will tell you about our second project.
SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) wanted to provide infrastructure
for craftswomen of Gujarat. We funded about 5% of the venture.
AID’s contribution is quite small but we are learning a lot by collaborating
with an NGO.
Kiran: My name is Kiran. I have been a volunteer of AID for about 3.5
years. I will talk mainly about volunteers in AID-US and what kind
of backgrounds they are from, what kind of work we can accomplish using
these talents. AID-Cincinnati is one of the chapters which started
about a year ago, we have other chapters in other parts of the US, and
the chapter in Maryland, of which I am a part, has been around for 7 years.
It was started by some of the people in this room.
Question: how many volunteers are there? Kiran: People who participate for one-time events like concerts may be up to 500, but regular volunteers who come every week would be about 100. Prasanna: what is the ratio of funding to non funding support? Kiran: The non financial aspect has been growing in the past 2 years. In the past our non funding contribution might just be ideas that we had. Lately we have done more creative things like collecting information or educational materials, or Sandeep designing cartoons for the health book. Maybe we are up to 10% now. Prakash: What portion of your time and money goes into education? Ravi: Into educating ourselves? Prakash: I mean formal education. Kiran: In terms of money I would say 25-30% of our funds may go into formal education. This is the easier area to support, even in terms of collecting materials. Ramani: and in our projects we interact with the community as a whole. For example in the Lodhar school which appears to be a regular education project a number of community issues are involved together.
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