Hand in Hand / SEED Newsletter No 5

Dear friends of Hand in Hand,

The year 2008 has kick-started for Hand in Hand – while our grassroots operations are expanding at a steady rate, we have had Swedish opposition leader Ms Mona Sahlin visit us, opened a new residential school for children who have been working in Vellore District, and been rated by rating and monitoring agency Micro-Credit Ratings International Ltd, M-CRIL.

This fifth newsletter, which has taken a new shape with a story of SHG-woman Sheela, captures these stories and more. We hope you enjoy the reading!

Beautician or Plumber
India's poor suffer from lack of vocational skills, and this is a major obstacle against building sustainable family incomes. "I want to start a business, but I have no knowledge to build it on", many of the women of Hand in Hand are saying. Now Hand in Hand planning to train 10,000 ultra poor in job creating skills. Baking or carpeting? That is the question.

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Swedish Opposition Leader Impressed by Biogas Project
Party leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, Ms Mona Sahlin, started her new year with a visit to Hand in Hand. And the former minister was very impressed by what she saw.

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Finding Clever New Ways with the Environment
How do you work with the environment in a country where needs are huge but money restricted? This is the challenge for the environmental consultants from SWECO now visiting Hand in Hand.

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Five Hundred New Businesses per Day
The rate of business creation is exploding at Hand in Hand. We take a look at the women who make it all happen.

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More News

New School for Working Children in Vellore

IT Ministry gives INR 5,000,000

INR 9,000,000 for Watershed Projects

Inauguration of New Residential School

Support Us!

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Beautician or Plumber

The room is small and overcrowded. On the floor, women of all ages are sitting, and staring mesmerised at the teacher in front, who right now is massaging a students head. On the headboard, "Scalp massage" is written. This is part of Hand in Hands new "Beautician Training", an oversubscribed course, whereby almost 400 downtrodden women will get the skills necessary to be able to open their own local beauty parlour. It is beauty with an Indian twist. Eyebrows are threaded, hair is oiled. The training is hands on, and combined with the general training in the Self Help Groups, where reading, writing, and entrepreneurial skills are taught. This will create the foundation for becoming bankable, and the women will be able to get microcredit to make the investments needed for their own business. This they will position on the small roofed porch that Indian village houses of all standards sport.

But beauty treatments are not for everybody. There is now training in tailoring, paper bag production (plastic bags are forbidden in India), catering, baking, computer basics. And for farmers Hand in Hand is starting training to improve productivity and yield together with the National Agro Foundation, to make farming businesses grow.

So far Hand in Hand has done little to support young boys, but they are as vulnerable in their poverty as the girls. Together with the local Confederation of Industries and construction company Marg Construction, we are now supporting 2,500 young women and men to an income they can live on by training in carpentry, plumbing and as an electrician.

Not all individuals who are trained will become entrepreneurs, but from experience, we know that the training gives jobs, both in enterprises and as increased opportunity to get an employment. To increase success rate we have teamed up with local businesses, such as the GRT Hotel in the catering training, to reinforce the links between the poorest and the income opportunities. The businesses started will sometimes be solitary ventures, but some of the skills will lead into medium-sized enterprises, such as paper bag production or bakeries.

Without some elementary skills, it is almost hopeless for the poor to break out of the worse jobs as daily wagers in quarries or paddies, and into incomes that a family can live on. The vocational training combined with entrepreneurship coaching and microcredit gives a solid foundation for a strong family income.

Do you want to support one woman in getting skills training? It costs USD 50, and you can click the image below to do so.

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Swedish Opposition Leader Impressed by Biogas Project

- "I am very impressed by the dedication of all the people I met in Hand in Hand. One of the things that interested me most was the way they worked with the environmental issue producing biogas and giving dignity to those working with waste."

At the Hand in Hand run Poongavanam Residential School, Ms Mona Sahlin met with children who come from abusive and exploitative backgrounds and who often have been working long hours without going to school.

Included in her one-day programme was also a visit to our solid waste management project, where organic manure as well as biogas is produced from household waste.

The day was rounded up at the Crisp Bakery – a small company, run by eight dedicated SHG women.

The purpose of her visit to India, 6-9 January 2008, was to study globalisation, the development of Swedish business in the region, poverty eradication, and entrepreneurship, as well as strengthen the political relations. In Delhi, Ms Mona Sahlin met with met with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mr R K Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), held a speech in the Indian parliament Lok Sabha and visited Swedish multinationals H&M and Ericsson.

Read more and look at pictures from the visit on the Swedish Social Democratic Party website.

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Finding Clever New Ways with the Environment
SWECO is the leading technical and environmental consultant in the Nordic area, and right now two of their environmental specialists are visiting Hand in Hand. Normally environmental projects are high-end both technically and financially, but in India the environmental needs are enormous but possibilities for financing limited. The challenge for the engineers is thus to find out how to make an environmental dollar go a long way, and how to tie up with small scale entrepreneurship and local governments. Credible candidates for high impact is water and waste management. Another area of large interest is small scale biogas facilities, where gas is produced by waste and used in households.

- I look forward to our work with Hand in Hand. They have good local knowledge and contacts, and new ideas on entrepreneurship and self help. We will support them with technical expertise in the environmental area, says Magnus Montelius, one of the participating engineers from SWECO.

The project is part of a charitable donation from SWECO.

- We are grateful for this charitable cooperation, and look forward to interesting conclusions, says Kalpana Sankar, CEO of Hand in Hand.

SWECO has 5,000 employees in 10 countries, and is today active in 75 countries around the world. It is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.

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Five Hundred New Businesses per Day

It is 5 am in Tamil Nadu and in the cool morning, Sheela steps out of the bathtub in the yard. She dries her long hair, puts on the cotton sari, pushes a bindi between the eyebrows, and sits down at her small altar. The Hindu goods are shining as she circles the puja flame by them.

- "I pray for my business to succeed. For my family to prosper, for my children to have a better life."

Sheela lives with her family on a small, badly lit concrete floor. On the walls are posters with inspiring quotes: "Work hard", "Be the best you can be". There are big dreams living under this roof. Three years ago, Sheela was unemployed. By joining Hand in Hand, she was introduced to a new way of stimulating entrepreneurship among downtrodden women. Now she and five other women run a bakery. They sell 1,200 buns every day to industries and nearby households. And she is not alone. The 113,000 micro-enterprises that have been set up by Hand in Hand women, were started by women like her. Who were down and out and sometimes sick when they entered the programme. All living on less than one dollar per day, which means in simple terms you cannot feed your own children properly.

They contradict every stereotype of a Western entrepreneur. Yet they exist. How do you make that happen?

Just like western entrepreneurs, these women will need capital, knowledge, self-confidence, and social context that is permissive to business creation. These conditions do not naturally exist for the women. They have to be created.

For capital, microcredit has been useful. It uses social collateral, for people who have no other securities, taps into the daily cash flows, and finances people rather than projects. The social context is created by Self Help Groups. Fifteen, twenty women, who save and learn together. They will exert positive peer pressure and give total support in the group, as they are all responsible for each other's loans.

The third part is the training. Hand in Hand has invented a business school for the poor. Training begins with reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. It then goes into how to save, borrow, and deal with the bank. Now the women are ready for business training. Production, quality, suppliers, customers, prizing, marketing, distribution. All taught by Hand in Hands 800 business consultants, served by extensive manuals for quickly setting up all the new enterprises. Right now 10 000 businesses are started per month.

Bicycles are repaired. They buy looms and weave for the local sari industries. They manufacture bricks, make juices, incense sticks, shampoos, and paper cups or carve out beautiful goddesses and sell outside temples. They do breakfast catering, cultivate orchids, or just get a few more cows, geese, or chickens.

There is no lack of ideas. The sky is the limit as long as there is a local market, and the women have the skills. And contrary to all grandiose "Get rid of poverty" plans, Hand in Hand never imposes a plan on anyone. It enables the individual dreams of the poor, supporting them in tearing down the walls that have been surrounding them all life, so they can get going here and now.

It is now 1 pm in the bakery. In the heat, the women are packing fresh buns for delivery to local customers. Sheela shuffles baking trays in and out of the ovens, and in between does the books and supervises the fast workflow.

One baker is minute. Her body is marked by that very semi-starvation of generations which impedes growth. She works rapidly, nimble hands dusted with flour, packaging, and carrying trays of buns into the delivery van in the street outside.

So I notice her eyes. They are positively shining. She stays with me for a long time.

Maria Borelius

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Support Us!
As you can see, our scope of activities has increased and we are reaching out to more and more communities every day. In order to continue in our successful fight against poverty and marginalisation, we now seek your partnership. All donations, no matter size, are welcome, and they will contribute to our work. If you wish to donate, please visit us on www.hihseed.org, where you also can read more about our projects and programmes.

Questions, comments, or contributions to the next newsletter are welcome! Please send me an e-mail as per below and I promise to get back to you.

Yours Sincerely,

Kalpana Sankar
Chief Executive Officer

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