Hand in Hand / SEED Newsletter No 7

Staying in school

Uzhaippali is a 12-year-old nomadic boy from rural Tamil Nadu. But what makes him different? He goes to school. And this is a real achievement for Hand in Hand, because his tribe does not traditionally stay long in one place, and does not believe in formal schooling or healthcare.

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SIDA extends support

Waste management is a huge challenge in rural and semi-rural Tamil Nadu. And Hand in Hand has been deeply involved in this issue. Now, it has signed an agreement with SWECO International AB, an environment consultancy from Sweden, which will help implement a project aimed at 'Developing Small Scale Waste Handling'. The project is funded by Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) under the Indo-Swedish Facility for Environmental Initiatives and Innovations Programme, and was launched in October 2008.

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Flash report

Voxtra to fund new enterprises

Hand in Hand took another step in reaching the poor by starting operations from 1 November 2008 in four new districts - Erode, Sivagangai, Tuticorin, and Virudhunagar - of Tamil Nadu. This has been made possible by a USD 3,000,000 contribution from the Norwegian foundation Voxtra. The project will focus strongly on business incubation and enterprise development and support.

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Two panchayats win sanitation award

Two Panchayats in which Hand in Hand works have won a national award for best sanitation. The two award-winning Panchayats are Mudichur and Kaarapakkam. The Panchayat representatives will receive the award from President Pratibha Patil in the first week of December 2008.

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Successful campaign with Swedish newspaper
In September, Hand in Hand and Sweden's largest daily business newspaper Dagens Industri (www.di.se) launched a unique joint fundraising campaign. The aim was to prompt companies and individuals in Sweden to donate money to our enterprise and job-creating activities in Tamil Nadu. They have raised INR 100 lakh so far.

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Clinic at your beck and call
When the people of Melpakkam village in Tamil Nadu fall sick, they travel 8 km to reach the nearest government health centre. This means they lose a whole day's wages. Apart from this, they get a health camp once in two months. That is not exactly healthcare at your fingertips. So, when villagers told Hand in Hand they wanted a clinic in their village more often, it gave Project Director R. Ashwin Kumar food for thought. He explained that this would cost money. The villagers said they were ready to pay a small amount. Voila! A new concept was born. The first community-owned paid clinic called Kai Raasi was launched on 10 September 2008. As Kumar says, this could well be the way to go to organise effective health intervention in Indian villages.

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New building for school for nomadic children

Till a couple of months ago, the camp in Visoor Panchayat, Kancheepuram, for the nomadic tribe of Narikuravas did not have a school building. Children would gather in makeshift sheds or use a temple pavilion for classes. This in itself was a big triumph for Hand in Hand, which had worked hard to convince the parents to school their children. Now, time for the next level. Hand in Hand has finally got the money together to build a proper school building. The school is renamed Bharathiar Residential Bridge Camp and was formally inaugurated on 9 October 2008.

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Hand in Hand in top ten
Ford Foundation and Intellecap have chosen Hand in Hand as one of ten most deserving NGOs/MFIs in India to include in the 'Make My MFI Investment Worthy' programme. Under this programme, Intellecap and Ford Foundation identify small, high potential MFIs and help them understand the investment context and investor expectations better; and train them to invest in capacity-building so that they can attract more commercial equity into their capital structures. The two and a half year programme identifies and handholds ten MFIs in India to prepare them to effectively engage with mainstream investors and raise the required commercial capital.

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CEO featured in Sweden's biggest business daily

Sweden's leading business daily, Dagens Industri (www.di.se), carried an interview with Dr. Kalpana Sankar, CEO, Hand in Hand, on 6 October 2008. In the interview, Sankar spoke of how Hand in Hand evolved from an organization focused on eliminating child labour, into one that tackles issues underlying that problem, e.g. poverty and heavy debt. As the organization moved into self help groups and microfinance, "We found that a USD 100 loan could create new income of up to INR 1,500 a month for an entrepreneur." Dr. Sankar's goals are ambitious: 75,000 more micro-enterprises by the end of this financial year. Going by the pace of Hand in Hand's growth, this looks well within its capabilities.

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Staying in school
R. Uzhaippali is 12 years old. And he is very proud. He has become the first of his seven-member family to go to school. And this is really quite a big deal for him. Not just because so many children in rural India are out of school and in labour, but also because Uzhaippali belongs to a nomadic tribe called narikuravas.

The narikuravas are nomadic people who came to Tamil Nadu many centuries ago from Western India, chiefly Gujarat and Rajasthan. They were originally hunter-gatherers but when conservation practices threw them out of the forests, they were forced to migrate in search of new livelihoods. Now, they subsist chiefly by selling beads and shells, ornaments and trinkets. And being nomadic, they don't stay too long in one place, moving constantly with their tents, carts, dogs and, of course, their children.

This nomadic lifestyle has meant that their children don't stay long enough in one place to go to school. Also, this community is wary of officialdom and regular society, often preferring to stay away from regular schools and institutions.

In this small village in Kancheepuram, Hand in Hand has found a great solution to the problem. In a settlement created by the government, where the families stay between their wanderings, Hand in Hand set up an Innovative Residential School (IRC).

This is where Uzhaippali studies. His mother had, in fact, put him in a government school but when a fellow classmate was killed by a car near the school, his parents didn't feel safe sending him back. Says Rekha, Uzhaippali's mother: "I was glad when Hand in Hand opened a school here. Now my children will be safe and get an education."

In IRC, a couple of Hand in Hand's teachers stay permanently. This ensures that not only are the children educated but also get support and care when their parents go away on trips. The teachers also counsel the children on healthcare, hygiene and social discipline. Uzhaippali is happy in school and thinks he is well taken care of. He looks at the teachers and classmates as his brothers and sisters. Says he: "I want to make something of myself so that I can look after my family."

Rekha is proud of her son: "I don't want him struggling out on the streets selling beads." Uzhaippali's younger sisters are playing close by and when they are old enough, Rekha plans to make sure that they too get the same education as their brother.

And what does Uzhaippali want to become? A policeman fighting injustice, a goal that might well come true since his teacher tells us that he is doing pretty well in school.

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SIDA extends support
The main objective of the SIDA-SWECO project is to improve the living conditions of people in rural and semi-rural areas through better waste management techniques, in terms of both technology and scale of operations.

Hand in Hand hopes to develop two or three efficient and replicable Panchayat models of sustainable waste management systems. It will increase the capacities of Panchayats by sensitizing and training decision-makers at the village level. It will also provide technical help on handling and transporting waste. It will increase community involvement by setting up local environment clubs or 'green' clubs and by developing systems to ensure sustainability. The project will run for 24 months.

As an extension, biogas plants will be established in suitable Panchayats after feasibility studies. This will help manage organic waste and promote sustainable and green energy development. Users will be trained to optimize plant efficiency.

Another exciting part of the project is the development of a Resource Centre for Waste Management at Thenambakkam near Kancheepuram. The Resource Centre is expected to provide hands-on experience on efficient waste management practices to different stakeholders.

The SWECO team travelled to Tamil Nadu in October to discuss the project. Hand in Hand has started work to identify the Panchayats suitable for the project. SWECO will then conduct a feasibility study in these earmarked Panchayats to install a biogas plant. Indigenous technology will be used for the biogas units. Sweco will also identify the area for landfill.

No infrastructure support is envisaged under this project, but four sets of training programmes will be conducted.

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Voxtra to fund new enterprises

Voxtra was started in January 2008 to identify exceptional development programmes and innovative social entrepreneurs in developing countries. It believes in funding such programmes in order to increase their reach and document their impact on social development. Its name 'Voxtra' is derived from an Old Norse word meaning 'growth', making it a fitting partner to enable Hand in Hand's expansion across the state. It promises to be a particularly fulfilling partnership also because Voxtra has stepped in to take ahead exactly what Hand in Hand does best - create enterprises to tackle poverty.

Through the three-year project, we will reach an additional 90,000 poor and disadvantaged women, and assist them in building over 40,000 enterprises. We will also help build 200 or more medium-sized enterprises, and reach 30,000 women through our adult literacy training. The enterprises started will also include Citizen Centre and vermicompost enterprises, which are two other of Hand in Hand's specialisations.

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Two panchayats win sanitation award
Nirmal Gram Puraskar is an annual award presented by the Ministry of Rural Development, India, to village Panchayats for the best implemented sanitation schemes for the village in general and schools in particular. This year, two Panchayats that Hand in Hand works with - Mudichur and Kaarapakkam - feature among the award winners.

The village representatives will receive the award from President Prathiba Patil at a function to be held in Pune, Maharashtra, in the first week of December 2008.

According to S. Moovendan, St. Thomas Mount Block Coordinator of Total Sanitation Campaign, villages go through a five-fold programme to make them eligible for the award. This includes scheme implementation, awareness creation and, finally, verification by officials of the Government of India and representatives of NGOs appointed by the government. There is a cash award as well, which is meant to strengthen the sanitation programmes in these Panchayats.

Solid Waste Management is one main criterion for selection, and Hand in Hand has done a lot of work in this area. In Mudichur, Hand in Hand covers the entire Panchayat of 4,000 households. We have a team of 26 Green Friends, one Organiser and one Block Coordinator, and 2,000 kg of waste is handled per day. In Karapakkam, we cover 1,326 of the total 2,000 households through nine Green Friends and one Block Coordinator. Here, 700 kg of waste is handled per day.

In both Panchayats, Hand in Hand produces vermi-compost from organic waste and diverts a significant amount of waste for recycling.

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Successful campaign with Swedish newspaper
As part of the campaign, more than a dozen full page ads have been published so far, with prominent Swedish entrepreneurs and business leaders such as Volvo Group's CEO Leif Johansson and Wallenberg Bank SEB's CEO Annika Falkengren telling readers that they personally support Hand in Hand's entrepreneurs.

Dagens Industri and its Editor-In-Chief Ms Gunilla Herlitz have named Hand in Hand their CSR partner. They have also taken up a village to support within our Village Upliftment Programme.

In addition, Dagens Industri sent a team of journalists and photographers to Tamil Nadu, resulting in an unprecedented editorial coverage. More than ten full-page articles have been published so far (some also hitting the front page) that covered entrepreneurial and empowerment success stories from Hand in Hand, and included interviews with Dr Kalpana Sankar and Dr Percy Barnevik.

In just a few weeks, more than INR 100 lakh was raised through donations from readers of Dagens Industri. The campaign will run until December, with the ambition of making it an annual event.

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Clinic at your beck and call
The idea of a clinic co-owned by the Panchayat and the community was discussed with the village by the Asst Project Coordinator, Public Health, M. N. Rangarajan, and a resolution to cooperate with Hand in Hand was passed. Villagers identified a building and started to renovate it. An MOU was signed and soon the clinic was up and running.

The clinic operates every Wednesday from 4.30 p.m to 6.30 p.m and caters to Melpakkam village and five other villages in the surroundings. It is housed in an old library building that belongs to the community. The Village Panchayat maintains the building, provides furniture and pays for electricity. Hand in Hand on its part ensures that there is a doctor, a nursing assistant, a health assistant and medicines.

Right now, the patients pay Rs 5 each per visit, but have voluntarily agreed to pay about Rs 10 in future. The idea is to establish more such clinics and spread a network of primary health care centres across the three blocks in which the Health Pillar presently works. The future could hold secondary (hospitalisation and minor surgeries), and perhaps even tertiary (super speciality hospital) clinics for the rural community.

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New building for school for nomadic children
The school is a residential bridge camp for the children of the Narikurava community. It is meant for children between 9 and 14 who have never been to school or who have been out of school for too long. Since it is residential, children not only get an education but also food and clothing, and are taught about sanitation and hygiene.

The new 3,000 sq ft building has three classrooms, including one for a computer and library. It has colourful laminated learning cards and picture books and the atmosphere is pleasant and caring. There are two dormitories for girls and boys, with attached toilets, a kitchen, and playground. Students are also provided with uniforms, bedsheets and pillows.

Today, 57 children (29 boys and 28 girls) stay and study in the camp, and are cared for by six teachers, who stay in the school with the children. Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, the government's programme for elementary education, provides 60 percent of the funds for running the school and the rest is met by Hand in Hand. The school has so far made 23 children ready to enrol into regular school.

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Hand in Hand in top ten
Under the programme, Hand in Hand will be helped to augment its knowledge of the equity investment process and investor motivations, and to assess its institutional readiness to absorb equity and pursue rapid growth. The programme will also help Hand in Hand develop a two-year roadmap to identify key interventions that will make it 'investment worthy'. During this time, we will get handholding and monitoring support, plus help to document the process.

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CEO featured in Sweden's biggest business daily
"A USD 100 loan can create new income of up to INR 1,500 a month", says Dr. Sankar.

Dagens Industri met with Dr Kalpana Sankar in Hand in Hand's humble office in a quiet street of Chennai (Madras), capital of Tamil Nadu. The real head office is in Kancheepuram, 160 km west of Chennai, a town with a million people and well known for its temples and silk saris. In 2004, Hand in Hand focused on fighting child labour and the plan for Dr Kalpana Sankar was to expand this project. But she quickly realised that a narrow focus on child labour would not do much good. One of her first actions was actually to close down the nine evening schools for children in labour. "When I visited our projects, I noticed that sometimes child labour had even increased. It's a problem that has been there for almost 150 years, and it cannot be solved isolated from all other problems."

Changing the parents' attitudes would require a solution for their heavy debts. "In every house there were one or two children who would have to work for 10-20 years to be able to pay off their parents´ debt. The children were given away as collateral and they lived under miserable conditions. The parents made a deal with the loan sharks without realizing the consequences."

Hand in Hand started Self Help Groups (SHGs) among the silk weavers and focussed from the beginning on women, who turned out to be more disciplined. For example, they turned up at meetings on time. Sankar brought this idea with her from her earlier work in the government with aid-related issues, where SHGs had been a much cosseted model which also had been exported.

The new thing was Percy Barnevik pushing for a strong focus on jobs and enterprises through microfinancing - also a growing phenomenon. "Percy asked me to follow some 100 cases and the results made him enthusiastic. A USD100 loan could create new income of up to INR 1,500 a month. And within a year we had become an organization focused on self help and microfinancing."

The expansion is based on careful preparations and a strong local presence. "It's important to convince the opinion leaders. I've had thousands of meetings with parents, village leaders, school principals, authorities and other important individuals. But the key is involving the women themselves. We don't want to provide for them - we want them to take responsibility!"

Sankar doesn't hesitate to point at her own background as an important element of Hand in Hand's success. Before she came to the organisation, she had worked with poverty elimination for the state government of Tamil Nadu. "I had just evaluated different reforms so I knew where the gaps were, and which programmes worked in the field and which didn't."

She has a large network since her family belongs to the top level of government bureaucracy and she herself has met with prime ministers and presidents. Her husband was a District Collector in Tamil Nadu and it was then that she realised the full depth of India's social problems. "As first lady, I led several charity projects. And many people came to my husband with their problems when we travelled around."

Sankar stresses that Hand in Hand willingly works together with the government and that it doesn't want to create parallel structures with, for example, schools and health clinics. "Our resources are limited, but we can create and demonstrate models that may be scaled up by the government." But according to her experience, the government is rarely able to accelerate self help and entrepreneurship. "Managing a cow is to be an entrepreneur and demands things like insurances and business plans. That's marketing, where government lacks competence."

Hand in Hand does not compromise with quality. "There is no reason why these poor women should not have the best teachers we can find." Another core principle is to be a completely transparent and honest organisation. "I always tell my staff that the money isn't ours. We have been trusted with these resources to help poor people. And every dollar counts."

The management philosophy of Hand in Hand can be summarised in clear goals and freedom of implementation. "Percy has the same idea, but he is much more into numbers. He gives me much space and that's why we grow so fast." Barnevik's importance goes far beyond the financial resources he has brought to the organisation. He communicates the brand of Hand in Hand outside India, and he knows how to run an organisation with many people. "He has brought many new ideas and he is never satisfied. He wants you to become better and better."

The challenge for the future is to handle a rapid expansion, both in India and internationally. Despite speaking of "consolidation", the goal is to organise another 150,000 women and get another 75,000 companies started during a period of 12 months, where the first half has already passed. This means increases of about 50 percent.

Sankar says that growth will decrease as Hand in Hand moves outside its "domestic market" of Tamil Nadu, which today represents 80 per cent of the resources. But there is already a huge need for investments such as IT support and Internet payment, in order to increase efficiency and secure large-scale operations. And to be able to handle the global activities - today in South Africa, Brazil and Afghanistan, tomorrow perhaps in China, Vietnam and some other African countries - the challenge is to bridge cultural gaps.

"We have to get everyone working by the same book", as Sankar puts it. She is sorry she cannot spend more than a fraction of her time on visiting the reality of the villages. "Earlier I spent 250-300 days out in the field. It gives me a bad feeling that it's no longer possible, because I enjoyed it so much."

It's obvious that she still sees poverty elimination as her calling. "My perception of the world was changed when I met children who had been pawned for 100 dollars, and women who could not feel secure about their future. It's not their fault that they have been born in a poor family. And the more you get involved in these issues, the harder it is to stop. I am trapped."

(Translated into English from the original Swedish by Göran Thorstenson, CEO, Springtime PR.)

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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 what size, are welcome, and they will contribute to our work. If you wish to donate, please visit us on www.hihseed.org, where you can also read more about our projects and programmes and also make online donations.

Questions, comments, or contributions to the next newsletter are welcome! Please mail me at the address given below and I promise to get back to you.

Yours Sincerely,

Kalpana Sankar
Chief Executive Officer

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