Too much... really?

Just came across this photo on deviantART. Brillliant art. All respect to the artist.
(Courtesy: http://rumbl3fishy.deviantart.com/)
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Wish we lived in a world where people enjoyed learning!

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A new approach for RTE campaigns??

As a volunteer of CRY, IIT Kharagpur volunteer chapter, we are undertaking some RTE (Right to Education) campaigns in the locality. But somehow these didn't seem to be going in the right direction. May be a new approach is required for this!!? :?


What method are we following till now?

• Going to villages directly, with permission from Sarpanch (For RTE)
• Interaction with the villagers directly
• giving handouts to people
  

What's wrong with the current approach?
After 3 RTE campaigns (may be too less to conclude anything, still!!), we have observed the following are the problems:

• Turnout of people is very less in some places
  
• Reluctant people; they are showing low interest at places
• hostility
• problem with the local language
• A doubt that, if at all they are learning anything from the campaign
• People doubt our intentions (Like the Sarpanch had once asked us if we were doing it just for grades; which is an obvious concern); hence will be difficult to convince them
  

An observation:

• For consumables, a suggestion from a friend/ relative generally has a stronger potential to affect our choice while buying a product, rather than a TV Ad. This is only because of our trust on the suggester.
• Now, can the same strategy be implemented in the villages?
• When a villager himself will inform the people about the advantages of education and informs them about the scholarship schemes, they will be more willing to listen to him.
• e.g, if a neighbor's daughter is going to school, having mid-day-meal and is taking advantage of the free material available, this family will also send its children to school.
  

Can this be implemented in our locality?

Yes. Some of us do think, it will.

How?

• To implement it, we'll have to sow some seeds in each of the villages/ localities.
• the "seed" will be a person, who knows the local people very well and has a good rapport, a little learned, somewhat wise and willing to help others.
• We'll have to point out such people and inform them/ feed them all the info as to how to take advantages of the facilities that the govt. is providing.
• And finally we can hope that word-of-mouth transmission of information will continually help increase their awareness.

Proposed approach (if at all we'll follow this):

• We'll contact the Sarpanch first, because he is the one who can
  
• Discuss with him the problems that we faced in the earlier campaigns.
• Ask him if there is any solution to it and ask him for suggestions
• Proposing him to inform us about such "seeds"
• We'll then educate those seeds first, will provide them with all the information that we have.
  
• >>> most importantly, motivating those seeds to get the word out into the public.
• To be in touch with the seeds and keeping track of them.
• Surveys to find out if any improvement came about by this.
  

As far as I can think of, these are the flaws:

• The "seed" might not do it without any monetary support
• Why would a seed do anything without any personal gain?
• We are expecting him to be a wise man/ learned person, who would obviously be having a better standard than the others. Hence may be he won't be that attached to the local "underprivileged" ones.

Any suggestion in this regard is highly welcome...

:)

My views on "One Project at a Time"

Some of my friends had come to me for the design of a website, "One Project at a Time". Somehow, i got involved in it (was taken in, to be precise). They wanted to take up a local project (a small one) which can help improve their quality of life (basically they wanted to do some social work). To do so, they needed money, which was to be generated from online fund-raising. The website was to act as a platform for people to be able to donate something to the organization. People were to be spammed initially to get followers through videos/ graphic material describing the problem. For almost 2 months not much work was done in this regard and finally we decided to meet and discuss the loopholes/ flaws in that system:


These are some of the loopholes/ flaws (in my view, all that i could think of):


Trust:

The basis of this project is to collect money from people (that too online). Unless the people have trust on us, they are not going to donate any money, however small it may be. the trust of course builds up as more projects are completed (successfully). But then for many of them, the first question would be "How can I trust them??"

One solution for this can be, to use the brand name of IIT Kgp. BUT are we sure that we can hold on the reputation of this brand even after usafter using it?

Potentiality:

The second question that people are gonna ask is: "Can they do it? / Are they REALLY going to do this?" Most of the people that are going to donate money, do not know us. Why would they help a group of students and not directly donate it to some reputed charitable organization/ NGO who is working in this field for loner time?


Image of india:

This point was raised by Ankit. Initially even I was ignoring this point, but as much as we want not to agree to this, this is inevitable. Mass spamming to people outside/inside India asking for money only shows only our inability to help ourselves.

It's wiser if we go to some filthy rich man (inside india), asking for money to help a bunch of poor people, than to spam the net to raise the fund!

Misuse of money

Apart from a reassurance from our side, how are we going to convince people taht the money is going to the right hands? India is corrupted. Everybody knows that. Even outsiders do! We'll have to account for each and every penny spent for every project that we take up! Before we take up any further steps, we'll have to devise a foolproof method to ensure this.


Transparency

The same as above. Transparent can this be?


Self-sustainability of the work:

This is probably the MOST IMPORTANT of all the questions. How self-sustained can the work be? Our main goal is to help those areas/people which are not able to get proper resources.

Let's say we helped a school once by making a bore-well or repairing the roof or by donating some money. The next time when they face the same problem, shall we come forward once again to help them? What about the other schools facing the same problem? We can't be biased for a single school, can we? We have to find a permanent solution to it. At least a solution which helps them for a longer period of time.

This work that the organization is going to do, has to select projects which are of this nature. Which can be solved permanently. This "One project at a time" is just a "tool" which we are using to help people. We should first find out problems/ projects and then strike that with our tool; not the other way round.

Independence

And finally, independence. An organization has to be independent as far as possible. i.e, We shouldn't be relying on anyone else for our work. Anyhow we have to depend on the money that we will receive through donations (as per the USP). But if possible, it would be safest to generate our money from some activity first and then utilize that for some development work.


For now this idea is on hold. May be with some modifications in the philosophy, it will once again be re-initiated.