Happy birthday Hari

Its my nephew Srihari's birthday today. He had always been interested in cars and we uncles- my brother and I fueled it thus far with different kinds of cars from hot wheels collection. This time though i wanted to buy him a comic book to shape him into a reader. I found it hard to find that suits his level. Now i have gifted him POGO's book on transportation that includes cars! That should give him some reason to read. Happy birthday Hari!

On train gripe!

It seems the coffee vendors on train are on a mission to wake you up. Once you are up and ready for coffee they say 'its done' and disappear. I wonder if they learnt it from city buses! They pass by the dozens when you want to cross the road. But disappear into thin air if you are at a bus stop.

Bowled by Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk!

I recently saw a series of talks in TED conference after a long interval (last time I saw, I was a bachelor in Japan!). An amazing journey that took me through technological superiority, psychological naivete of humans. But while they fed my cerebrum well, one speech deeply impacted my romantic and moral side.

Elizabeth Gilbert shared her insecurity about surviving success - one that she now shares with any other successful people (some of whom died because of it!) in the creative field, after the of her recently published bestseller "Eat Pray Love" in captivating 20 minute speech. Watch out especially when she talks about a 90+ poet she met and her picturesque narration of how the poem "barreled down at her with earth shaking underneath". Evidently Elizabeth is not just an accomplished writer, but probably an even better speaker.

I have placed an order for her book - and this is the first time when I have bought a book I have never heard of, written by someone who I have never heard of - purely based on her talk. She says in her talk that she wonders if her best is already behind her and if she would ever surpass her first success. I personally wonder if her book would surpass the speech that she gave on TED.

Enjoy the video!

The Alchemy

Middle class apartments in hyderabad are substandard in design. For example, the kitchen platform is so low that a gas cylinder is too tall to get under it. And its not really unheard of in apartments worth the rent Rs 9000 per month. However, we do have something to smile about. Our two balconies open out into a panoramic view. Better still it is likely to remain that way as the adjacent area is the backyard of a government college. So they are not goin to build more than two floors. Tea, biscuit, music and evenings do form quiet an alchemy with balcony!

Its all my wedding!

For shashank - my 2 year old nephew my wedding was the first exposure to the world of weddings. He enjoyed it to the fullest. After his return home, everytime if spots a couple dressed up for an occasion or hears a nathaswaram-thavil music combo. He starts celebrating as it is all 'Badhri chittappa' getting married!

"S" series and Scrabble

I don't know if it happens to others. But sometimes when I encounter something, for about a week or so, that is all I happen to encounter. For example - this will raise a few eyebrows - about a couple of years ago, almost all the girls I meet newly have had their names starting with "S". Swapna, Shweta, Sangeeta, Srujana, Shruti, Shabnam, Swaroopa, Sirsha T, Sirisha G. Sometimes a few of the girls with those names I have come across for the first time. I wonder if that particular series actually has come to an end. I am engaged to Sriramya! I have heard of a Ramya, I have heard of a lot of girls with the prefix "Sri". But Sriramya is a first. :)

While that is still there, now I am beginning to come across scrabble in quick succession. While at office, about a couple of weeks ago I heard someone talk of scrabble while passing by me. Then I thought "may be its a good gift to give for kids!". A week later, my niece who twisted her ankle in my earlier post >[:-D] received a scrabble set as she was celebrating her birthday. Now I have come across an interview of a New Yorker journalist who has wrote an article about Scrabble (registration required. Those beep!), its influence in America and how it has reemerged in its online version. In the audio, I found that India is big in scrabble. Now I am thinking I will take it all in and start off with scrabbling, and am banking on Scrabble's recurring encounter with me.

Taking the plunge

After taking a stab at various way of social intervention it seems that the way ahead seems to get slowly and clearer.

I have a school near my work that is looking for teachers.
I have my idea of doing the teaching with as much demonstration as possible.
I have the rickety infrastructure that the team at my office prepared once and gathering up dust.
I have a new set of 25 DVDs dedicated to physics demonstrations (thanks to the sincere belief in social and educational change of a few executive level managers of Synopsys!) that I have not yet started watching.

May be it is time to set aside an hour of my mornings to start teaching science. This is in a way going back to where it all started. The first of my thoughts on social change was to teach and teach at schools.

For now though, this thought has to remain as just another thought and the extent to which it fructifies over the next year hinges upon how much hit my conviction can take over the next couple of months! All the best to me!

First-aid: Do's and Don'ts

About a month ago, my niece twisted her ankle and it bloated up within like "pulka roti" within minutes. That night I happened to be there. Noticing her twisted ankle and grimacing face, I told her that the next time she twisted her ankle, she must keep keep her feet in a raised position and apply ice immediately to prevent the swelling as much as possible. Thanks to my earlier double-experience, I was fully equipped to provide first-aid treatment for twisted ankle. Pity I couldn't use my skilss in my niece's case. The poor 10-year old was limping for the rest of the week. But the incident quickly demonstrated the handiness of the knowledge of first-aid.

I found the following article on "Do's and Don'ts of First Aid" in LiveMint, which can come in as a handy guide. Recall your college days, brush up your memorizing skills and learn this one by heart! :). This is also a handy guide that should reside along with your first-aid kit!

Ads of the world

Most of the works of creativity that you would have noticed nowadays come from advertisement industry. Ads of the world is one website that seems to track all (at least a lot) the ads throughout the world, categorized into different regions and industry. There are quite a few good ones. Check out a few here!

"Alone we jump, together we soar!"

கேட்போரின் எண்ணம்

[ நூறாவது மின்பதிவைத் தாய் மொழியில் செய்வதில் மகிழ்ச்சி! ]

சில கானங்களில் வரிகள் மனதை வருடுகின்றன....
சிலவற்றில் இராகம் நெஞ்சில் இறங்குகின்றன...
பலவற்றில் பாடகரின் பண்பட்ட குரல் உள்ளத்தை உருக்குகின்றன...
ஆனால் ஒன்றிரண்டு மட்டுமே கேட்போரின் எண்ணத்தைக் கூறுகின்றன..

"நீங்காத பாரம் என் நெஞ்சோடுதான்..
நான் தேடும் சுமைதாங்கி நீயல்லவா?
நான் வாழும் நேரம் உன் மார்போடுதான்..
நீ என்னைத் தாலாட்டும் தாயல்லவா?"

[English translation follows!]

Is targeting the poor alone always efficacious?

With my on and off involvement with centers close to social development, I find one attitude that may have to be changed for better efficacy of social initiatives. Let me have the first stab at defining the attitude.

"A social initiative will produce a better impact when it is targeted towards the economically poorer sections of the society. The richer the beneficiaries are, the lesser social impact it has.."

While in general this point has a validity, it has to be revisited for every specific case. Here is an example. A team of my friends and I conducted a science demo in a private school nearby. When I talked about this, "Don't you think your initiative would be more useful to students of government schools?" was one question that popped up universally. My answer is "In my case doing it in *this* private school is likely to have a higher social impact" . Why?

1. This private school doesn't have a lab infrastructure in spite of the students paying a nominal school fee (Rs. 200/- per month).

2. The students here do have a capability to read, listen to and understand English, Telugu and Hindi which provides us flexibility in our implementation. So, it gets easier for us to get more students to start "thinking and reasoning science" - a better success rate at our initiative. On the other hand, a government school on which we are working on the ability to grasp English is lesser providing us with challenges (lesser number of teachers from our office)

Much more importantly, access to better education sure is relatively much more difficult for the poor. However, schools that fall in the economic category of the one that we are working on also face problems faced by government schools (non-availability of teachers, labs etc.). In addition to that they also suffer the ignorance of NGOs that rush to help poor quality government schools. It is almost as if these students are paying Rs. 200/- per month to be ignored!

Thankfully, in our case, we need to ignite as many minds to think and reason (in science and others..). In our eyes, whether the students have the ability to pay Rs.200/- or not, if their inclination to reason is lacking, they are equally poor! Only the former is equipped with a skill (English language) that offers flexibility for us to make a better impact.

A society, apart from being categorized into economically richer and poorer, can also be categorized into rich and poor based on other criteria. And the economically richer need not be richer (or have better opportunity) in all the other categories. Social upliftment, one must remember, is not only the upliftment of the economically poorest, but the upliftment of the society as a whole.

Reader.goggle.com

Ask my room mate and he will tell you that i read a book at about a page per day before dozing off. Now that I've started off with tamil books its worse. Yesterday i bought a book called 'Katrathum petrathum' (those learnt and those acquired) in which novelist sujatha shared his views and experiences with a sumptuous and proportionate dose of comedy and insightful facts. An engrossing read. But the best part is, i didnt have to fumble with my rusty tamil reading ability. My dad did it adding the much missed flow. Sujatha through my dad's goggles sure looks wiser.

Wood to stone

This is a piece of Wood that got buried for 200000 years and gradually turned to stone!! Showcased in Madras museum. For the historically inclined this place is a treat.

Terrorism in, parochialism out ... for now at least

I am not interested in going deep into the Mumbai terror strikes, which is already over-analyzed in all spheres. But the one silver lining that I see out of this unprecedented and audacious act is that everyone, including the politicians have for once forgot about petty parochialism. Raj Thackrey shut up for sometime now, or if he is still talking, there is none to listen. But it is such a pity that sanity on one issue has to be established only superceding it with a far worse insanity! Pity!

SE Session 11: Social accounting and auditing

Today’s session was on an interesting topic called social accounting and auditing. Financial accounting and auditing are tried and tested methods for tracking and verifying the financial status of an organization and finding out if the financial goals are met are violated. Social accounting and auditing is a parallel concept developed on the lines of financial accounting and auditing in order to measure and verify the social goals of a social enterprise.

In case of a business enterprise, when a project is taken up, one sets a financial goal for the project. As the project progresses one tracks certain financial metrics of the project that will help assess the financial performance of the project when financial audit is done.

However a social enterprise has a double bottom line of financial profit and a social impact. So, when a project is taken up in a social enterprise, similar to having a standardized financial accounting procedure that can be used for enterprises catering to different sectors, one may have standard social accounting procedure that can be used be social enterprises irrespective of the sectors they are catering to.

In social accounting, one will set a social objective that complies to the mission of the enterprise, and plan activities that achieve the social objective, while upholding the values of the organization. For each activity planned, social metrics has to be measured that provides feedback about the social impact of the activities when a social audit is conducted. This is the basic idea behind social accounting and auditing. One difference between financial and social accounting is, for the former, quantitative metrics will suffice to accurately assess the financial performance of the enterprise. But for the latter, the both quantitative and qualitative measure has to be captured to assess the social impact.

Social accounting has three steps

1. Getting ready: Social accounting is process that has to be assimilated as an inherent part of the social activity and is effective in giving a measure of social impact only in a long term (3 years). So, it is important for the members of the enterprise and stakeholders to understand the importance of the accounting. Steps have to be taken to get everyone’s approval to adopt social accounting as part of the enterprise’s initiatives.
2. Social, Economic and environmental planning: We went through a case study of a social enterprise called Good Crafts that trains women from a Mumbai slum in employment related skills like making baskets, wall-hangings, soft-toys etc., and procures their products to sell it in overseas markets and shares the profit with the women. From the case study write-up we identified the

1. mission statement of Good Crafts that addresses the purpose for which the organization is formed

Example: Good crafts aims to empower women and thus build sustainable and self-reliant communities in slums of Mumbai.

2. the values it has to uphold in the organization as it strives to achieve its mission

Example: Being non-discriminatory to the beneficiaries (slum women), etc

3. Objectives that are aligned towards the mission statement and the activities that achieve the objectives

Example: To empower women through training and creating of employment by

a) Providing relevant skill training

b) Encouraging and supporting self-employment

c) Providing crèche facilities for the working women’s children

4. Metrics that measure the effectiveness of the activities

a)      Number of courses provided (quantitative)

b)      Number of self-employed women (quantitative) and how satisfactory to the women is the quality of support provided (qualitative)

c)      Number women whose kids are enrolled in the crèche.

During the exercise we learnt that

-         the mission statement should be specific, clear and should remain the same through the completion of the project

-         each activity taken up must  be tied to a specific objective. This is because; the metric that we measure should provide us feedback about the efficacy of the activity in achieving the objective.

3. Social Economic and environmental implementation: This amounts to ensuring that relevant metrics are measured and qualitative data collected during the activity. Standard ways of collecting qualitative metrics are focus group discussions, questionnaires, surveys, and analyzing the minutes-of-meetings and status reports
4. Social, Economic and environmental auditing: Once the data is collected, a social auditor may audit the accounted metrics to analyze the social, economic and environmental impact that the social enterprise has caused and provide feedback on how much the objectives are achieved.  Based on the inputs the implementation strategy may be modified for the better. Then the social audit may be repeated the next cycle to measure the efficacy of the modified strategy. So, the minimum recommended period for the audit is two years.

Benefits:

1.      It’s a standard auditing based on a proven model. It can be applied to all sorts of social enterprise, irrespective of their area of interest

2.      Scalable: Can be applied to a whole organization or just one program of the organization

3.      It is a process. It can accommodate other tools of measurement like “Social return on Investment” within itself to make social auditing complete.

4.      Can  be used as a strategic tool; can sell the results of the audit to stakeholders and to generate more support (money or the like)

Snag:

1. Need to allocate time, finances and resources
2. Inaccuracy of surveys or scanty response to questionnaires
3. Long term project, needs change in business model to accommodate the process

Face-to-Face with Comat technologies

Cross-posted from ThinkChange-India

TC-I Fundwatch has recently reported a Rs. 60-crore investment by Omidyar Network and Unitus Equity Fund (UEF) on Comat technologies, a profitable social enterprise doing business with the rural poor.

The CEO of Comat technologies Sriram Raghavan recently talked to NASSCOM Emerge Blog and offered some good insights into Comat's success in becoming a profitable social business.

Sriram's answer to one question explains the business model of Comat technologies succinctly.

"Q. Your own business is built around the Rural Business Centres. What exactly are these?

SR: It is a very simple concept. The rural business centre is primarily an access point for rural citizens, where we use technology to deliver different kinds of services - only those that help improve the quality of life in villages. We don’t want to sell soaps and consumer goods.

I’ll give you two examples. Take government certificates such as birth, death, land and property related papers. If you have to get one from the taluk or the district office, you have to go to that particular office, wait in a long line and follow cumbersome processes. We deliver it to the village directly – it takes about five minutes for the same cost, i.e., Rs. 15 per certificate. This makes a very big difference to the rural consumer.

The other area we are in is education. There are teachers in rural areas, but the quality of education is very poor. Our centres bring live classes from best teachers in cities who broadcast their lessons online, much like the erstwhile UGC programmes. Except that here, we have two- way interaction and the students and teachers can speak to each other."

Sriram Raghavan also shared a few of his experiences with rural consumers that can come handy to a new social enterprise venturing into the villages.

"In a typical agrarian set up, income generation is a twice-a-year cycle – unlike in urban areas where we earn monthly salaries. It is important to bear this in mind as you have to position your product around this insight."

With a turnover of Rs.55 crore while improving the lives of about 10 million rural inhabitants, there should be little doubt about the success of this unique business model. But the best aspect about the venture is that it has identified one critical handicap of the Indian villages and working successfully towards eliminating it. Better said by the man himself.

"All these years, rural India has been isolated; they have been “informationally disabled”. It is now time for a change and we want to ensure that."

SE session 10: Writing fund-raising proposal

I couldn't attend this class. So, this post owes its credit to my classmate, Manmohan Jain.

1. Most NGOs overseas average about 51% earned income. The percentage for Indian NGOs is much lower. Earned income is income generated by the NGO. It could be either by
- sales of goods (T-shirts, auction of paintings by hearing-impaired children)
- volunteer activities e.g organizing a qawali nite / music concert
- beneficiary created products (hand made carpets or some other handicraft of a particular community)

2. People give to People -
At the end of the day it is a person that you are making the appeal to. It may be a foundation that makes grants, or a government body or a corporate that you are seeking funds from, but eventually the pitch is made to a person - for e.g a trustee or board member.

Similarly when making their decision they are considering you, your credibility etc. You may have a great cause, your NPO may have good track record, but still it does matter in terms who is the person appealing to them.

A fraction of funds raised may be impersonal but any large grants - the "people to people" principle applies.

3. Understand donor - what appeals to them, what is important to them, what is their process for selection.

4. Pareto principle - how 80 % efforts might only give 20% returns and often it is core 20% activities that give most of the Return Of Investments so focus on those.

5. Acronym for sources of income - GGCIE (you can refer to the slide on this)

6. Fund raising cycle - PDCA Plan -> Do -> Check -> Act

Or on similar lines

Need -> Sources -> Method -> Select / Evaluate

with the last step feeding back into the first in each case. For example, you evaluate you results and re assess/replan your needs.

A good question to answer is "How will you sustain the work after the grant runs out?"

Plan: Research sources - who will you target? Refer to GGCIE. If it is Government what schemes and programmes are available?
V K Puri's "Government funding schemes for NGOs/NPOs in India" lists several hundred schemes and can be very useful resource.

7. We went over SSA proposal format and some of the sections in that.

If applying to Companies and CSR departments, they will certainly need metrics/measures

8. A good exercise in planning phase is to project the need over time and match to appropriate sources. For example

- quick or short term needs - selling T-shirts, individual volunteer donations of small amounts

- long term needs - grants from foundations/governments. This will have long lead time and typically be larger amounts.

9. Objectives of CSR:
- branding
- employee motivation and feel good factor
- shared objective e.g KidSmart ?
- good business
- social responsibility

Went through exercise in actual writing of funding proposal. The template used is in slides 10 to 14 The class broke up into 4 groups of 2 each and spent about 30 mins preparing a proposal and then presented to rest of class.

Each was critiqued by Prof Bhargava, pointing out what was good and what needed improvement.

Some key points

- be specific in your title if you can
- have facts, clear breakdown of expenses/projected needs
- shows you have done your homework
- have measures or impact - short term/long term, even can mention associated/corollary impact
e.g rehabilitation of street children addicted to drugs will reduce crime in the locality - in 1 year impact can be seen

After the exercise we saw short video where a trustee/grant making body official talked about how they decide and how it is never a cut and dry Yes/NO answer.

- donors would want to review and evaluate
- they would want to visit and assess
- they are assessing the individual /invidividuals making the application, what is their credibility, integrity, commitment etc
- the decision takes time and combines several factors
So it is not black and white - yes/no.

Caution: Never put any fact or any statistic that is not real or cannot be substantiated

We then saw a real proposal example . Hindi Martin Institute and went over its salient points. It was a real life actual proposal that got funding.

Finally he touched briefly on results versus indicators and the LFA - problem solving technique. (I need to learn more about this).

Sricharan

My nephew

first stab at first aid

A doctor delivering the lecture first aid to school kids during a session we did. Its a first for the kids, first for the doctor and for up too. Not a roaring success. But all of us learnt.

Live accident report: Are we learning anything?

The picture didn't turn out to be clear...but two things

1. it still delivers the message
2. for once I am glad it didn't since the real scene was terrifying and nauceating (literally one more minute and I would have passed out!)

It happened right outside my residence but on the opposite side of the road, as I was walking home. I just heard the loud crash. But as I crossed the road, I knew that the guy passed out the moment he hit the ground. He was injured in the back of his head and, needless to say, it was profusely bleading.

The only thing that went right was that someone immediately called 108, the ambulence service (one good service for the insane hyderabad traffic). But what went wrong?

1. No helmet!
2. His companion, who escaped unhurt, had no clue that the first thing to do is to stop the bleeding, nor did the on-lookers. None seemed to have first few minutes after an injury to a vital organ is crucial. That guy basically racing to his death. ZERO AWARENESS OF FIRST-AID! It took another first-aid dumbo to tell him to stop the bleeding.
3. The on-going traffic dutifuly stopped to catch a glimpse of the accident and pay "homage" to the hapless victim. The called ambulence can reach to about 100-150m from the victim, but no further. The police was on scene regulating the traffic, but the flow was still slow. In this situation, if you are on scene and if you are not helping, your are hurting!

But he is just one in a billion....a piece of statistic...what is the lesson learnt...right? Look at the picture again...