Traffic and Approaches to Development

Read a post by Kipaya about development here. 

Lalbagh Botanical Gardens, Bangalore

Cleaning up after Bangalore 10K

Saahas is a social enterprise in Bangalore that is working to solve the city's waste management problems.  They organization is made up of twenty women who do a variety of waste collection and sorting programs around the city.  We learned yesterday that they were responsible for cleaning up the waste generated at the Bangalore 10K that I wrote a post about a few weeks ago.  See photos on facebook of this clean-up effort here.  While it does not justify the waste generation of the event, it is nice to know that an NGO has filled the need to make Bangalore cleaner.

Social Entrepreneurship, Ashoka Fellows, and Where I Fit In

Our program is called Global Social Entrepreneurship.  So, naturally, I should be thinking a lot about social entrepreneurship.  It seems though that the more I learn about social entrepreneurship the less I know about it.  This post will hopefully help me organize some of my knowledge and thoughts about SE.

I’ve learned a fair amount about social entrepreneurship in the context of the Ashoka Foundation.  The Ashoka Foundation was started in 1980 by Bill Drayton and is a platform to provide social entrepreneurs with resources and networking.  For Ashoka, a social entrepreneur is someone who has an innovative idea to solve a social problem with the ability to create systemic change.  Social entrepreneurs are very creative people who devote their whole self to making social change a reality (this is where the entrepreneurial quality comes in).  There is a quote by Drayton that helped me better understand social entrepreneurs when we were learning about it in our spring seminar.  It was again repeated by a woman from the Ashoka Foundation that we met when we first arrived in Bangalore:

“Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or to teach how to fish.  They will not stop until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”

The Ashoka Foundation elects leading social entrepreneurs to become Ashoka Fellows via a rigorous selection process.  There are over 350 Ashoka Fellows in India alone.  Shanti Raghavan, the founder of EnAble India, is the Ashoka Fellow that I have personally worked most closely with.  She started EnAble India in 1999 after witnessing the difficulties her brother (who is visually impaired) had when trying to find employment despite having great qualifications.  This was a social problem that she wanted to change.  Her innovative idea was to start providing training for persons with disabilities that matched what was needed by the employers. 

At EnAble India, candidates (the people with disabilities) are registered and then an analysis is done to see what type of job would best suit the candidate.  The candidate then receives the proper training for the job and EnAble helps place them with an employer.  Moreover, EnAble visits the employers themselves to come up with “workplace solutions” that will make that company accessible for someone with a disability.  A workplace solution could be something as simple as screen reading technology for someone who is visually impaired.  Once a disabled person gains employment, EnAble’s job is not complete.  They continue with post-placement reviews.  EnAble also does trainings with employers to so that workers in the company can understand how to work with a disabled person.

EnAble India trains its candidates very well.  When a person with a disability is placed into a company by EnAble India, they become a change agent.  This is where Shanti’s ideas begin to create systemic change.  Employers see that a disabled person can do excellent work and they then begin to want to hire PWD just because of their skills, not necessarily to fill quotas.  This starts a process where disabled people can have more than just employment.  They can have economic independence.  They can have dignity because they enjoy their work and their work is valued by others.  They can have a livelihood.  They can begin to teach people that disability is just one part of a larger diversity of human beings.

Talking with Shanti in meetings has been very inspiring for me.  She is truly driven by her vision of dignity for all persons with disabilities.  She has countless ideas about how to work on these social problems and she is constantly networking and partnering with others to work for social change.  Working with Shanti and learning about her path with EnAble India has really shown me the power of someone who is a social entrepreneur.  It is great to see that people like her have become Ashoka Fellows.  (And, as someone who was brought up with an empowering all-girls high school education, it is great to see that a large number of Ashoka Fellows are women.)

Since I’ve arrived in Bangalore I have been thinking a lot about where I fit in in terms of social entrepreneurship.  Not everyone is a social entrepreneur.  I do not consider myself to be one.  If you have read any of my blog posts you know that I am passionate about working for systemic change.  However, I don’t have any innovative ideas to a social problem and I don’t have the entrepreneurial skill set like social entrepreneurs do to create the systemic change.  Or at least I don’t have these things right now.  So is social entrepreneurship the only way to create systemic change?  What can I do in terms of helping to create the systemic change?  I reflect on it every day.  I don’t have any answers yet, nor do I think I will by the time I leave India.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it.

About Food and Livelihoods, by Sarah

Check out Sarah's post on the Global SE blog to hear her thoughts on our Russel Market experience last weekend along with her experience in general in India.  Sarah, a rising Wooster senior, is a great addition to the GSE team.  She and Kipaya are working with Dream a Dream, an NGO that helps teach life skills to underprivileged children in Bangalore.

Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement in Rural Karnataka

This past Thursday and Friday the GSE Team took a trip to rural Karnataka to see the work of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM).  SVYM is an organization that focuses on development with three areas of focus: health, education, and community development.  They began in the 1980’s after a group of young medical students in Mysore wanted to make a positive impact and improve the lives of the poor that they saw around them.  Today, SVYM runs countless projects, mostly in the state of Karnataka, to create community-driven empowerment and a better civil society.

On our visit we got to tour two hospitals and two schools, some of which were in very rural areas.  These institutions cater to rural peoples as well as tribal groups who have traditionally been marginalized members of society.  SVYM receives special government funding to make healthcare and education affordable for tribal peoples.  However, as SVYM staff noted, it is often difficult to get tribal persons to come receive medical care at the hospital or to attend school because of a number of cultural reasons.  This includes a tradition of needing children to stay at home to help with work, having to travel far distances from home, and having parents who have never attended school.

School artwork made from waste materials.

Sarah (the cook of the group) in the kitchen at one of the schools, frying up some onions and garlic.

Sam, Sarah, Kipaya, and I really enjoyed meeting all of the kids at the schools.  They loved taking photos with us and asking us “What is your name?”  This was the major highlight for most of the team.  Of course a major highlight for me was getting to see the “sanitation park” at one of the hospitals where all of the different toilets are displayed that can be purchased by villages (perhaps I should thank my father for this interest in toilets).

Squat toilet at sanitation park, along with a list of pricings.

In addition to the hospitals and schools, we visited the Vivekananda Institute for Leadership Development in Mysore.  Here, people receive training to work on various SVYM projects.  There is also a very cool graduate program in Development Management (MDM).  It was very inspiring to meet the students in the programs and see students like us who were very passionate about social change, development, and sustainability.  The students were full of energy as they told us about their final research projects and what they hoped to do after graduation.

One of the greatest parts of the trip for me (perhaps my most favorite) was the agrarian landscape as we travelled out of the city and into rural village life.  I wish I could have visited a farm to see the operations up close, but even from afar it was fantastic to get to see small-scale agriculture in action.  The photos don’t do it justice.  Lots of people working with their hands or directing a team of cattle in very small fields was a typical scene in the areas we traveled.  There were definitely no John Deers the size of a house out in Sargur or Hosahalli!  It was so calming and at the same time uplifting for me.  I would have loved to go join the farmers in their fields.  I'm sure they have lots of wisdom to share.

A stop at Mysore Palace on the way home.

Is there urban ag in Bangalore?

One of my biggest passions is agriculture.  Recently I have been most interested in urban agriculture after I spent last summer working on farms in Cleveland with a cool program called Green Corps.  I even hope to write my Junior and Senior Independent Study projects at Wooster on urban agriculture.  That's why of course I am putting my feelers out for urban ag in Bangalore while I am here.

I found a really cool looking urban agriculture site in a semi-urban area outside of Bangalore.  I have contacted the organizers and hope to arrange a visit with them.  The farms are located in Magadi and are run in part by the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security.  A project description can be found here. 

A view of Magadi.

 

 

Land use in Magadi (you might want to click on the image to view it in a larger form).  About half of the land is used to grow food.  What if Wooster or Portland could be like this?

So far it has been hard to see what type of farming or gardening is going on in the city itself.  Bangalore is growing so quickly that most of the space is used.  Some vacant lots, however, present potential locations for growing in the urban setting.  Still, the number of vacant lots here cannot even come close to what I've seen in Detroit or Cleveland.

If I am able to arrange a visit to Magadi or meet with the organizers I will be sure to post an update.

Russel Market 2011.06.12 Sunday

Do you have change?

A brief note: The GSE 2011 Team wants change! 

 

We want change so that all Indians can have a decent livelihood and so that we can buy mangoes off the street from local vendors.

We want change so that persons with disabilities are treated with dignity and so that we can get to Enable India on the bus.

We want change so all children have access to good schools and so that we can have wi-fi access at cafes to do our own coursework.

We need change because we seek a better world.

And we need change because Indians prefer not to handle anything bigger than a 10 rupee bill.

Photos From First 2 Weeks

Autorickshaw under repair.

In an auto.

Toilets and bucket showers.

Street cows.

EnAble India office space (you can see some of the honors EI has received in the background).

Eco-dryer.

Two worlds collide.

Mangalore Pearl restaurant.

Statues at UTC.

Mango, mango, mango.

To view a larger version of a photo, simply click on it.
ET

World Bangalore 10K

Yesterday we went to the World Bangalore 10K race sponsored by Tata Consultancy Services.  This event is a large event where NGOs can raise funds for their causes by participating in the race.  Moreover, businesses can “run for a cause” and raise funds for a specific NGO.

Both Enable India (where Sam and I are interning) and Dream A Dream (where Sarah and Kipaya are interning) participated in the event.  Unfortunately I did not get to walk with the EI team (I missed registration) but I did get to watch all of the different teams cross the finish line holding their banners about their various NGOs and causes.  The energy of the various NGOs was quite exciting and I especially liked the special cheers that many organizations were saying as they crossed the finish line.  I thought the event was quite fun, with dance music and food for participants at the big stadium finish.

Dream Team

Enable Team

More great photos from the event here at SE Wooster's flickr page.

Of course, I am one to always find something ironic in an event like this.  This event is a way to raise funds for NGOs who are working on very important social causes such as the employment of disabled adults and building life skills in underprivileged children.  The organization of the event, however, did not always match what I would think the values would be of these NGOs. 

Let’s use the example of bottled water, which was passed out to all participants at this event.  Bottled water is often stolen (I use this word to show my opinion of the extraction process) from local villages to be bottled and sold for huge profits.  The bottles are made with PET plastic that has a number of carcinogens that especially affect those who live near the production facilities, usually in low income areas.  At the Bangalore 10k, once the water was consumed, bottles were mostly tossed on the ground.  There were some trash bins (no recycling or composting) but they were rarely used.  Even if bottled water were to be recycled, it is unlikely that it would be made into another product that would be recyclable (this is called “downcycling”).  Thus, bottled water almost always has negative social and environmental connotations.  Would many of the people at the 10K (who I presume are somewhat socially/environmentally conscious) be okay with this if this were indeed the case? 

A big sponsor of the event, from what I could tell by their advertising everywhere, was Nike.  (Portland’s presence is even here in Bangalore.)  While Nike has done many things in the past few years to improve its image, I still do not believe that all of their practices are socially, economically, and environmentally just.  How much were their workers paid in Indonesia to make my favorite pair of red running shorts?  Do their factories use environmentally sound practices?  I’m not so sure.  Heck, some NGOs probably ordered their 10k themed shirts from Nike and they were made in some sort of “sweatshop” in India itself.  Perhaps even a young child made them.  Yet so many of the people at this very event are working to eradicate exactly these practices—so how could they be okay with having Nike there saying how awesome of a company it is?

To me, the bottled water and Nike aspects of the event (and these are just a two examples) are not aligned with the values underlying conscious consumption.  Nor are these aspects aligned with what the NGOs at this event represent.  That is not to discredit this event in any way since I think it is a good way for NGOs to network and fundraise and promote their work.  It is also a great event for laypeople to get involved in a cause.  I think it just goes to show that you sometimes have to be stuck within the system in order to “fight” it.  I am definitely in the system even though I am trying to change the system.  It’s extremely difficult to create a “pure,” “wholesome,” event to support social enterprise.  Perhaps the fact that the bottled water companies, Nike, etc are here at this event provides some opportunity for the NGOs to collaborate with them to create better practices.  (And this is coming from someone who’s always saying things like “I live to fight The Man” and such.)  If the partnerships can be nurtured in an effective way then perhaps large scale, sustainable, social change could become more of a reality.

After the 10K race.

Let me know if you all have any thoughts.  Is it okay that the Bangalore 10K has bottled water and Nike advertisements (to name a few examples) at its event?  Do we have to work inside the system?  What would an event for NGOs look like if it were to be truly fitting with these organizations’ social values?  I’m still processing these questions myself and I would like to hear other people’s responses.