ORGANIZATION:
Students Action Committee (SAC), Raigad District
Project:
Katkari Villages in Raigad District, Maharashtra
Type of Visit Report: 6
month review and advisory visit (announced visit)
Visit
Date:
3 August 2002
Visit & Report
by: Guruswamy and Premnath
________________________________________________________________________________________
CURRENT STATUS:
- Project approved for year
2002. $2500 committed for the year.
- Jan 2002: Project start, $
1250 given
- June 2002: Six monthly
review, Report recd from SAC, $1250 given
- 13 July 2002: Discussions
with Mahendra Singh (SAC) at Pune
- July -Aug 2002: Review
visits planned by Vijay Mokashi (around 15 July 2002) and Asha-Pune (3 Aug
2002) separately.
________________________________________________________________________________________
VISIT GOALS: (based on emails
from Melli Annamalai)
- To clarify for Asha-Boston
the Vision behind the activities of SAC, the range of activities pursued and
where education fits in. To advise Asha on long-term stability and plans of
SAC.
- To clarify SAC stand on
registration.
- To clarify to SAC the
need to plan expenditures in line with proposal.
- To help SAC in aligning,
managing and reporting of his finances and administrative affairs to meet
standards of funding agencies.
- To provide moral support
and guidance in certain activities. To help SAC find support (from other
sources) for some of its other activities not related to education.
________________________________________________________________________________________
REPORT:
- On 13 July 2002, we
invited Mahendra Singh over to Pune for a discussion with the primary purpose
of clarifying the understanding of SAC for Asha and understanding of Asha goals
and requirements for SAC.
- On 3 August, we visited two
sites. The first site was a Thakar village at the foothills of Matheran. It was
a remote site which was 45 minutes from the closest motorable road. The school
had about 20 students ranging from 5-12 years (mostly 5-8 years). The teacher
here was "Guruji" who is 12th std pass. The school also had a small
garden which the students had developed. The second site was a Katkari village
(we had visited in Oct 2001 also). This village is close to the Reliance plant
at Patalganga. The teacher was Devka (who had been trained by Guruji). The
school and village have been described in the Oct 2001 report. The students
here were younger (perhaps 4-8 years old).
- Here are some points from our discussions and visit:
CLARIFICATIONS ABOUT SAC'S ACTIVITIES AND GOALS:
- SAC's core focus is to work towards the long-term betterment of tribal (adivasi) communities (more specifically, Katkari and Thakar communities) in the Raigad district. Click here for a site that gives more information on tribal groups in Maharashtra. At the time of the Oct 2001 visit, SAC was only working with the Katkari community. Since then they have expanded their activities to some Thakar villages also. The organization currently works in a few hamlets lying in between Khopoli and Panvel near the Bombay-Pune expressway.
- Currently, SAC is
working on efforts which are directed towards both the immediate problems of
these communities and longer-term betterment. Here are some of the activities:
SHORT-RANGE ACTIVITIES/ SOLVING IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS:
- Forest land issues: Fighting to protectt their rights to community land from
both arbitrary legislation by the government (for example: declaration of such
land as protected and offlimits) and from encroachers (for example, developers)
- Revenue land issues: Fighting to secure rights for cultivable land.
- Displacement/ rehabilitation issues: Esspecially those relating to
Bombay-Pune expressway and Morve dam.
- Health: Ensure services to these communnities at primary health centers,
regional hospitals, cottage hospitals. (For example- when doctors are not
visiting, they bring it to the notice of local authorities.)
- Panchayat to Zilla Parishad level: Ensuuring representation. Pushing village
-level development using Panchayat funds..
- Providing assistance in cases relating to interaction with the police
(discrimination, victimization issues), electricity board and other services
- Tribal and poverty schemes: Helping villlagers avail of tribal and poverty
alleviation schemes from the government.
- Courts: Represent tribal issues at courrts
- Campaigns/ protests (roughly 5-6 per yeear) on general issues relating to
tribals.
LONG-RANGE ACTIVITIES:
- Education: 1) Basic education/ literacyy; 2) Awareness of civic rights,
health; 3) Awareness of tribal cultural heritage
- Developing awareness of local governmennt structure and benefits of
partcipating in it.
- Building coalitions amongst various triibal groups in Maharashtra via
networking between NGOs with similar interests.
- As you can see, many short-term range issues feature on the list of activities and Mahendra Singh has to spend quite a lot of his time on these issues. However, it appears that SAC realizes the importance of education and has members who are exclusively looking after the education-related activities.
- Longer term vision: I think SAC would like to see a day when the tribals are organized, well-informed about their rights, capable (on their own) of defending / demanding their rights and effectively improving their quality of life. Education, viewed from this perspective, is important to them.
REGISTRATION:
- SAC has registered
themselves. We have asked for the papers.
COMMENTS ON GENERAL
MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTS:
- The organization currently consists
of 12 "activists" of which 5 are teachers and 2 are TISS
project students. These 5 teachers manage schools in 4 hamlets. The teachers
meet every week and discuss issues relating to syllabus, progress of students
etc. Of the teachers one is 12th std pass. The others have some minimal level
of education supplemented with some in-house training. (Since, the hamlets are
remote, it is difficult to get well trained teachers to visit these places
regularly. Therefore, having locals serve as teachers is a good idea.) A lady
(Indira) from a Bangalore-based NGO called Poorna who has been interacting with
Mahendra Singh has helped in creating the syllabus/ curriculum and has
organized some training for the teachers. However, till our discussions with
Mahendra Singh there was no system of evaluation for the students or clear
goals for the students to achieve (say within a year).
- In each of the hamlets, SAC
has managed to get the villagers to provide the premises for the school and
some support (accomodation and food) for the teachers who live there. However,
the class rooms were quite barren (with children sitting on the floor, no
proper blackboards-- walls painted in black are used as boards, very few
posters). They are using some hand-made education aids for the kids to teach
words, alphabets, arithmetic, shapes, colors etc. In one location, there
is a library of books which is kept in the house of the local teacher (who
lives right behind the school). The students apparently visit this house and
read/ see the books. Teachers from other locations can borrow books.
- Class room sessions
appeared to be quite informal. Especially in one location, the kids went in and
out of the class. Some kids brought their little siblings along. The kids
were a mixed group - some attending only this school, some attending this
school and the government school. All the kids seemed enthusiastic but it was
not clear how much they were learning.
- SAC has an office in
Panvel. Now they are renting another office in a location called Chowk near
Khopoli. They say that this second office will allow their activists to stay
there a while in transit especially when they return late from another location
and are unable to get back to their villages (for which they will have to walk
some distance through rough terrain).
- SAC is running on deficit
financing. They are not very good at managing their finances. Their
current expenses exceed their assured monthly income and yet they are thinking
of expanding the scope of their activities. Moreover, there does not seem to be
clarity on how funds will be generated. The accounting systems are also ad-hoc.
So when they receive money from Asha, they are not really tracking how the
money is being spent - it seems to be going into one pool and then being spent.
I think they this is because they do not have experience managing money at an
organizational level. (But now that they are registered, they will have to also
get their accounts audited and so they should be tightening up their
accounting procedures in the near future.)
- Rough costs and inflows are
as follows (our estimates based on discussions with Mahendra Singh):
Sources of income or equivalent
1)
Asha:
Rs 10,000 p.m.
2) Donations: Rs
3,500 p.m. (sometimes delayed)
3) Contributions of villagers for specific campaigns at the time of campaigns
(roughly Rs 10/ family)
4) Partial support for accomodation, food and grocery for activists + school
premises by villagers
Costs (estimates a little on higher side)
1) Activists honorarium: Rs 2000 p.m. X 12 activists = Rs 24,000 p.m.
(not always paid)
2) Travelling for mtg, courts, govt offices, campaigns (petrol, train, bus,
rented-for campaigns): Rs 7000-8000 p.m.
3) Stationery: Rs 2000 p.m
4) Phone calls, fax, emails: Rs 2000 p.m.
5) Office rent: Rs 1300 p.m. (only Panvel office)
6) Specific costs during campaigns for mobilizing people etc.
Costs (estimates for education component)
1) 5 teachers: Rs 2000 p.m. X 5 = Rs 10,000 p.m.
2) Stationery and consummables: Rs 1500 p.m. (roughly, 1 book+1pencil p.m
per student for 100 students)
3) Yearly investments for school- books, board, charts: Rs 1,000 p.m.
4) Rent for class room (4 locations): Rs 2,000 p.m.
Clearly, the
inflows are too less to sustain even SAC's current activities. Therefore, they
need to look at other sources for funding their non-education related
activities.
- We are still not clear how
SAC is managing to run. We have requested detailed accounts for Asha funds.
SUGGESTIONS ON PLANNING
EXPENDITURES AND MANAGING ACCOUNTS FOR ASHA FUNDS:
- Asha has basically agreed
to fund only the education component. This has been made clear to Mahendra
Singh.
- SAC needs to tap into other
funding sources for their other activities -- Asha-Pune has volunteered
to try and locate other sources of funding for them.
- Accounting and financial
planning needs to be in line with requirements for registered/ audited
organizations. Asha-Pune can outline this for SAC. Mahendra Singh understands
that if they do not take this up seriously they run the risk of not being able
to approach funding organizations in the future.
- We also impressed upon
Mahendra Singh that growth should be planned so as to be sustainable. SAC has
ideas of expansion without having secured funding for the expansion. This is
dangerous. (In some cases, we got the feeling that SAC is not able to
refuse requests for help from other villages who have heard about their
activities and that ends up in diluting their efforts. In some other cases, the
planned expansions are not well thought out -- for example, SAC has a
suggestion for a boarding school for the kids or a rice mill for income
generation for the villagers)
- SAC also needs to invest
more of the Asha money for improving the school infrastructure/ assets (black
board, books) and supplies (note books, slates, chalk, pencils).
SUGGESTIONS TO SAC ON
REPORTING, DELIVERABLES, EVALUATION:
We have also suggested the
following to SAC (and they seem to have taken this up very seriously):
- They should clearly define
the goals for their education program - both short term and long term. In this
context, we had a long chat with Mahendra Singh on best practices in other
Indian NGOs. We asked them to clearly think about what benefits the kids will
get out of this program -- for example, would they be better prepared to
integrate into the formal education system (like by taking open school exams,
getting into vocational traning programs etc)
- The immediate goals and
standards for evaluation should fall out of that. So for example- they
need to set targets like, can the kids write a post card by the end of a
year,or, can they read a government notice by the end of the year, or can they
do simple arithmetic at the local grocery shop. We suggested this since this
would also serve as clear goals against which Asha can evaluate the performance
of SAC when Asha considers their case for futher funding. SAC seemed to like
this idea and they have promised to define these goals and let us know of them.
- SAC needs to develop and
implement a system for tracking the progress of individual students. They
should keep attendance and performance records. (We suggested this on 13 July
when Mahendra Singh visited us at Pune and SAC had already put together a
system by the time we visited the villages on 3 August)
- We have also asked SAC to
provide a list of books purchased with Asha funds. We will be requesting him to
itemize all purchases in future.
RECOMMENDATIONS TO
ASHA-BOSTON:
- We believe that the SAC is
a well-intentioned organization and with clear goals and a high level of
sincerity and is deserving of our support.
- However, they need to
(1) sort out their finances and (2) set clear goals for their education
program before they can be considered for further funding. Asha Pune will
advise them on this and keep Asha Boston informed. Asha Boston should evaluate
them on these two counts (and suggestions listed above) at the end of this
year.
TO DO (for SAC):
- Send photocopy of the
registration papers
- Registration for accepting
foreign funds (if done)
- Account statements for Asha
funds with itemization
- Give us the syllabus and
targets for each school
- Give us a list of books
purchased with Asha funds
- Give us a statement of long
term goals for the education program
- Give us a statement of
1-year goals for student performance against which they can be evaluated.
- Keep a record of all
students, current proficiency levels and progress at each school
TO DO (for Asha-Pune):
- Locate funding agencies
which might be willing to fund other activities of SAC.
- Help Mahendra Singh sort
out his accounting and suggest methods to manage finances.
- Help Mahendra Singh in
reporting correctly to Asha Boston.
________________________________________________________________________________________
CONTACT INFORMATION:
SAC email address:
studentsactioncommittee@yahoo.com (contact is Mahendra Singh)
Phone number: 91-2192-52572
(Mahendra Singh c/o Kanta Shinde at Lohbh -- Leave a message and he will get
back to you)
________________________________________________________________________________________
VP/10 Sept 2002