ANNEX B

• Asha Junior Centers will be set up in 40 dalit villages for the all round development of about 3200 children.
• Micro-credit will be extended to the women’s group in each village on condition that the group takes responsibility for running of the Junior Center
• Over three years, a corpus fund will be created in the village from the service charges collected each month from the recipients of micro-credit.
• From the beginning of the fourth year, the Center will be run entirely by the women’s group, using the interest from the corpus fund and further monthly service charges collected.

• Many projects collapse when the funding agency withdraws. This proposal is an attempt to build in an element of sustainability right from the beginning.
• The women carry the twin burden of caring for the children and earning a living. This scheme will ease both: the Asha Junior Center takes care of the children and the micro-credit improves the economic status of the women.

• Poor quality of education combined with discriminatory treatment in schools
• Lack of help from parents in doing schoolwork
• Lack of opportunities for further education, training and expression of talent
• Need to travel long distances to school (in several villages); even if a village is located on the main road, very often buses do not stop there
• High dropout rate after middle school, especially among girls
• Children forced leave the villages to work in shops and small factories as far away as Chennai and Coimbatore
• Malnutrition
• No medical facilities or other amenities in the village

• Irregular employment
• Indebtedness to moneylenders
• Absence of government schemes to promote employment opportunities
• Degradation of coastal zone and dwindling natural resources
• Water scarcity, lack of green cover and poor rainfall
• Lack of basic amenities including medical facilities
• Alcoholism among the men, which puts women under greater pressure

• Most of the village children would be attending the Center in the evenings
• Most of the dropouts back in school or preparing for Open School Exam
• Most of the children showing better performance in school
• Every child 13+ in age will have at least one vocational skill (tailoring, book-binding, plumbing, electrical wiring, vermiculture, nursery-keeping, data entry, etc.)

• enjoy better health and be more resistant to diseases
• attend at least 5 training programs (health, alternate medicine - herbal and traditional, ecology, art, entrepreneurship, etc.) each year
• have opportunities to express her / his talents
• have access to a library of books and magazines
• be able to ride a bicycle (in particular, every girl !)
• understand / speak rudimentary English
• be able to operate a PC (in the 8+ age group)
• be a member an Eco-Club that will take responsibility for keeping the village clean; planting and maintaining trees in the village; and ensuring upkeep of water sources

• Better education, support for schoolwork and all round development
• Play school for small children and evening activities for the school-goers
• Trained for at least one vocation before reaching 10^th grade
• Better health thanks to the nutritional supplement and the increased income of mothers
• Ecological awareness

• Training in the chosen micro-enterprise
• Training in accounting and in dealing with suppliers and customers

• Relief in terms of time and energy demands since children are taken care of at the Center
• Improved economic status
• Better health thanks to higher income

• An organizer will be appointed and the Center will begin functioning.
• After a month or two, when the women have seen the usefulness of the Center and discussions have been held on the micro-credit program and the link to the Center, Rs. 100,000 will be given as capital to the women’s group to be distributed as loans of Rs.3000 to Rs.5000 each.
• Each loan has to be repaid in 15 equal installments with a service charge of 2% per month.
• The principal returned each month will be given out as loans to more women.
• Each month the service charge collected will go into a recurring deposit account in a bank in the name of the women’s group. At the end of three years, the corpus fund thus created could be anywhere between Rs.60,000 to Rs.100,000, depending on the loan amounts, size of the village, scale of absorption of  credit in the village, etc.
• The contribution (in kind and in cash) of the women’s group to the running of the Center will gradually increase over the three years. From the beginning of the fourth year, the women’s group will run the Center using the interest from the corpus fund and the monthly service charges that will continue to be collected.

• Village women’s group will
  • take ownership of the Center
  • take responsibility for its maintenance and
  • provide labor and other contributions in kind when necessary
• Children:
  • Older children will help the younger ones.
  • Whole group will take responsibility for ecological activities.

• The women’s groups should have been functioning well for at least six months. A spirit of cooperation and initiative should have been seen in other activities. Internal savings scheme should have been in operation for a period. The women’s group should see the Asha Center as a village common activity.
• From the beginning, the women group will be involved in the design of the Project.
• A formal agreement will be made with the group in the presence of the elders of the village; the panchayat leaders will also be consulted and their support obtained

• Women’s self-help groups have been set up in all the 40 villages with a total membership of over 1100.
• Group savings and micro-credit schemes have been promoted benefiting over 400 women
• A large number of training programs have been conducted for the women on diverse topics like ecology, eco-technologies, income generation activities, women’s rights, health and hygiene, etc.
• Women have been trained in tailoring, typewriting and bicycle-riding
• Women have been encouraged to plant a large number of trees and to set up community gardens
• Vermiculture, Spirulina culture, fuel-efficient stoves and rainwater harvesting have been introduced in the villages.
• A cultural troupe has been formed to create awareness of environmental and social issues through street plays and songs

• Supplementary Education Centers have been set up in 21 villages.
• Over 700 children, including 400 girls, attend evening classes.

• Asha Junior Centers have been set up in 3 villages
• With the support of Asha-MIT and Asha-Seattle (US$2500 per year), Junior Centers have been started in two villages.
• A new Center has begun functioning (in April 2001) in a third village under the Asha-WAH program (US$11000); the project is similar to this proposal, with the women’s group getting micro-credit and agreeing to fully support the Center from the fourth year.

• Assured funding as per the enclosed budget (Annex 1)
• Active involvement through visits, provision of resources like books, videos, computers, etc.

• Regular reports, impact assessments, photographs, video
• Case studies of successes and failures
• Documenting of experience for sharing and replication elsewhere

Annex 1

Annex 2

1. Asha Contribution:
   The Asha contribution could be spread over the three years: in US$
   
   

   Year 1	6000
   Year 2	3000
   Year 3	1000

   
   
2. Anawim / IOI Contribution:
   • Anawim will provide the basic office infrastructure for initiating and running the project (office space, communication and computer facilities, overall supervision)
   • IOI, through Prof. Rajagopalan, will provide technical advice and support  and help in monitoring and evaluation
   
   
3. Central Fund*: 10% of budget will be put in a central fund to be used for
   • Training for the women in entrepreneurship
   • Improvement in infrastructure of center (provision of solar lamps, painting, etc.
   • Combined activities like cultural festivals, tours, etc.
   • Loans to women’s groups to run Center when problems arise
   • Coordination, monitoring and evaluation: one supervisor (salary and office expenses, local travel, etc.) when the number of villages exceeds five.
   • Construction of a building for the Center where absolutely necessary (Village unable to provide space, general conditions poor, etc.

Annex 3

1. Preparatory Meetings
   • Discuss keen with women’s group and later with the entire village
   • Get their approval, commitment to sustain the Center and promise of place for Center.
   • Sign formal agreement with the Women’s group
   • Work with the women’s group to draw up a plan for using micro credit and supporting the Center.
   
   
2. Start the center
   • Locate temporary accommodation
   • Appoint organizer
   • Enroll children
   • Provide basic infrastructure like blackboard, play material, books, etc.

    

3. Extension of micro credit
   • Begin about a month after a start of the Center.
   • Extend a credit of Rs.3000/- to Rs.5000 each to the members of the women’s group (to be repaid over 15 months)
   • Provide training to women in entrepreneurship
   • Install mechanism to
     • collect repayment (principal and 2% service charges);
     • deposit the service charge in a bank; and
     • extend credit to more women using the principal amount returned.
   
   
4. Build center where necessary
   • Design building to suit local needs
   • Construct the building using local labor (women) to the extent possible
   
   
5. Monitoring and evaluation
   • Ensure that the recipients start enterprises
   • Monitor progress and health of children

Annex 4

1. Has Anawim / IOI tried getting funds from other sources for this project?
   
   No, because this is a novel project unlikely to be funded by normal donor agencies, which specialize either on child development or on women’s welfare..
   
   
2. The proposal says that the men are unemployed (and alcoholic?). Has anything been done to address this root cause?
   
   This is a very complicated and difficult problem. The hope is that if the women and the children are empowered by higher income and overall education, the men can then be handled.
   
   
3. Provide more information on the villages to be covered by the project.
   
   The specific villages for the Project will be chosen later, when we know the number of villages that will be funded. In general, the poorer among the 80 dalit villages in the area will be chosen.
   
   
4. What are the government schools like in the area? Why don't the children go there?
   
   The children do go the schools. However, they do not get a good education there. Our project goes beyond school education, it is the all round development of the children.
   
   
5. Any attempts to improve existing schools in the area?
   
   This is beyond our capacity. The ground realities are that the government system is inefficient and corrupt. If the dalit villagers gain self-confidence through our projects, they will be able to demand their rights in the school system. That is still in the future.
   
   
6. Do you have any information on the organizers / teachers that will be running the Asha Junior Centers?
   
   We look for local women or men with some education. So far we have been able to locate organizers for the three Asha projects under way.
   
   
7. What will the salary of the teachers be?
   
   Rs.2000 a month. During the first year this will come out of the Project funds. From the second year onwards, there will be a nominal contribution from the women. From the fourth year, the women’s group will bear this expense.
   
   
8. The service charge of 2% per month works out to 24% per annum. Is this not a high rate of interest on the loan?
   
   It is a service charge and not interest. It is a contribution from the women towards making the Center sustainable in the long run. The women see the importance of educational and other forms of support to their children and do not see this charge as being excessive. This is our experience in the Asha-WAH project.
   
   The lending rate in the women’s own savings group is 3-5% per month. The local moneylenders charge a minimum of 10% per month.
   
   
9. What will be the nutritional supplement?
   
   We propose to give a spoonful of spirulina, the wonder algae, which has a proven ability to improve children’s health and increase their immunity to diseases. Since raw spirulina powder is not very palatable, we propose to make special biscuits with sufficient spirulina content.
   
   The spirulina will be cultured in the Greenwork Resource Center, set up as a part of the Eco-villages Project. The Center will have lab facilities to test the spirulina for any contamination. Spirulina is also being cultured in two villages by local women.