The Learning Process in AID/Asha/ILP

• Active Learning versus Passive Learning
• Project Review Guidelines
  1. Understanding our projects
  2. Difference between an NGO and a People's Movement
  3. The role of paid people and volunteers in a programme
  4. Comments on Self Help Groups (SHGs)
  5. Project Monitoring and Referral
• Developing a Shared Understanding

Active Learning versus Passive Learning

To be really useful and to develop a clear idea of the issues involved one needs to critically analyze the experiences one has and to be conscious of one's assumptions and premises. This constitutes an active learning process.  It is faster, more efficient and effective and also can lead to clear, consistent plans and directions.

For such learning to be effective one cannot depend on AID/Asha/ILP projects alone.  One needs to take into account historical experiments of past and present mass movements, people's efforts, government programmes, and the work of so many institutions, "experts" and "ordinary" people that has gone into addressing the issue at hand.

One has to understand the various approaches and efforts that have taken place, why and how they succeeded/failed and based on this understanding one needs to evolve a better approach to the issue.  On most issues that AID/Asha/ILP are interested in there is a large literature and many wonderful books and articles.  These areas are active with new ideas constantly coming up and being tried out.  One needs to see one's projects and efforts within this larger context - as a way to test out our understanding and analysis.  This understanding is not something that you can develop independently with only your limited projects. Such an approach is foolish and wasteful of resources.

Is this already being done in AID/Asha/ILP? Is our understanding of Education or Health improving because of our projects?  In what ways?  Please ask yourself the following questions and find out:

1. How many projects in Education/Health has AID/Asha/ILP done?  For how long?
2. Generic Model:   Have you tried to compare these various projects with each other? What are the similarities in most of these projects? Can you develop a generic model project based on these similarities? In what ways does each project differ from this generic model?
3. Philosophy of programmes:   What is the philosophy and approach behind some of the "innovative" education/health projects you have done? Where did they learn this philosophy?  Did they develop it themselves?  Is it part of a larger trend?  What is the history of this trend? Are there published books and literature on this "new" approach? Have you found out what books have inspired the NGO doing this "innovative" project? Have you got a copy of it and read it?
4. Government System:    The government has made huge investments on health and education. A lot of large funding agencies have also made a lot of investments.  Do you know what is the National Health Policy or the Education Policy?  A number of committees (government appointed and non-governmental) have studied the existing system and have analyzed the problems, and suggested corrective actions. Have you got their reports and studied them? Yashpal Committee Report on Education and National Health Policy and Bhore Report on Health are acclaimed as landmark reports.  Since we are working in these areas and the government is already doing "so much", it makes logical sense to understand what the problems with the government system is and how our approach does not suffer from the same flaws.
5. Your Understanding of Education/Health:  Do you have a philosophy of Education/Health?  There are a large number of well-known and acclaimed efforts in education and health. Do you know about them? Where does your understanding stand with respect to them - where do you agree and where do you differ? How do your projects reflect your understanding? What kind of feedback do you request? Can you measure quantitatively the actual impact your project makes? How? How does the feedback from your projects sharpen and refine this understanding?  Can you list out any concrete examples where something like this has happened?
6. Your Stand on Government's Role:   What is your stand on the government's role in education/health?  What policy, fund-allocation, approach changes will you recommend to the government on these issues? In your projects are you trying to make use of the huge infrastructure that the government has built up or do you just neglect it? Are your projects trying to see how the large number of existing (government and NGO) programmes can be made more efficient or are you just adding one more inefficient project to the list?
7. Do you believe that the above mentioned studies are necessary?  Or do you feel that programme structure and approach matters little and the only problem with failed (government) programmes is the corruption and lack of commitment?  In case you believe it is only a matter commitment, have you tried to find out whether there are committed government teachers and doctors and how many such people are there? How effective are they? What prevents their effectiveness?  How many young inspired people joined these services since independence? How many of them lost the initial inspiration? Why?

Maybe, some of you can answer some of the above questions.  My guess is that most volunteers would not even have thought in these terms. I don't expect that we know the answers to all these questions - but we should at least know that these questions exist and we should ask them and that our projects should help us answer them - at least in part.

The initial years of our organizations has been spent in just understanding our own strength and commitment.  Being fully absorbed within ourselves, we have not recognized the existence of bigger players (both good and bad) in the area of our interest. This can only blind us to the existing realities.  Only by recognizing their existence and analyzing their role and approach critically and building our own activities within the context of all that exists can we be effective and useful.
 

Project Review Guidelines

1. Understanding our projects

   Our ability to learn from a project (and also to review it well) depends on how we understand its purpose.  What we will expect to learn from a research project is obviously different from what we expect from an expansion programme. Also in case of a research project, we will want to know what is the "newness" of it.  If they want to do the same thing that another person has already done, then we will question why the project's need. We will also want to know what the "knowledge" outcome of the project will be. For an expansion project, we will want to know how good the model, on which this expansion is based, is.  We will want to know what is the expected "benefit to people" outcome.

   By classifying the projects based on what the purpose is, we can have better and more realistic expectations from the project. Also such classification will give us a basis to compare various types of projects. No point in comparing a research (model development) project with a model replication project.  You have to compare it only with other research projects. So far we have not foccused on this kind of classification.  That's why we have not been able to learn well from our projects.

   I propose that the first step in the project should be classifying it into one of the categories given below. Each category has its own logic and based on the logic we can review the project. Also using such a classification we should compare across different projects and approaches and exactly identify what outcome (knowledge/benefits) we want out of the project. This will form our feedback requirement.

   First we list out the categories and subcategories. Then follow some notes and then case studies on how each categoy leads to a different set of review questions.

   The best way to understand this categorization is to have before you 5-10 projects that you have already supported/studied. Then try to apply this categorization to these projects. What will be the questions you will ask now of the project? Where they asked earlier? What could you learn from this project and what have you actually learnt.

   1. Research Study - Fact-finding and studying a problem or solutions.
      1. New problem -  Study of the problem and finding possible solution
      2. Old Problem -  New study of the problem and Old Solutions tried
   2. Action Research Project - Purpose is primarily model building and testing if some idea or a particular understanding of a problem works, etc.
      1. New Problem - Testing out a proposed solution
      2. Old Problem - Testing out a Radically different New Solution
      3. Old Problem - Testing out a Modification of an Old Solution
      4. Old Problem - Fine Tuning an Old Solution, Integrating various components previously developed, and developing a model which can be expanded.
   3. Planned Expansion of a tested and developed model
   4. Circumstantial Programmes - Tapping and making use of  (or struggling against) unexpected large changes (a mass anti-arrack agitation, a sudden change in public awareness and interest on an issue, a new government policy etc.)
   5. Exceptional Projects - Projects where we over-ride all the above criteria, because we would like to establish some contacts, or because we want to maintain good relations with the group, because we want their help for something else etc - primarily these are like miscellaneous projects - should be kept to a minimum and one should ensure that they do not become too many or too costly or time consuming.

   Notes:

   1. Most of the projects we receive may seem like Multi-Purpose projects. Usually this is because various stages of the project are being presented together. In most cases you can break the project up into stages or parts and each stage/part will fall into a single category. Similarly there can be large projects with several components - each component can be categorized separately.
   2. These categories are for the overall project plan - not just the part you are funding. One may fund only a small portion of the programme and that portion may not be so easily categorizable. One should always see the whole programme, take into account all the sources (including ourselves) and see if the whole makes sense.
   3. It is important that both you and the group implementing the programme in the field come to the same category-understanding of the project. The reason for the categorization is to see the programme in perspective. It should also be obvious that these categories can neither be applied very rigidly nor do they form a complete set of categories.

   Once you categorize a project like this based on what it sets out to do, analyzing it becomes simple and logical. We will analyze a few cases below. You can do the same for the other cases, as it is a direct extension of this reasoning process.

   Case 1:
   1(a)  - New Problem - Study of the problem.  Is it an important problem?  One should find out whether it is indeed a new problem, whether others have faced similar problems in other areas.  Then of course the obvious question, why and how did this problem arise? How did they find out about it? Has no one else worked on it recently? Etc.  What is the logic behind the study method? Does it make sense?  Is there some sort of result we can expect at the end of the study?  What do they plan to do with the study? What possible outcomes can be expected out of the study? Etc.  The cost will depend on the methodology of study - have alternate approaches for study been looked into? Can and does it make sense for the study to be broken into parts, which can be done one after the other? (Quiz for the reader - Why did we ask the last question?)

   Case 2:
   2(b) - Old Problem - Testing out a Radically different New Solution.  What are the approaches that others have tried out before - NGOs, Governments, Mass movements? What is the impact of those approaches? What is your critique of those approaches?  What are the good aspects of those approaches? How does your new approach build on the previous experiences? Where and how exactly does your approach differ from all the other approaches? What are the questions this programme will seek to answer? How will the programme help you find the answers or test your hypothesis? What is the best case scenario (where you find the best answers to all your questions)? Will the best case scenario answers help formulate a more effective programme? How?  Does your programme make use of existing infrastructure and facilities that others have set up in your area - government, NGOs etc?

   Case 3:
   2(d) - Old Problem - Fine Tuning an Old Solution, Integrating various components previously developed, and developing a model which can be expanded.  What are the past experiences on which this programme builds? What were the questions asked during those experiences and what were the answers obtained?  How do these approaches relate to the larger set of experiences and approaches? How effective are the solutions this programme is building on with respect to other similar efforts? What are the key issues and difficulties in integrating the various components? What is the model trying to achieve? What are the key constraints in expansion of other existing programmes?  Is it money? Trained Human Resource Base? Coordination? Training Material? Programme Design? Sustainability? Is this model taking these factors and constraints into account? How does it plan to overcome these constraints? If say money is the constraint, is it developing a low cost but effective approach to the problem? Can the proposed model be scaled up easily? If the model development succeeds as envisaged, how will the expansion take place? What is plan for expansion in that case? How does this model make use of government infrastructure and staff and links up with appropriate research institutions for technical and service support? What is the role of the local community, village volunteer groups, panchayats in the model? Is there an attempt to work with existing people's movements and use their large volunteer base for developing and expanding this model? Is this model being developed keeping in mind a specific people's movement or a category of village volunteers?  Is the scale of the model project reasonable - should it be more or less? Since the programme is moving from research stages to actual large scale implementation, the question of community participation comes up - one index for community participation is the degree of volunteerism. Is this degree of volunteerism reflected in the model programme?  What is the volunteer to paid staff ratio in the programme? A good number for this would generally be at least 10:1.

   Case 4:
   3. Planned Expansion of a tested and developed model.  What is the model that is being expanded?  Have we studied the model as described in Case 3? Is the model effective enough or does it need more fine-tuning?  Is the model programme self-sustaining? Does the programme have community support as reflected by the volunteer-index?  Is the model relevant on a larger scale and in different locations?  Do we need to further test out the model under different conditions? Does the expansion programme leave enough flexibility for local adaptations or even complete restructuring of the programme if necessary? Should the expansion be in stages or should we start in all places simultaneously?  What are the other groups that can fund the expansion?  What is the human-resource for the expansion? How will the coordination be done?  How will the quality of the programme in all the places be ensured? It is best to do an expansion through an existing volunteer network of a people's movement. Is this the plan? What is this people's movement?

   Similar case studies can be done for other categories.

2. The difference between a People's movement and an NGO

   There are a number of good NGO efforts and people's movements in India.  It is important to different between the two.  Usually NGO efforts are interventions in a rural or urban "poor" area led by "outside" people. The work is primarily done by paid staff. Sensitive NGO efforts take into account people's demands and perceptions, but usually this is very rare. In general the local motivation, initiative and leadership in the NGO's work is quite low.   People's movements on the other hand generate a large degree of motivation and commitment from the local people.  The work is primarily done by volunteers from the local area and one can see a lot of local initiative and leadership in such people's movements.   The local volunteers in people's movement very strongly own the organization and feel proud to be a part of it and vie with each other for leadership within the organization.  For many volunteers the movement becomes inter-twined with their self-identity.  Money is usually not the reason they are in the movement.  All people's movements have a strong ideological basis for their activities - an understanding of poverty and exploitation with which the volunteers relate strongly.  A lot of people in the movement are drawn to it because of the ideology.  Usually people's movements get into "controversial political issues affecting the people" and organize struggles and demonstrations.  This sense of a "movement" and "struggle" gives the People's Movements (PMs) a kind of voluntary spirit and drive that is difficult to find in NGOs.   PMs are also very democratically organized with a fair degree of openness which draws in fresh volunteers quite easily. Many NGOs on the other hand maintain a strict hierarchical and closed set up.

   The scale on which a people's movement operates is also usually much larger - since the ideology is the defining characteristic, people all over the country who relate to the ideology become part of the movement. One can usually find a large number of organizations and sub-organizations spread out all over the country with the same ideology and similar inspiration networked together with a common "organizational" identity.   Most PMs have a long history going back to the freedom struggle days and also have linkages with similar groups internationally. Also their contact an influence base is quite large.  This kind of diversity also means that there are wide variations within the PMs - in terms of understanding, in the approach they take etc.  Most PMs either have volunteers in almost all the villages in their state of region or can easily find volunteers through their contacts. Often villagers see PMs as "their own organization" or "their friend/relative's own organization" (something which is trying to help them but is not rich or heavily funded).  The same people see NGOs as "someone else's (wealthy) organization".  This difference in perception leads to curious circumstances - villagers who would be ready to volunteer for the PM totally free (even raise money for it locally) will invariably demand a salary for doing the same work for the NGO.  This difference comes about primarily because PMs offer a number of social benefits - leadership roles, local respect and higher status and visibility - apart from intervening in issues in a way in which it seems "useful". Working for an NGO usually ends in their being classified as just an "employee".

   One can go on listing the differences, but the important points for us are the following:

   1. People's movements have a large base and are primarily volunteer-driven - they should be involved as far as possible in all programme expansions.
   2. Because they can mobilize volunteers and funds locally, they can implement the programme with a lot more community participation, can do the programme with less cost and can sustain the programme more easily.
   3. They have well-developed ideologies and strong commitment to the poor - usually programmes done by these groups have a much higher quality.
   4. We can work with NGOs for developing models, but expansion and large scale intervention should be done through PMs.  Many of these PMs have set up organizations (like NGOs) to develop programmes and support the PMs intervention.  Also PMs have a lot of goodwill and many "experts" are willing to develop programmes for them. It is easiest to develop model programmes intended for expansion using these PM based NGOs.

   Three important and independent people's movements today are:

   1. The National Alliance for People's Movements - Groups like NBA, Penurimai Iyyakkam etc who have come together to form this alliance. Primarily working in the area of people's rights over natural resources, fighting against large multi-nationals and globalization etc.
   2. The People's Science Movements - Groups like the TNSF, KSSP, Ekalavyaa etc networked under the banner of the All India People's Science Network and Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samithi.  These groups have been working in the areas of science popularization, mass literacy campaigns and restructuring knowledge and developing large scale replicable programmes in health, education, women's rights, etc as well as intervening in government policies. These groups also organize against communalism, nuclear weapons and globalization.
   3. Dalit Organizations - fighting for the rights of the dalits and mobilizing them under various banners - some directly participate in electoral politics, others work within cultural and mobilizational spheres. I know much less about these groups than about the previous two.
   
    
   For various reasons - some sane and some insane, some ideological and some practical - the first two PMs do not accept foreign funds.  But since AID/Asha/ILP are quite different from most "foreign agencies" it may be possible for these PMs to accept money from them.  Anyway working with them need not mean directly funding the PMs themselves.  Helping develop programmes for them through other NGOs, which accept foreign funds, is an option. Also working with them in various ways other than just monetary funding is certainly possible. Also it is important to find out from NGOs whether they have links with any PMs.

3. The role of paid people and volunteers in a programme

   One thing PMs teach us is that volunteerism in a programme implies many things. It implies the need for people participation.  It implies that the programme should allow for local leadership and decision making. The programme should actually reflect people's felt priorities. Almost all programme (except maybe some research studies) can be structured so that most of the work is done by volunteers and the role of the few full-time paid people is primarily coordination, training, motivation of the volunteers, problem-sorting etc. It is possible in most programmes to structure it such that for each full-time person there are at least 10 part-time volunteers.  The full-time person's role is supporting, training and helping the part-time person and not doing the work himself/herself. Only such programmes where there is a lot of scope for volunteers can be sustained locally. Only such programmes can take on the shape of a mass movement because of the inspiration it generates.

   If a programme is unable to draw such a volunteer ratio - it often means that the programme is not creative enough, not enough insight has gone into the problem, and the group is not using all the ways to tap volunteers. Or worse - maybe the programme is not participatory enough, does not generate local leadership, or does not address people's real needs.

   This volunteer: paid staff ratio of 10:1 can be a good way to judge the possible effectiveness of the programme. (Unless it is some sort of a learning model - not meant for replication.)

4. Comments on one specific programme: Self Help Groups

   Self Help Groups (SHG) or Small Savings Groups for women have become an almost universal phenomenon in India. Basically this is something that started with the Grameen Bank idea in Bangladesh and underwent a whole series of modifications in India.  The crux of the idea is to help women access credit at a comparatively lower rate than what the moneylenders offer.  Most moneylenders loan out the money at 60-120% interest rates.  The idea is that 20 women form a group and save their money together and they give it out on loan to one of their group members at 24% interest rate.   For a variety of reasons this idea works very well - peer pressure on the women, recognizably good system for credit in need, etc. The repayment rate is very high (almost 100% in many cases). A lot of push has been given to this programme by the government (DWCRA schemes), Nationalized Banks, NGOs and Funding Agencies.

   Since the funding situation for starting such groups is very favourable, a number of NGOs have taken to this programme. They pay coordinators to start and monitor groups and sometimes also pay the local organizer etc.   We have seen that it is possible to start and sustain the SHG with ABSOLUTELY NO OUTSIDE FUNDS.  If the SHGs are organized properly (taking time to convince and explain to the women), the women should be able to see that this is a useful system and will be willing to half of the interest that is generated from the loans.  We have seen this in various places where we have started the SHGs - almost 10,000 women in Kanyakumari are part of such a movement and another 10,000 women in other districts in Tamilnadu and growing fast too.   Such a structuring has its advantages -

   1. Self reliant and independent of external funds - in built sustenance.
   2. Women recognize that they are paying the coordinator and for the passbooks etc and therefore feel confident to raise demands when the promises are not met. This is especially important to make the NGO/group responsible to the women directly.
   3. The project coordinator's salaries and travel expenses comes from the SHG - this will happen only when the groups are running well. Basically this becomes an in-built mechanism to ensure effectiveness.
   4. Cannot do all this well without making the SHG into a place for women to meet weekly, read, discuss their problems and take on community level problems.  A lot of cases like this (including anti-arrack agitations, stopping wife-beating, taking on the police on a rape case) have been seen at Kanyakumari.

   How exactly one can start and run a self reliant SHG programme is described step by step in a book that was authored by the TNSF - "United We Sit".  Those interested in getting a copy of this book can contact Kirankumar Vissa (vissa@eng.umd.edu) or Kalpana (kalpa@vsnl.com).

   Unfortunately by funding the salaries of coordinators of SHGs etc, this whole opportunity to organize women for a variety of activities is lost.  Also we found that many NGOs funded by foreign agencies for running such a programme start competing with local self-reliant efforts and by promising the sky to the women destroy their efforts. Their own programmes are generally not very good and stop soon after the funding stops thereby leaving the women in the lurch.

   One strong appeal we have to AID, Asha and ILP is that you should NOT fund any SHG effort which requires you to pay salaries for coordinators etc., or which starts with giving a loan to the women before they have demonstrated their motivation and ability to save, give out loans and collect it back for at least 6-8 months.  Once a group is up and functioning on its own, then you can provide a loan to the network (at a low interest of 6-10%) of SHGs. Again a loan, not a grant. The interest that they get out of this loan will be the additional money they will have which they can use for their purposes. But this interest will be generated only if the SHG functions well.   Similarly, no loans or grants to SHGs should be given for enterprise development until they demonstrate the ability to run the SHG independent of external funds (with weekly meetings, regular savings and loan circulation) for at least 6-8 months. It is best if the enterprise money is also given only as a loan.  In some rare cases, it may make sense to provide some small grant (Rs.5000-6000) to support one full-time person (woman) to go around and initiate SHGs.  This money (one-time) will last about 5-6 months in which they can easily start 20-40 SHGs to reach the level of self-reliance.  At any rate this payment is not for the coordinator of one or two groups but for the overall person to find contacts and coordinators (who will be only supported by the interested generated by the loans).  Funding SHG programme by supporting the coordinator and not taking any money from the women can only lead to more problems for the women in the long run.

5. Project Monitoring and Referral

   AID/Asha/ILP have set up various project monitoring systems - Feedback, visits by volunteers etc. A few additional things may help monitor the projects much better.  Every year, we can have an annual project review meeting somewhere in India where all people working on all the current projects come and present their respective reports.  They send in their written report (a few pages) earlier and make a 10-15 minute presentation followed by questions.  It will give an opportunity for good interaction between all groups and also between AID/Asha/ILP volunteers and the NGO. Also the NGO will have to defend its project in front of a peer group - which is a good exercise to do.  The meeting of course can lead to many other things as well.  Apart from this, requesting a project final report with what the goals are and whether they were achieved will ensure some reasonable accountability.

   For reviewing, it will be a good idea to set up a Project Referral Committee in India - basically a bunch of people who have worked on a problem - Education, Health, SHG, Enterprises, People's Rights etc - for some time with reasonable success.  Every project on that problem (after your initial scrutiny) you send to this Referral Committee.  They will send you their comments, which you can then use to make your final decision. If necessary, I can suggest some names for this committee and you can contact them to get their ok for being on a Referral committee.

Developing a Shared Understanding

To take AID/Asha/ILP towards this kind of shared understanding we propose the following set of start up activities:

1. Form separate study groups on health, education, micro-credit and women's organization, large dams, politics of funding agencies. The idea is that some people interested in each of these issues study the various literature available, take up the task of preparing notes, web pages, etc and initiate discussions and invite speakers to speak on the specific topic. Each group tries to develop a common understanding within itself about the issue and then tries to get this understanding across to a larger group.
2. These groups also form email study circles - where anyone can place questions and others respond to it.  Including some people who are working on these problems in India and who have looked at various aspects of the problem will make the experience richer.
3. The email discussions should be consolidated as a set of questions and answers and put on the web regularly. The idea is also through this process to develop a rich resource on the web detailing our common understanding of the problem. The starting point for this web resource is preparing a list of reading material - putting the list up on the web (with a small summary of the book/article) maybe with a link to the complete article or book.  Each chapter should also set up a library with all these materials for the reference of their volunteers.  The recommended reading list can be something you get from various projects and people you are working with.
4. At every meeting (both study group meetings and general volunteer meetings) one volunteer should present the main points in the book/article he/she has studied. The group then discusses the relevance of this study to their projects and what parts they agree with and what issues they would like to study more before forming an opinion. These sessions should be viewed as preparing for a consensus opinion to be arrived at by the group at the end of one year.  Occasional papers describing the understanding can be written up, debated and circulated to other chapters and people and opinions sought.  The idea is that the consensus you arrive at (hopefully in a year's time) will reflect a basic ideological understanding of the problem and your approach to it.
5. Once every 6 months or a year - analyze all projects in each area to find out what we have learnt from them and how it has changed our perception of the problem and the solutions in a measurable way. This analysis should be written up, circulated, discussed and critiqued.
6. Organize regular public debates/essay competitions on the pros and cons of a particular approach to a problem.
7. All the reports, discussions and email debate, articles and questions can be put up on the web as part of the resource base.  This will help others offer their inputs and comments and will also be a way to develop a public consciousness on the issue.