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AID India Vision by Balaji |
Balaji presenting the AID India Vision The AID Vision session was chaired by Balaji Sampath, an Ashoka fellow and a renowned name in the AID community. He began by explaining the need for AID’s vision. He stressed that the present set of activities have to continue and basic tenets of AID must remain intact. However, the key is to understand how to strike a good balance between the quality and scale of activities/projects we are doing. Also, there’s a need to deliberate on what more we can do as and when we have more bandwidth available to us. Hence, there’s a need to formulate a vision so that we can expand our horizons while maintaining the quality.
For building the vision for the future, it’s crucial to understand how we are functioning at present:-
- Programs with measurable impact
- Strengthening movements & organizations
- Sensitizing people
We achieve our aims through:-
- Intensive Field Programs
- Campaigns
- Influencing the way others are working by acting as a catalyst
- Volunteer mobilization
And there’s a three-pronged strategy for implementation:-
- Direct involvement of AID volunteers/full-timers
- Working with/supporting our partner NGOs
- Working with the government to influence the policy-making Since Balaji has been very active in Tamil Nadu, he also presented the status of AID-Tamil Nadu and its future vision. At present, AID Tamil Nadu is working closely with the Tamil Nadu Government and about 30 NGOs with activities spread over as many as 1300 villages.
In future, AID Tamil Nadu aims to achieve the following in either sequential or concurrent mode:-
- Working directly with 500 villages
- Partnering with about 100 NGOs, working in 50 villages each, to influence 5000 villages
- Influencing government programs. For example, reading cards borrowed for Pratham helped improve child literacy from 50% to 90-95% in primary grades. The government can also be sensitized to adopt this measure.
He stressed that with scale, full timer work and volunteer work has to be separated
Also, review meetings should happen on a regular basis between various groups of full-timers.
He gave a wonderful mantra for solving big problems by addressing and solving thin slices of problems first. This can be done if we develop modules to tackle problems and share these with NGOs and other movements to solve these problems. Then, we move on to the next problem, which is again a thin slice in some big issue.
The direction for future has been charted as a shift from NGO focus to problem focus. Working in a problem locality and running several programs concurrently with different groups could be a positive step to solve problems for them. We should share our best practices with our partner NGOs and also learn from their experiences.
The Expert Groups that have been put in place are:-
- Electricity connection - Srikakulam
- Libraries – Srikakulam, TN
- Reading – Tamil Nadu
- Artisans – Orissa
- Khadi – Srikakulam, Orissa
- Biogas – Pune
- Bamboo – Orissa
- Organic Farming - Bangalore
To make this vision come true, AID Tamil Nadu already has a good network of full-timers with funds to support them coming from different agencies including AID US.
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