10^100 (Ten to the Hundredth) - SEWA Ashram

There's so much going on in the battle against poverty just now, including a couple of particularly innovative ideas that have come across my radar - 10 to the Hundredth, and Blog Action Day. Read on to find out more.

As part of Google's 10th birthday celebrations - must surely be the wealthiest 10 year old in the world - they have put out a "call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible."
(http://www.project10tothe100.com/intl/EN_GB/index.html).

My colleague Stephen and I can't think of a much better idea than SEWA Ashram, and we've put together the following application. With a bit of good fortune, we hope we will be one of the 100-strong shortlist. Expect a very excited post here, with a link to our youtube video (being put together as we speak) if that happens!

What one sentence best describes your idea?
To provide shelter, healing, education and training to the most destitute in society through a new form of community that will become a model for rehabilitating the extreme poor.

Describe your idea in more depth.
Two hours north of Delhi, SEWA Ashram is a small volunteer-run community that for the past 8 years has provided shelter and healthcare to destitute individuals who have been found on the streets of Delhi, abandoned by society. It’s budget is $4 a day. But many of those who are helped fall back into destitution, as they have no skills or opportunities to integrate themselves into society when they leave the Ashram.

The current Ashram can only house up to 150 individuals so with a larger site and the introduction of education, training projects and microfinance, SEWA Ashram plans to extend the work it does to truly re-connect the most destitute into society. It will grow its community to around 750 people.

This project would build a bridge between the most destitute, excluded individuals, and one of the most innovative developments in the not-for-profit sector in the last 30 years: microfinance. By providing shelter, healthcare, training and – ultimately – microfinance opportunities in one community, this project could provide a model for rehabilitating the most destitute.

The aspiration for SEWA Ashram community is to provide a model of society in miniature, tackling many social issues we face today. As such, this idea could equally fulfil any one of the 10^100 categories:

- It provides shelter and healthcare to the sick, through loving, non-judgemental treatment. One in ten current patients have HIV, and around 50% have TB.

- Through education and livelihood projects, it provides individuals with the capability to help themselves.

- As a purpose-built community it provides a platform for clean energy solutions. Through its scalability across the world’s second largest country and beyond, the implications for the environment could be profound.

But most of all, this idea is about community. A community is literally built for those who have none.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

In urban Delhi, 100,000 people are homeless. Many of these people leave behind family and have no local support networks to turn to when trouble arises.

Javed was born 33 years ago. His family home was made of mud and grass. His father left the family when he was 3 months old. He seldom had clothes and was always hungry. He ‘left home’ at eight, jumped trains and begged until he was 13.

Eventually he escaped to Delhi, where he lived under a flyover for 5 years. Uneducated of the dangers, he contracted HIV through his drug use.

When Sewa Ashram found Javed, he had infected wounds, TB and was seriously ill. He was in a coma for 8 days. After hospital, Javed came to the Sewa Ashram. The early days were difficult.

The Ashram gave Javed the chance of a new life. This project gives more people that chance.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

It will benefit the most destitute in society; those – like Javed – whos’ lives have been tougher than we can imagine, lacking hope, love and opportunity. Many of the poorest are capable of doing much to help themselves and others. Sewa Ashram encourages this capability.

However, it is not just those who are helped who will gain from this project. This project gives all of us the opportunity to understand our fundamental similarities, and explore how we can overcome society’s most intractable problems.

Javed grew whilst in the care of the Ashram and discovered a talent for painting, which provides him some income. He met and married Jyoti, another Sewa Ashram patient. They have now adopted Jyoti’s 14 year old niece.

Javed still leads a life that most people would shudder at. But for him, he has “made it”.

Our idea is to make more stories like Javed’s a reality.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

Implementing this project and testing the SEWA Ashram model will require significant resources, both human and financial. These are the steps that will make the SEWA Ashram model a reality:

- a draft detailed business plan has already been developed for a community village for the destitute that will provide a financially and environmentally sustainable solution to the problem of the destitute homeless in Delhi. It’s feasibility needs assessing.

- this village will be built on a site outside Delhi, incorporating medical services, family homes, school buildings, livelihood training projects as well as other community initiatives. This will cater for a community of 750 people and will cost an estimated US$3m for the initial 12 month period.

- 12 months after the Ashram launch, the community acts as an inspiration and model for communities across India and other countries.

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

With the support of the 10^100 project, we will develop an innovative and cost-effective solution to the problem of extreme poverty in urban India.

Impact is not measured simply by the number of people helped, but by whether and how their lives have been transformed and the sustainability of the solution.

The project mission will be to take the homeless, impoverished and sick, and heal them, give them shelter and ultimately give them the capability to move forward with their lives and become part of society again. We would measure success by the numbers of people who successfully complete this process.

Success will be measured by meeting people like Javed and listening to their stories on how they “made it”.

This posting was created for Blog Action Day 2008.

http://blogactionday.org/

In Her Footsteps

I've been busier than ever at work recently, and I'm not the only one. Opportunity has been very busy working on some exciting projects. And, there’s one big first that Opportunity wants to tell everyone about!

On Wednesday 1st October, “In Her Footsteps”, received its world premiere at the Dendy Cinema Opera Quays, in front of an enthusiastic audience of about 250 people from Sydney’s business and entertainment world.

In Her Footsteps is a feature-length documentary about a group of women from Australia who travelled to India in early 2008 to experience the reality of poverty in the developing world and the potential of microfinance as a solution to the indignity of poverty.

After the very warmly received premiere, the film was shown again the following night, and another 200 people, including myself, had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of what represents a pretty interesting and novel departure for OIA.

First off, though I’m bound to be biased, you can take it from me that the film is a real triumph. It’s very professionally done, it holds the attention throughout, and it does exactly what – I presume – was the intention: to show the depths of poverty in India and how unsolvable these situations can appear, and then to show how Opportunity’s partners are helping the poor to help themselves out of poverty with the aid of microfinance.

After getting over the shock of seeing my big head on screen – in a mercifully brief non-speaking role at the start – I settled into the story of the group of women travelling from Australia to India. Told in the words of the women themselves (and those of Anita, the Opportunity tour-leader), we saw poverty through their eyes, and heard them describe in very personal terms their impressions on being confronted with the slums of Delhi.

What comes across in the first half of the film, as we follow the women on a day trip to one particularly deprived area is that these trips can have a profound impact on both staff and participants. Being confronted by the squalor that some people live in, by simple consequence of where they are born, gives rise to feelings of anger and disgust. That people – who are patently very much like us – have to live with so little in conditions we wouldn’t consider fit for our pets, is inhumane. For many people, seeing extreme poverty first hand brings out a personal determination to do something to make a change.

The first half of the film can be difficult to watch, focusing as it does on the extremes of poor peoples' lives, but it’s when the women visit one of Opportunity’s partners and meet Indian women who are using microfinance to transform their lives that the film really grips us, and gets across the message that we are powerful, we each can – and should – do something about poverty.

I’m sure everyone will be personally touched by something in the film. For me, I was reminded how easy it is to assume that poverty is “too big a problem for me to do something about”. Before I first tried doing some charity work in Belize in 2006, I did very little to help with poverty, believing I couldn’t have any impact. There was a real personal growth for me when I turned that idea on its head. Today I make my own very modest contribution. More importantly, I can’t imagine ever again not doing something. I know the women in the film now have the same feeling.

In Her Footsteps will be shown again in Brisbane on , 29th October and – I hope – many more times after that. I hope this film becomes another powerful medium for the message of microfinance. My big head notwithstanding.
http://www.inherfootsteps.com/

I wore a suit for the premiere, and at some cost to my personal comfort! Sydney is experiencing some exceptionally unseasonable weather at the moment. On Thursday, the temperature hit 30C, an incredible temperature considering that we are still closer to winter than summer. This was only to be outdone the next day, with Friday’s high reaching 35C by some accounts, 38C by others. That’s at least 15 degrees hotter than the October average. I am going to be very careful with my skin this year.

For once though, the good weather couldn’t hold out over the weekend. With the Parklife music festival to go to, and the biggest racing day of the Spring Carnival, I would have paid good money for sun over the weekend. Instead I was shelling out for an umbrella. Still a great weekend though and photos of Goldfrapp, Dizzee Rascal and Keith and I in our Sunday finest will appear shortly.

At Last!

You thought I’d given up didn’t you!

Ok, so it’s been more than two months. And that's not good. But winter isn’t a good time for me. I tend to go into a semi-hibernating state. Like a NASA robot on Mars, all non-essential systems are shut down to conserve power to survive until conditions are favourable for a return to full action. But it’s been 28C today. That’s enough to bring anyone out of hibernation. So – much belatedly – here’s an update on the most interesting part of my last trip to India...


SEWA Ashram is a volunteer-run refuge for the destitute homeless people of Delhi. Opportunity International has a connection with the Ashram through their shared mission to provide opportunities to the impoverished, in response to Jesus Christ’s call to serve the poor. In July 2008, I visited SEWA Ashram’s one-and-a-half acre site, just north of Delhi, to see first-hand the challenges faced by the Ashram in providing medical care, shelter and rehabilitation to around 150 of the most vulnerable people on the very fringes of Indian society.

As we approach the main entrance of the Safdarjung hospital, one of Delhi’s largest hospitals, Nino spots a guy sitting on the bare ground. He could be around 20 or 30, or older. It’s hard to tell. He has a filthy bandage around his right leg. He looks confused, drugged even.

“This guy is typical,” Nino tells me, “he knows he needs help, he knows this is the hospital, this is where the care is, but what he should do next… he has no idea.”

“This is what it means to be destitute and ill in Delhi.”

Nino, one of the two volunteers who run Sewa Ashram, had picked me up from my comfortable central-Delhi hotel that morning.

As a veteran of 16 months working with the poverty-stricken in Delhi, Nino had volunteered to give me a ‘day-in-the-life” of SEWA Ashram. We would visit the Ashram itself, take a tour of the Delhi streets where they find most of their patients, and visit one of the government-run hospitals in Delhi, where I would see the challenges facing those who want to do something for the welfare of the poorest.

Softly spoken, passionate, and thoroughly non-judgemental, Nino is a great teacher. Spending time with Nino is learning about poverty at the coal-face. Everything Nino does seems to be a product of both a passion to change, and an acceptance of what is. At first glance, these two things might seem incompatible but I learn from Nino that a real, respectful and lasting contribution to the problems of poverty in Indian society comes from managing the clash between these two emotions.

After a few minutes we are driving through Delhi’s chaotic morning traffic in the tiny Toyota that doubles up as delivery van and ambulance for the Ashram. As with much else in India, Delhi’s traffic problems are pretty much the same as anywhere else in the world – no more or less stressful than in London or Sydney. It inconveniences you, it raises your blood-pressure, it gives you something to moan about when you get in to work.

But imagine chaos in a hospital. That is something far more harmful. What more difficult time to manage stress, confusion and disorientation than when one is ill?

Unfortunately, in Delhi, this too is a fact of life – for the poor at least. The young guy lying on the ground in front of us is a victim of this chaos, and it’s when Nino and I walk through the front entrance of the hospital, that I realise why. And I also start to understand what it really means to be poor and ill in Delhi.

Getting care and attention is a fight against a multitude of obstacles. The first problem is finding the right department. With no reception desk, and no obvious staff to direct you, it’s difficult to know where to start. There are signs, yes, but if you are illiterate how do you know where to go? It’s not hard for me to imagine this problem – with my extremely limited Hindi, the Hindi script is meaningless.

Maybe if you are self-assured, assertive and well-spoken you can find someone who will help you find where you want to go. But many of the poorest lack the confidence and strength that they need to help themselves.

Moving beyond the entrance hall, Nino takes me round to one of the hospital’s main admission departments where maybe as many as 50 people are waiting in two queues to see a doctor. This is the key to being admitted to the hospital – to be seen by a doctor and for him to assess your condition and decide that you should be admitted. It sounds straight-forward, but…

Some people will wait here all day, just in the hope of getting their few minutes with the doctor. And though the hospital is clean, the atmosphere is intimidating. It’s busy, noisy and dark, more like a city-centre bus station than any hospital I’ve been in before. We stay for a few moments and I feel a real desire to be able to help, mixed with not a little helplessness.

But as well as showing me the problems, Nino also wanted me to understand from the start that this hospital was not only of a better standard than many of the other hospitals in Delhi, but also on a steady – and in places rapid – curve of improvement. The A&E ward has modern trolleys and expensive diagnostic equipment. Two new large buildings are being built next to the main hospital building, to provide specialist surgery and care.

And past the admissions department, I see patients who are being treated, and treated well. In the Orthopaedic Department, we visit a ward that is bright and well-equipped. And the staff we talk to are caring and attentive.

But though things are improving, people still fall through the safety net.

In the ward, Nino introduces me to a sometime patient of the Ashram. The man lying in the bed in front of us had tried 15 times to be admitted for treatment for a badly fractured leg. Not all of those attempts had been unsuccessful. Through a misfortune which would have caused me to lose my senses, he had been admitted on one occasion, only to be thrown back on the streets when the nursing staff in the department had – for what may well have been very understandable reasons – gone on strike.

We spend some time with the patient, and Nino talks to one of the nurses. The Ashram staff have a good relationship with the hospital, built up over time and through personal connections. Many of the things that make a difference in public healthcare in India appear to me to be dependent more on trust and personal motives than policies or regulations.

As we leave, we pass the admissions department again. Looking at the long queues of weary patients, I see some determination, some resignation and plenty of bewildered, confused looking people. It strikes me that this weighting room is like a force-field, bouncing back the weak, and those lacking in confidence.

Back outside the hospital again, we see those who have neither the capability, nor the help from relatives to breach this force-field. In the competition to be admitted to the hospital it is the weakest who lose out. And around the Safdarjung hospital, you can see them sitting on the steps and lying under the trees and at the corners of the buildings.

After the visit to the hospital, Nino and I drive over to the streets around the Yamuna, the river that cuts through the Eastern half of New Delhi.

The van pulls up under one of the city’s newly built overpasses, and I can see a number of figures sitting or lying in the shade, taking some relief from the pre-monsoon sun. As we park up, someone approaches the van and directs our attention to one figure lying on the ground.

As we approach him this figure looks notably different to others I’ve seen sitting at the side of Delhi’s roads. Firstly, his condition is shocking to me. He is obviously a tall man, but Nino guesses that he weighs “less than 40kg”. He is all arms and legs. There was another difference too. He had a dignity, even lying prone on the ground. When Nino asks him his name in Hindi, he answers in English. He is not looking for charity, but rather Nino has to persuade him that he desperately needs treatment. TB of this severity has a very poor prognosis if left untreated.

But back at the Ashram, some kind of future can be offered. The first step was to take the new patient to the clinic in the local village for chest x-rays to assess the extent of the damage. Then a prescription would be made for the patient (at least 6 months of drugs in the case of TB), followed by education for the patient. In the case of TB, a disease all but forgotten in the developed world, success of the treatment is dependent on strictly following the prescription. All this could happen in the clinic over a couple of days. Recovery and rehabilitation would take many months, hence the need for the safe and loving environment provided by the Ashram.

In fact, by the end of that day the impact of the Ashram was already obvious. The guy we had picked up off the streets was lying on a sarpoy (a simple Indian bed). He had been at the Ashram for just a few hours but already looked like any of the other residents. For a moment my mind couldn’t quite grasp how quickly he had become part of the community.

I wondered why this seemed so odd to me. The answer was in my own experience and prejudice. I was used to the idea that, to become part of a group, especially a group that offers love, care and community, there is a kind-of ‘probationary period’ when you are not afforded the privileges, trust and rights of established members.

I was seeing this guy as a ‘new patient’, when in fact there is no such distinction at the Ashram. He was part of the community from the moment he arrived.

I wondered if I should feel encouraged that we had ‘saved’ him, made a difference. But I remembered too what Nino had said about the false impression that could be picked up from a visit to the Ashram site, about how the picture was only half-complete without seeing what was outside the Ashram.

My thoughts turn to all the people who we had seen earlier in the day who didn’t have this opportunity. As easily as some are ‘saved’, many others were just as easily left out. It unsettles me that there could be such a difference in outcome, for want of so little. My mind races on. How can I sit aside and accept that people are just as easily left outside, sleeping under bridges, alone, with serious, untreated, bewildering mental and physical problems?

I was also troubled that finding answers to these questions was more about addressing my guilt. I had felt good that one person had been saved, and this made me wonder at how it was possible that people could just stand by and let people suffer for so little. But this was to misunderstand the whole nature of the problem. Poverty is about the big picture in Delhi. Lasting solutions – as Nino fully appreciates – need an understanding of what is, as well as a will to change.

SEWA Ashram, with the assistance of Opportunity International, are currently considering options for expanding their existing operation, both in size, and through providing more sustainable solutions to the problems facing Delhi’s destitute homeless.

I love the colours in this photograph. It's almost like a painting with the marble-y coloured floor.

Whales!

Update on India to come soon, but in the meantime...


It's whale watching season again in Sydney as Humpback and Southern Right Whales migrate north along the New South Wales coastline.





But you would never expect the whales to come quite as close to the coastline as this:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/jul/31/whales





These whales are right in the middle of the bay at Bondi!!! When I go to my ocean swimming class (on a winter break at the moment) I go out past the surfers!





Amazing Stuff...

Its time to be proud to be from San Francisco

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7494640.stm

Yeah, its another political post, but quite a funny one i reckon. :)