Creating a World Without Poverty

I am currently reading Muhammad Yunus' "Creating a World Without Poverty." Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist, pioneer of microfinance, Nobel Prize winner and all around awesome person. He created Grameen Bank in his home country, which is an innovative banking program that gives small loans to poor people (mainly women), enabling them to launch businesses, lift themselves and their families out of poverty, and control their economic destiny. Microfinance institutions are popping up around the developing world now, and all are replicated on the fundamental ideas of Grameen Bank. In "Creating a World," Yunus goes beyond this one institution and explores the idea of a 'social business.' Recognizing the importance of capitalism and globalization in today's economy, Yunus builds on the notion of profit-maximizing businesses (PMBs)that are owned by shareholders. He proposes a new kind of business, social business, which entrepreneurs set up "not to achieve limited personal gain but to pursue specific social goals... Operated in accordance with management principles just like a traditional PMB, a social business aims for full cost recovery, or more, even as it concetrates on creating products or services that provide a social benefit. It pursues this goal by charging a price or fee for the products or services it creates."

The project that I am working on, Mobile Naukri, is in accordance with Yunus' definition of a social business. What I find most interesting about Mobile Naukri is that it is in no way charity work. Yunus points out that NGOs and charity work are only band-aids for real problems, are painfully dependent on outside funding, and don't look at the poor as individual actors. While charities and NGOs obviously do good work, they are not a plausible long-term solution for eradicating poverty. A social business, on the other hand, gives the poor specific tools to gain economic power. At Mobile Naukri, we provide a gateway service in which rural job-seekers, who have limited or no internet access, can get in contact with local and national businesses searching for employees. Because Mobile Naukri is still in its pilot phase, we don't ask our job-seekers to pay a fee for our services; starting in July, job-seekers will pay a fee of Rs. 500 (about $10). Over time, we hope that our enterprise will make profits, allowing us to recycle the money into expanding our business across other locations in India.

Yunus notes that like any capitalist PMB, social businesses will have/need shareholders who buy stock in the company. Social businesses would have to compete for these shareholders, ameliorating their ideas, increasing their productivity, and in turn, benefitting the poor. These shareholders will buy stock in the businesses they find most likely to succeed, and will most likely make back their money, allowing them to reinvest it in the same or different social businesses. Shareholders can be big-name, rich philanthropists, or, they can be the very people who have benefitted from said social business. At Grameen Bank, for example, many of the shareholders are women who have taken out loans from the bank to start their own business. Not only does this add to the financial security of a social business, it instills a sense of pride and hope in the participants. At Mobile Naukri, I have learned that many unemployed rural job-seekers suffer from a lack of direction, hopelessness and frustration. Imagine if they were able to get a job through our services, succeed at their post, and turn around to invest their hard-earned money into our business! Of course, we still have a ways to go before this can become a reality, but the concrete emergence of social businesses as a viable solution to eradicating unemployment amongst the poor is reassuring that we can, in fact, create a world without poverty.

Namaste,
Sarah

A Couple Characters

I feel like my blog hasn't been doing justice to the routine activites that make up daily life in Bagar. In order to paint my friends, family and random internet creepers a better picture, allow me to introduce a couple of ever-present characters and activities that make up my day.

The Air Conditioner:
It is hot in Bagar. Not like, "Oh, my roommate Eugeune turned up the heat and now I am slightly uncomfortable in my apartment" hot, but blister-inducing, fire-breathing hot. The average temperature hovers between 120 and 130 degrees. I wake up at 6AM to bask in the coolness of 90 degrees. I'm not quite sure how to describe such intense heat, other than two emotions. I either feel so hot that I go beyond it, like when you are so hungry you feel full, or I just wonder if I will be the first human to die drowning in my own sweat. There is little relief from the heat, as the power cuts off sporadically, and all the shower/faucet water is boiling hot. Save, the Air Conditioner. A clunky contraption that sounds like someone who has spent too many youthful years sucking down Newports and taking shots of Listerine, it runs entirely on water. And, like someone with severe lung cancer, Meg and I are required to shove a tube down its throat to fill 'er with some sweet nectar. Sometimes, this hose is hard to find, as it runs behind the courtyard and bathrooms and into the garden. Late the other night, relying only on my feline night-vision and an overwhelming desire for cool air, I confidently marched into the pitch dark of the garden, one foot striding in front of the other when- splash! My entire left leg had fallen off the Earth and into her bowels. I really did want to refrain from making any comparisions to Slumdog Millionaire while in India, mainly because that would be cliched, but this one is impossible to resist. In my painstaking effort to fill my airconditioner with its required medicinal dose of H2O, my ENTIRE LEG was covered in well, you know. That night, the shit hit the fan.

The Geishas:
I find babies impossible to resist. Not so much American babies mind you- they spend too much time wearing diapers that cost more than my entire outfit, eating only organic purees and taking Mommy & Me Yoga classes. No, I quite like Indian babies. They are fantastically independent and never seem to get hurt, even when they are pushed off of tables; all they do is laugh and laugh and laugh. It was only a matter of time before I befriended a trio of ruddy-haired sisters, all under the age of 6, and collectively weighing around 20 pounds. These girls come into GDL absolutely every single day, requesting that we swing them by their toes and throw them up over the volleyball net. Miniature hands outstreached, they sweetly say "Namaste" and force-feed us spicy potato chips. Buttering us up, you see, for the action-packed hour that must follow or else. Actually, the or else is nothing but pulling extremely sad faces and whining a lot, but no one wants to hear that! So, playtime it is, until we are red in the face and dizzy in the head, collapsed on the ground from a minor heart attack while the girls stand over us, laughing and laughing and laughing. It was Siler, the Intelligent One, who pointed out that we should probably make these girls earn their time here. Nothing too serious, just some geisha-like activities, like performing elaborate sing and dance routines, or serving seven-course meals on their heads. A kimono-wrapped thought crossed my mind, but then Prianca looked at me with Those Eyes and That Smile and I was back, twirling her by her toes and collapsing on the floor.

More characters will be introduced as time goes on, but these are it for now!

Namaste,
Sarah

Workin' Girl

I can't believe I have already been in India for a week. I think I am starting to blend in- I've got the scarf flip down, I wobble my head all the time, and I've started to sing along to Hindi songs. For the next seven weeks, I will be working at Mobile Naukri. GDL has a couple of on-going projects, but I specifically chose to work with Mobile Naukri because it is a three-week old project, still in its pilot phase. Mobile Naukri is a solution for the growing problem of connecting job seekers to companies. There are a lot of jobs to be found in India, and there are a lot of qualified people to fill these posts. However, most people in rural India don't have internet, don't have the contacts to these companies, and are thus unable to obtain a job. Mobile Naukri acts as a liason between the two, using mobile phones (absolutely everyone in rural India has a cell phone, including iPhones, and spend upwards of 30 rupees for personalized ringtones).

Basically Mobile Naukri gets in contact with companies who are in need of workers to fill certain positions. They have an ever-growing database of job-seekers who register with Mobile Naukri. These job-seekers call in and fill out a form via phone, than meet with a Relationship Counsler for an initial interview, to get them acclamated to the private sector. When new companies and new jobs are introduced, Mobile Naukri scours this database and sends an SMS to possible candidates. The database has over 230 registered job-seekers from just three weeks of marketing, and nearly a dozen people have been successfully placed in companies.

I will be working as a marketing intern for the rest of my time here. Rural marketing in India is absolutely fascinating, as it requires going out into the field on a daily basis (part of why I picked this project). The full-time marketing staff consists of Pankaj and Deepak, two local twenty-somethings with a panache for tight pants and music. Our boss is Sahil, an American-Indian who is here for one year through IndiCorps. In the middle of last week, Meg and I went to Sultana, a neighboring town about thirty minutes away, with the rest of the Mobile Naukri gang. Basically the marketing team goes into the marketplace, walks around hanging up posters, handing out cards, and talking to people. It sounds pretty basic, but add two white girls to the mix, and it becomes quite the party.

Firstly, there is a lot of gender division in rural India- women don't fraternize with men, and are not really walking out in the streets, they mostly stay at home. Secondly, this part of Rajasthan is not particularly tourist-y, making Meg and I quite the attraction. Walking around and putting up these posters was fantastic- grandmothers came up and patted us on the head, little kids started chasing us and singing songs about the "white girls with bullets for eyes." (A compliment, we were assured by Sahil). We had a great time laughing with all the locals and chatting in our broken Hindglish to people. We also saw a monkey attack a small child. We were walking down a main street, and all of a sudden a monkey came out of nowhere! I quickly moved out of the way, because unlike the cute Curious George, these monkeys look mean. Teeth bared, nails out, the ran down the street, knocking over a small child and stealing his bag full of fruit. Once we realized that the little boy was okay, I came to the conclusion that this was possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen.

The next day, Sahil took me to Jhunjhunu, the biggest city in this district. Since I am the full-time intern at Mobile Naukri (Meg and Siler work at Source for Change in the mornings) I am privy to some special conditioning that will get me prepared for working as a woman in a male-dominated field. We hopped on the bus and bounced along to Jhunjhunu, where a series of obstacles were placed in my way. I was to ask a random shopkeeper for directions (nonsensical directions, I later learned), hail a rickshaw and tell the driver where to take us, pay the driver, and navigate us through most of Jhunjhunu. The main purpose of our journey was to meet some very important friends of Mobile Naukri. In India, all business is done based on relationships, Godfather-style. You have to make friends with a person first, gain their trust and respect, and then they will help you.

We first met Vinoji, who runs an English learning center in Jhunjhunu. He has helped Mobile Naukri find lots of job-seekers who have skills that companies are looking for (language, computer, etc.) He considers Sahil and all of GDL his good friends, and got extremely angry when we tried to leave. The time, he repeated, was not auspicious. Somehow we made it out and moved on to Sandeep, who runs Jhunjhunu's only computer store with his twin brother. Mobile Naukri has formed a good relationship with these brothers, who in turn allowed us to hang a huge banner advertising Mobile Naukri in front of their centrally located store. I am really quite enjoying this business as a relationship model. I got several cups of chai out of it, and had some lovely chats with people. I definitely thought that my gender would be much more of a problem than it is. Really, people are people everywhere- if you are polite, and nice and show them respect, they will like you and want to help you. I hope that by enganging with men on a daily basis, I can get them to at least see that women can be smart and capable of this kind of work. A lofty goal perhaps, and one that is held back by cultural and religious norms, but it's worth a shot.

Namaste,
Sarah

Greetings from India!

Ah, the first few days in a new place. The sense of adventure; the savoring of the unknown. For the next three and a half months, I will be calling the top country of India my home. Until the end of July, I will be working with a wonderful NGO called Grassroots Development Labratory: Piramal Foundation in Bagar, Rajasthan. Two other interns from Penn are here, Meg-ji and Siler-ji. I will be working as a marketing intern for Mobile Naukri, a brand-new start up that connects job seekers to companies in need of employees through the ever present mobile phone. Following my internship, I will attempt to travel through some parts of India.

I arrived in New Delhi on Sunday night, fresh off a fifteen hour plane ride in which I sat next to a Marine Corps professor and experienced cinematic classics such as "When in Rome" and "What Happened to the Morgans?" Still pondering what exactly happened to the Morgans, I was whisked through customs and baggage claim and hurried through the arrival gate. Indira Gandhi Airport's arrival gate is by far the most animated I have ever seen. Hundreds of drivers jockeying for prime spots were brandishing signs and looking for their clients. Meg and I looked for our driver, which UPIASI so kindly sent for us, when suddenly! An arm connected to a size triple zero body appears, clutching a torn piece of paper that says "Mr. Sarah Souli." We were whisked off to the India Habitat Center to spend the night. Driving through the streets of Delhi, even at midnight, was eye-opening. Entire families ride on motorcycles, narrowly avoiding trucks that seem to double as discotheques. Squatter settlements line the street in make-shift tents. Driving in Delhi is absolutely crazy and not for the faint of heart. However, I oddly felt safer than in the US. If people are so used to hairpin turns and arbitrary lane changes, than the system must work!

After a restful night, Meg and I met up with Siler. We spent a jet-lagged day shopping for salwar kamizs (traditional dresses) in 110 degree heat at Connaught Place. We also made the fatal mistake of going to Old Delhi at noon. We saw the Red Fort and mosque from a distance, but then we had to walk in the streets. Old Delhi is very crowded. Old Delhi is very hot. There are no other tourists in Old Delhi at this time of year or day. Huffing and puffing, we physically and emotionally bushwacked our way through throngs of hand-holding men who have a peculiar habitat of staring at women while refusing to acknowledge their actual existance. Charming. Delhi does have delicious food and very fun rickshaw rides; I wish we had had more time to explore other parts of the city.

On Monday afternoon, we drove five hours into Rajasthan, to Bagar. A small village of about ten thousand, Bagar is located in the Jhunjhunu district, and borders the desert. The staff here is all twenty-something Indians and Non Resident Indians (and a couple of us pale folk). The villagers are extremely kind and friendly to us. I was nervous that there might be some apprehension on the Bagar people's part, and I did not want them to think I was that American girl coming in thinking she could fix everything. So far, that has not been the case at all. It is namaste and chai all around, and I have a great feeling about this place. India seeems to be buzzing with excitement and energy, as though everyone knows something huge is coming soon. I am very grateful to the GDL staff for so quickly including us in their family, and the Bagar people for letting us into their village! More stories to come.

Namaste,
Sarah