Organisation: RDI, Jolly Grant (1.5 hours from Dehradun)
Visitor: Richa Govil
Date: Friday, April 13, 2001

I visited RDI, at the request of the Asha Stars team supporting the project. Previously the project had been visited in 2000, and in March 2001 by Vimalbhai. Since Vimalbhai had already gotten the official treatment, I decided to go unannounced. I went with my parents, and did not declare that I was from Asha. I did not speak with Ms. Malini, the director of education program at RDI, since Vimalbhai had already spoken with her. This report is based on conversations with Ms. Kavita, who works at RDI, and examples of the teaching materials available at the office. They are running only 3 schools at present, which were closed on the day of the visit.

BACKGROUND

RDI (Rural Development Institutte) is part of HIHT (Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust), which runs a large hospital and a medical college. RDI handles all non medical activities. RDI was established after a big Uttaranchal quake in the early 90s, as a relief effort. Since then it has grown significantly and now handles a lot of govt sponsored programs. RDI covers most of the districts of the newly formed Uttaranchal state. It is involved in:

1. Health programs - RCH (Reproductive and Child Health), School Health, Health fairs
2. Water management
3. Diversified Agriculture
4. Income generation - SHG (women's Self Help Groups)
5. Education

Health: RDI is acting as the "mother NGO" for RCH program of the UP/Uttaranchal govt. Under this program, the govt. gives money to large established NGOs for the purpose of distributing it to smaller ones. School health program involves checkups of kids in schools and teaching them about good hygiene, etc.RDI also organizes Health melas, where it offers free treatement to patients.

Water management: programs are done in conjunction with the UP Jal Nigam and the World Bank. Goal to have the community plan, build and maintain their own water supply and sanitation system, with RDI acting as the catalyst for change. According to RDI, this program is ongoing in 50 villages.

Diversified Agriculture: This govt program attempts to improve the economic situation of farmers through a variety of agriculture related activities, such as marketing of villages' agricultural produce, credit mobilization, awareness campaigns, etc.

Income Gen: RDI mobilizes SHGs in its districts to spread health awareness, and some income generating programs. The funds for these come from the govt and major international agencies. In the past, they provided training to villagers on beekeeping, tailoring, rope making, chalk making, shopkeeping, etc. They did not provide startup capital to start a business. Now the main program seems to be the women's SHG microcredit program.

Education: There are two components, non-formal schools and project based education, which I will describe in more detail below.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

HIHT has a huge clean campus in Jolly Grant. This is where the hospital, medical college and the administrative headquarters of HIHT and RDI are. It also has residential colonies for the doctors and other employees. I have to say that the first thing that struck me was the cleanliness -- they maintain their grounds well, even though, obviously, there is a lot of traffic to and from the hospital and medical college every day. Another thing that was obvious was that this is a large, well established organization. Even before talking to RDI folks, I could tell that they must have a some secure source of funding. It turns out that the majority of their funds come from the govt, govt programs, or programs of major international agencies such as the World Bank, etc.

EDUCATION RELATED ACTIVITIES - NON FORMAL EDUCATION

The UP/Uttaranchal govt has a non formal education (NFE) program, through which it attempts to bring kids to 5th grade level in 2 years. It pays for teachers to run non formal schools. The govt has published NFE books which the schools are supposed to follow. The teacher is supposed to be paid Rs.200 per month for teaching 2 hours per day. If there are 20 school days, this works out to Rs. 5 per hour. What ends up happening is that instead of actually running the school, the teacher pays half the amount (Rs. 100) to the local program administrator, and pockets the other half, resulting in a perfectly operational and high performing "paper school". Obviously such an NFE scheme (of paying teachers next to nothing) only serves to increase the problem, not tackle it.

RDI is running 3 (yes only 3) non-formal schools. Two of them are within the HIHT campus, intended for the children of migrant construction laborers, and one in a nearby village. [Note that the Kanpur Asha Center also targets the migrant construction labor community.] RDI has improved on the NFE plan in two ways. It has developed educational aids that make the learning more interactive and faster. These learning aids include alphabet cut-outs, posters, etc. Secondly, they give the instructor additional salary (extra Rs. 1000 for the campus schools, Rs. 500 for the village school). In return the instructor is required to use the RDI educational aids in teaching and teach for 5 hours/day in the campus school, and 2 hours/day in the village school. Since the teachers already make much more money, they don't need to bribe the local program official. This has also lead to them actually receiving the full Rs. 200 instead of the Rs. 100 from the govt! By the way, all three teachers have BAs.

The funds for these activities (which today are small scale) come from the govt (for books and the teachersRs. 200). The incremental salary comes from donations, local and small international orgs. I asked Ms. Kavita, what their plans were for the future and how they intended to fund them. She stated that they wanted to run more NFE schools. How many will depend on how much funding they can get. The source of funding would be international organizations. This conversation also answered the big question in my mind, why would a govt funded NGO need Asha funds? Because of the poor design and thoughtlessness of govt programs.

EDUCATION RELATED ACTIVITIES - PROJECT BASED EDUCATION

RDI's Project Based Education refers to "learning by doing" techniques. It is a well known method where kids are taught through hands-on activities. The RDI program was set up by a Dutch visitor. PBE is being used in govt schools in the area. RDI team visits teh school for a week, and adds one extra hour of instruction per day. During this hour they teach kids about one topic through hands-on activities. Topics might include "how diseases spread", air, water, etc. When asked why the govt school teachers wouldn't mind, Kavita's answer was that they actually are happy, because this means that they have one less topic to teach. Note that these topics are taken from the standard govt school curriculum, though the teaching technique is different.

PROPOSAL BUDGET

The funds asked for in the bugdet seem to disproportionately high -- especially since the proposal is only for 10 villages. Since I didn't declare that I was from Asha, and didn't have the proposal budget in front of me, I couldn't ask detailed budget questions. But based on what I saw, here are some thoughts and questions. You may wish to contact RDI and clarify.

The budget includes "School Health" program. They already get govt funding for this program. So why are they asking for funds for this? Are they planning additional health programs to supplement the existing govt program?

NFE part of the budget specifies just one teacher. Is this teacher supposed to teach all 10 schools? I find that hard to believe. Also, why is a full-time supervisor needed, if only 30 visit monitoring visits are being made and even for those, a daily allowance is being paid. Where are the 10 NGE schools going to be -- on RDI campus or in the villages?

PBE: why teh Rs. 30,000 in contingency? It seems very high. Also, why for 3 years, if the rest of the proposal is for 2 years. Also, are these funds are for the one-week PBE programs in govt schools, or for the 10 village schools? Again, why teh supervisor? Why the consultant fees for all three years? Once teh topics are prepared, they don't need to be revised every year. Why office rental fees? Why cant the current RDI office be used (especially since they tacked on an overhead charge on teh budget?)

Technical Education fees seem to be way too high on a per student basis. Where is this training going to beimparted? In the villages? Or at the RDI campus? Since they already had these programs ongoing 2 years ago, there should be no need to invest additional capital.

Scholarship funds amount to Rs. 100 per kid per month. What is this amount going to be spent on, if Asha is paying for all education expenses?

RECOMMENDATION
I was asked to let Asha Stars know of the overall scenario at RDI. That is what I have attempted here -- to give a general impression. As I menttioned earlier, this visit is based on conversations with Ms. Kavita and examples educational aids, etc available at the office. Kavita seemed to be knowledgeable about all the different activities. I did not get the feeling that this was all for the benefit of just getting funds. I did not go as representative of a funding agency. Their activities seemed to be genuine, but I did not get a chance to see a school in operation. Since they are used to large funding agencies, they have a high overhead. We should try to minimize unneccessary expenses, especially for management. Since they already have enough staff, I wonder if they really need more to run this program. The proposal has too many contingencies, too many supervisors without specific duties.

On the whole, my impression is that they are doing the work they claim to be. But the cost of the work they are doing is high. So, the Asha Stars should be very clear about what they are spending their money on, and make sure that they receive a detailed expenditure report and visit the site at least once a year themselves. This way they can hope to avoid wastage of money. As to whether or not this project should be supported, the host chapter and Asha Stars should decide that based on other available projects. If it was my decision, I would support it after removing some of the supervisors, etc. and keep a close eye on exactly what % is spent on the programs, and how much on administration.