Ms. Pearl Tiwari - General Manager, Community Development. Ambuja Cement.

ACF has a 3 - way MoU with the District Government, relevant communities and themselves at Chandrapur. What is the MOU ?

The MoU really is a tri-partite relationship, between Government, ourselves, and the people through village education committee. Our objective is not to add to existing infrastructure of schools, but to do a school support programme. That is, strengthening the existing schools to bring about better quality education in the school, to make school a lively experience for children so that there is lesser drop out rate. In order to achieve these objectives, we three groups had a discussion i.e. Government, village community and ourselves.

In that we felt that we didn't want to take over, we really wanted to facilitate a process where school would be a more interesting experience. We clearly identified the responsibilities of each group. We got the government to commit to the fact that whatever responsibilities they have must be taken care of. e.g. teacher's salary must come on time, they should not make ad hoc transfers of teachers and principals , make sure that in mid-day meal programme grains reach on time, maintain the infrastructure, and if school does well then upgrade the school.

Village education committee's responsibility was to start looking at what is the quality of the education in the school, whether teacher is attending the school regularly, things that are to be provided by the government and by us is reaching the school, whether the school committee is meeting on a regular basis etc. Third group was us, and our responsibility was bringing in whatever little infrastructure required, and substituting what government was not doing. For example, the mid-day meal programme - the government gives grains but does not provide the utensils or gas to cook those grains. We put in efforts to provide such things.

We managed to get someone from village who is willing to come and cook the mid-day meal for the children - so there is no adulteration. Village education committee comes and checks these things. So that's the kind of relationship we have worked out.

Is getting into an MoU with the District Government difficult as is the perception or it is easily replicable ?

Frankly our experience in Chandrapur was good. We found procedures very easy; we had good and easy relationships with Zilla Parishad. In fact everything began when we were discussing with Zilla Parishad on how we could facilitate the process. Zilla Parishad said that if we would facilitate, they would extend full support.

So last year on a pilot basis we started with 3 schools and we had a very easy relationship. And the result is that we want to expand. We are not looking at a huge expansion like thousands of schools. We are looking at may be another 15 schools in our programme area.

To answer your question on replicability, the idea is of doing 15-20 schools as a model, and we are sure, it will be replicable very easily. Because it is an extremely low cost model. And we are looking at making it a sustainable one.

What are the pros and cons of working with the Government ?

Well I am a firm believer that one has to work with the Government, because Government has already created the infrastructure. And one cannot ignore the existing infrastructure.

So one has to create ways to build relationships - to make government equally responsible. It's quite a myth that Government is not interested. Very often the Government is interested but it wants some one to take charge and initiative and they do support.

I think that's fair enough because we must let the government govern and if we have other parties including people themselves who can support, I think we'll then have better development.

Any specific difficulties working with Government systems ?

We really never had detailed working with government. In the sense, apart from giving government the role that it was already playing.

All we had to do was to get the commitment that they would stick to the role and make sure that things happen. And it did. We are a facilitative support; we are not taking over government's job and we don't want to. Because we believe that government has a huge role.

There is already a huge infrastructure, and if we create parallel infrastructure than we are just duplicating things. It is better to strengthen what exists.

What is the role of communities in the MOU ? How did you succeed in getting MOU with communities ?

We have succeeded in tri-partite relationship. We had a discussion with people first, then we went ahead and had discussion with the government.

Since everybody was open, we had a meeting where all three of us i.e. government, people and us came together. Then we had a workshop facilitated by external resource educationists, who came and talked about the positive outcome that can be anticipated if everybody came together on something like this.

We found that everybody was willing, so we just started with three schools and that was very easy.

What non-financial values do you add to the Government village schools ?
How are they different than other schools in the region in terms of attendance, result etc ?

We have created a climate where parents and villagers have become far more responsible to believe that it is also their responsibility to see that school, government, teachers do what they are suppose to do, and that we as a Foundation do what we are supposed to do.

Kids have got far more organised. So we have brought in activities which are normally not found in government schools. e.g. workshops, child development programmes, exposure visits where we take kids to see functioning of a police station, functioning of a post office etc..... just to give them a larger exposure to worldview outside.

We also talk about environmental conservation and awareness that we are promoting in our communities . We have done it with the kids because they are citizens of tomorrow. As a result children have started activities like growing their own kitchen gardens within their school premises well before the rest of the community has understood its relevance.

For any outdoor activity or to develop a hobby they need some money. One thing that they (the children) have realised is that not all kids in school come from a socio- economic background where they can pay even one or two rupees for such things. So children have started creating their own fund. Therefore for every activity, they collect money and have created a school children's fund, with a hope that they will be able to support other children who can't pay..

So there is this whole team spirit building up. I don't think we have put in any thing substantial financially. 85-90% of what we have done is non-financial.

And we are seeing that the attendance is going up and dropout rate coming down.

Do you have plans to work with other Corporates, Funding Agencies, NGOs in promoting education ? How ?

We have always worked in collaboration. We haven't collaborated with any corporates, in this location because that kind of situation has not arisen, its not that we are against it.

But in every area that we want to do work, if someone is already doing something, we collaborate with them. This will teach and build our capacities and vice versa. We share resources rather than duplicating. We have been doing lot of that in our other projects with government, other groups, NGOs and especially funding partners. There is a lot of funding available nationally and internationally for rural development.

We would love it if it is channelised through us and we are partnered with as a programme-implementing agency. We are already doing it in a big way.

In Ropar, the Ambuja Manovikas Kendra provides quality education to 50 intellectually challenged children and also conducts on-going workshops for parents of these children.
What is the training programme at Ropar ? Is it vocational training or regular school training ?

Children who are intellectually impaired are at different levels. Depending on the type of child, we develop unique programmes. In addition to academics, we have introduced in last two years lot of physical sports, which these children are deprived of.

One of our huge successes is that last year; four of our children went up to national levels. One of them, a 14 year old girl Hunny Saini was selected for World Special Games held in Dublin. This girl had never played badminton till two years back but our teachers spotted her talent and encouraged her to take up sports.

And Hunny won a gold and another silver medal for India at these games. Apart from regular school training, we give them opportunity do something more than academics. We do as much academics till they can comprehend, and subsequently, we take on vocational and pre-vocational activities.

There are many children making beautiful candles and other things. We are now planning to promote these products and create self-employment opportunities for them. But Sports is something we are very serious about, because these kids have lots of physical energy that they can use very fruitfully.

Do you have plans to work with other Corporates, Funding Agencies, NGOs in working with disabled ? How ?

We are already doing it. e.g. when we conduct any workshop we already have trained teachers as resource persons, but its not always that our trained teachers conduct workshops.

We get people from University from Chandigarh or Delhi who are experts on the issue.

And once again, we are always open to collaborations.

On credibility of NGOs

The term NGO is used very broadly. It is used for any organization that is non governmental. Even a religious charity is called an NGO. But here in NGOs - meaning developmental organisations, integrity with people is an important criteria.

Many NGOs are lacking integrity which leads to misappropriation of funds and reflects on their credibility. Also hiring professional staff is very important. We have a staff of over 50 and all are development professionals.

We don't believe in loading responsibilities on volunteers. That doesn't mean that volunteers are not good enough. I believe volunteers can do a great job and they are essential in NGOs. But there has to be a team of professionals that take things forward and volunteers are part of the team.

Credibility of NGOs also comes from their quality of work - something on which we are never ready to compromise.

Evaluation and Monitoring of Programmes

Since we have our projects now in 8 different locations in the country, we have a central co-ordinating office at Mumbai and another coordinating center at Delhi. At every programme location, we have a senior programme co-ordinator under whom the rest of the team works. So all the project staff under the project coordinator for their respective projects provide reports on a monthly basis to the programme coordinator who compiles and sends both qualitative and quantitative reports to Mumbai and Delhi.

We have our MIS in place. And Programme Coordinators all meet together with us for programme review meetings, once in every quarter. So that is the kind of monitoring work we do. We also undertake impact studies for our projects, on a regular basis - both internal and external

We have a very serious thought given to the next year's plan of activities and budgeting that happens at the end of every financial year for the next year. We present that budget to our ACF Board that is ratified and approved by them. We spend money only after the due budget approvals from the board. We give regular updates to the Board.

Besides from the central coordinating office, I play a role in monitoring by visiting sites regularly and talking to both people of the community and to our other senior officers of Ambuja at all the locations who are involved in the process. Monitoring really happens from here in Mumbai, to a large extent.

Role of senior management in Ambuja Cement Foundation……

We have a board that we are proud of. We have some very good external people on our Board. Our MD and Chairman play a very active role in ACF vision building and in the progress.

Some senior Ambuja officers are also involved at the locations for the functioning of the Foundation.. I play a role of mediating between the programme locations and the Board.

Our style of working is such that the work originates through our teams' interactions with the people in the community. So plans and budgets are made at the locations, through discussions between the ACF teams and senior Ambuja Executives.

These are presented and ratified by the Board on a regular basis. The Board gives us lot of autonomy for planning the work, but they do keep track of money spent, money coming in from out side, cost benefits, etc. We are very particular about cost-effective models purely because we believe that replication and sustainability have to play a very important role in our thought process and planning

So there is a good blend of vision building and governance at Board level, a lot of autonomy of functioning at programme coordinator's level and close monitoring in between.