Mr. Rajiv Tewari - Director, Aspirations India; Chief-Corporate Communications, Rai University

We believe there is a vast section of underprivileged students for whom there should be reservations in education, so that they are able to realize their aspirations. Most of the civil society education models groom these children to get primary and secondary education, but there is not much done for their continued higher education. Aspirations India seeks to fill this gap.

How are you contributing to reforms in education ?
We have raised the following issues in field of education reforms:

• Education must create better citizens
• It should empower students to earn a livelihood
• The students should be provided access to the means to afford education.
• Sovereign guaranty for education.
• Curriculum need to be close to reality and topical

What is the issue of sovereign guaranty to education ?
We talk of sovereign guaranty for education, subsidization of education through scholarships and availability of loans for the students. All over the world the moment a student gets into education institute, the availability of finance is abundant, as they get jobs at the end of it and can pay back. In India since the education system does not offer surety of employment this channel of financial support is almost non-existent.

We are therefore working to bring this aspect on the fore, so that it becomes part of the policy some time. We are sure the banks that have huge non-performing assets by lending to businesses, will have a far better experience with the students. This will help in youth realizing their aspiration, which otherwise get nipped in the bud.

How are you raising these issues to influence policy makers ?
Aspirations is a communications NGO that works on issues that effect education for youth. We are working with a long term perspective. It is very clear that there would not be any major changes in a day. We have the privilege of enjoying infrastructure and resources of Rai University, which helps us in conducting dialogue sessions where we invite people from government, politicians, MPs, MLAs, media, members of the civil society and other opinion leaders. The University has also made a start by initiating these reforms in the curriculum that is under its control.

Aspirations is called a Citizens NGO. What warrants this tag ?
We work toward building of communities of opinion leaders. Today this community already stands at 12000 members. What ever we do is a reflection of the community. It is even named Aspirations because the community wanted to call it that. It was earlier an informal forum, which members wanted to convert into a formal not-for-profit organisation. We have been successful in creating a powerful dialogue amongst diverse communities like media, politicians, bureaucrats, students, corporate houses and voluntary sector. An indication of the large base can be had from the fact that more than 1600 media people are part of it in North India alone. Therefore, we call ourselves citizens NGO.

You have been publisher of Indian Express and have spent long years with other media houses.
How receptive is media to the issue of education and reforms in this sector ?
The media earlier covered education when there were any controversial issues linked to it. Only sizzle made it to the front pages. Now media encourages education issues a lot. Education has become an issue of priority and makes it to the editorial and front pages of the publications. It is no longer an issue of mention only in the supplements. Many years back I had noticed that all social issues received 3 columns of space per week and that too in the lost corners of the newspapers. I am highly positive on the current levels of the sensitivity of the media towards the issue of education.

You spoke about powerful dialogue on various issues.
Has there been a dialogue on NGO credibility ? How can this be enhanced ?
Yes, such issues come for lots of discussion in some of the forums we have organised. What every one has to say on this is quiet the same. The surprising but good part is that there is a total consensus on the issue.

The power of an NGO is the support from the community. If an NGO does not have community support then it will cease to exist. Therefore an NGO that is accountable and transparent to the community and its other constituencies will enjoy high levels of credibility. The transparency and accountability should be shown in both the areas of programme and finances. Infact there are so many people around who want to help NGOs and credibility is a major issue. Therefore, it is such an important issue for NGOs.

In my Indian Express days with my Social Marketing Team we carried an exercise to identify NGOs doing good work. The idea was to provide free space in terms of advertisements and articles to organisations doing high impact work. To our great surprise more than 150 NGOs could not provide things like 3 year balance sheets. At the same time there were organisations like Navjyoti, Deepalaya, CRY, HelpAge, Oxfam, Venu Eye Center, Dharamshila and others who could provide all the information asked for. This makes credibility a central issue.

You have largely spoken about reforms and interventions in advanced education.
What is Aspirations' contribution to the primary education ?
We have focused most of our current initiatives at education reforms related to realization of aspirations of the youth. But we use our communities to spread sensitivity on the issue of elementary education also. Such debates only have mandated Rai Foundation, our associate organisation, to address the issue of elementary education. Rai Foundation would soon have schools that address the issue of inclusive education for students from various social strata.

Is Aspirations also in direct intervention at the grass root level ?
As I had mentioned Aspirations is a communications NGO. We are not into direct intervention at the grass root level. Our direct interface is with the opinion leaders. We are not into grant making, although we recommend scholarships for the youth from weaker sections of the society.

What is your structure of governance ? What are your views on NGO governance ?
We are registered as a society under the name of Career Guidance Forum (CGF). Since the communities involved felt that we were all about realizing aspirations of the youth, we have started calling ourselves Aspirations. CGF has a board of trustees. I and my team are responsible to the trustees. We have a team of 5 people in Delhi and similar numbers in the cities of Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune. We will soon be extending to other cities also. We have been fortunate to use infrastructure of Rai University which helps us in increasing our outreach.

The NGOs need to learn a lot from governance from the corporate sector and few very well governed NGOs in the country. The good practices from both these benchmarks should be used as guidelines. But at the same time, I feel the aspect of governance cannot be forced on the NGOs. It should be left for the public opinion and community demand to ask for governance in the sector. An NGO cannot survive without supporters. While corporates have to follow governance for generating goodwill, NGOs have twice the reason. This is because stake holders would only support NGOs that are better governed.

What is the importance of Networking in the sector ?
Do you work with other organisations doing similar work ?
The NGO sector is doing great work on several issues and can be the most effective body, if backed with judiciary. The sector also has to come together forgetting the differences on issues they work for. The issues should unite and not divide. At the same time NGOs need to network with other parts of the communities and not only within. Very few people know about the work NGOs are doing outside the sector.

As mentioned earlier we work very closely with various communities. These communities are cross functional and even cross sector. So our work cannot inch forward without collaborating. We partner with various think tanks in the field of education, deriving a lot from their experience.

Since Aspirations has been founded by Rai Group. Are you also like a corporate foundation? If yes then what are your Corporate Social Responsibility activities ?
Yes, we are currently very much like a corporate foundation. This is because we liberally use their infrastructure and human resource. On the other hand we are an organisation that has a big community focus. The community has a big say on what we do.

The CSR activities for the Rai Group is largely in identifying talent in various areas, provide them quality education and aid them with scholarships. The University has also started courses in MSW to bring out professionals to serve the voluntary sector. Our Mass Media courses have Development Communications as an area of focus.

Since you also run a web-based newsletter- 'Education Wire', how can indianngos.com and Aspirations collaborate ?
Most of the speakers that come to our forum, from the NGO sector ,are there because we read about them first on the IndianNGOs.com. Education Wire would be very happy to syndicate information from IndianNGOs.com.

Your portal has immense knowledge base, which can be very useful to organisations like us. We surely hope that IndianNGOs.com would be keeping the accuracy and currency levels of the information going.

Aspirations is also a like a resource organisation. How can grass root NGOs benefit from you ?
I would also here like to share what we can gain from grass root NGOs. We look forward to grass root NGOs to continuously feed us on value systems, additions that can be made to the curriculum and academics and career choices available to the youth. This would facilitate us in enriching ourselves to further reforms in education.

We on our part can advise Rai University and other educational institutes to create courses suitable to the voluntary sector. We can also partner with them to this aspect if they plan a similar initiative. We can provide the medium of Education Wire to NGOs to communicate the issues they work for and provide access to the opinion leaders that form part of our community.

What are the future directions for Aspirations ?
Our future initiatives emerge from the continuous dialogue that happens amongst our communities. We will be spreading this dialogue to other cities also to keep our process of evolution going. What ever mandate that we receive from our community in the areas of advocacy and reforms, we will pursue the same.