Tr. Ravi Khanna (RT 50)
National Vice President, Round Table India

What are mission and vision of Round Table India's Social Responsibility initiative ?

Round Table India decided in the year 1998 to have a long term perspective on social responsibility. In our AGM, it was observed that country was facing the problem of population explosion. One big reason for this was the lack of primary education. So it was decided to focus on primary education. If you look at the statistics that out of 186 million children in the 5-14 age group, 100 million are not in school. Of the rest 86 million only 40% of children make it to Grade 8. We at Round Table India, believe we can change this with our project- Freedom Through Education, as true freedom can only come by providing of education and that too primary education. And with that came our objective of Educating 1 Million Children by 2008. With this we mean that 1 million children would have passed through the system by end of the period, through the school infrastructure we create. We are not into running education programme, but we build and refurbish infrastructure. We have now partnerships with Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh state governments. We are in talk with Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal governments.

Round Table India is one of the world's most respected social service organisations. Established in 1957, RTI is part of 40 member Round Table International and 75 nation World Council of Services Club. RTI is driven by young socially responsible, active citizens and is non-political, non-sectarian organisation that aims to build a prosperous future for India through focused social service.

How does this all extend beyond philanthropy in the realm of entire social responsibility ?

Round Table very firmly focuses on ethics in ones' private and business lives. Infact our aims and objectives very clearly say that we have to carry ourselves well in the society. One of the aims that address this particular issue states, "To encourage active and responsible citizenship by cultivating the highest ideals in business, professional and civic traditions."

Members of Round Table join by invitation, not every one can join in. But we also ensure that there is right mix of people, we have people from all vocations - corporate executives, IT professionals, people in advertising, people running their own businesses, etc. The basic focus is fellowship, the bonding amongst ourselves. This makes Round Table have best of talent with lots of bonding and community service also comes out because of this fellowship.

On governance Round Table has a much organised structure. At the basic level is a table or a unit. For better governance we have divided the country into 10 areas. At the national level we have President, Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer and conveners for each activity e.g. for Fellowship, Projects, Corporate Alliances, HRD, Image Building, etc. Under the National structure we have Areas. Each area has a Chairman, who has tables under it. Even each table has a governance structure. Every one knows what functions to perform and who to report to. And definitely this kind of organisation is followed in our personal lives too.

You mentioned that fellowship binds Round Table, how does this reflect in your action on the ground ?

I will give you a very beautiful example. When earthquake struck Gujarat, many of our members, their families and relatives who lived in the Kutch district and other areas also got effected by it. The Round Tablers immediately got into action. We rushed there and organised camps, sent medicines, clothes and infact one Round Tabler flew in doctors from US. The entire Round Table fraternity quickly responded to the crisis - this all was because of the strong fellowship that binds us all. We did not stop at that as we realized that school buildings have fallen. We built 14 schools and it was not only about awarding contract, but also about close volunteering. Infact members of our Gujarat Round Tables traveled to the effected districts on weekends, oversaw the work and returned on Monday's to work. This all continued for full three months till the project was completed and the schools were hand over. We built schools of over Rs. 2.5 crores through this.

All this energy could be generated because of fellowship. Round Table becomes a way of life. The members become your closest friends, with whom you can share your views, problems and what not. Since we all come from similar age-groups and backgrounds it is easy to turn to each other.

Most of the members are also business leaders, how do they extend Social Responsibility to their respective businesses ?

We have our aims and objectives to guide us in our work lives too. The aims and objectives which read as:

• "To develop the fellowship of young men through the medium of their business and professional occupations and community service activities"
• "To encourage active and responsible citizenship by cultivating the highest ideals in business, professional and civic traditions"
• "To promote and further international understanding, friendship and co-operation"
• "To promote extension of the association", also traverse into our work lives. We have a manual that governs our way of working in this aspect. We also have an induction programme, where inductees take oath that the pin that they wear all the times, the ideals it stands for, the repute of the organisation has to be upheld all the time.

You mentioned that Primary Education is your key focus area. Tell us more about it. Do you work with NGO partners to achieve ends in this ?

The Primary Education continues to be our major area of work. As mentioned the target is to Educate 1 million children by 2008. We do not run education programmes. We work with state governments, NGOs and social service organisations. We have done work with Akshara Foundation, Azim Premji Foundation, MV Foundation and Pratham. We build the schools on the government land and hand them over to state government or the partner NGOs to run the schools. We have also now started the 'Maintenance programme", where we revisit the schools we have built and see any upkeep is required. In a way we provide the hardware and the software part of running the education programme is handled by our partners.

A highly complementary part of building schools is the provision of hygiene facilities. Therefore we also build toilet blocks, separate for boys and girls. We have a separate organization for our wives called Ladies Circle, which runs programs for children coming to school on proper hygiene habits, besides other activities. In fact there have been instances where children have gone back and taught their families and parents on hygiene issues.

In order to leverage skill sets of other NGOs doing work in the field of running education programmes, we have been talking to form a common platform that meets regularly and brainstorms on how to make initiative have deeper impact.

How do you evaluate and monitor your programmes ?

We have a secretariat in Chennai, where we have a Round Table House. The secretariat has permanent employees, who are the only paid people in the entire organisation. The people here are for years to come, as tablers retire as they reach 40. It is the back bone of our governance structure. The reporting on the programmes happen from the tables to the area heads, although information flow is both ways. From the area level the reports come to the national level. The secretariat plays an important role in all this.

Since we are not in the software part of running education programmes, there are no fixed parameters to measure. One such yardstick being what government says about us. Infact, since the existing tie-ups with the government are so successful, we are looking to enter into MOUs with 10 state governments. Another yardstick being the number of schools that we have built. Like when we started community services in 1998, there were 5-10 schools. Today there are 550 schools that benefit 300,000 children, taking us closer to our 1 million children goal. Rest we have targets progress of which we check upon through frequent meetings.

How do you go about selecting your partners ?

We interact a lot with people who are doing work in the field of education, people in the education department. These people often refer the organisations that are doing good work. Or at times we come across, organisations we know are doing impactful work. It is more word of mouth. We don't have any guidelines, infact some of them since we have worked with earlier, we work with now. For example Round Table helped Pratham in its initial stages to get some funds; today we again work with them. We went around and saw there work, visited their centers. It is not about blindly signing. Similarly Gujarat Education Society, with whom we work in Delhi, we saw their programme in detail before partnering with them. We have also worked successfully with MV Foundation, Akhshara, Azim Premji Foundation to name a few. The members visit the programmes and give their views on the work.

Have you developed any internal policy document on Social Responsibility ?

We don't have a policy document, but we have enough documentation of road-maps in terms of our slogan of achieving 1 million children in school target. We have been invited to speak on few platforms and be part of the industry forums that are recommending changes in education policy to government. So Round Table's role would be to influence policy through this forum. We have been doing lots of good work silently, without coming in the eyes of the public. Hopefully now we would be working on these policy issues also.

What kind of capacity building on Social Responsibility do you provide for your members ?

We have very well developed Facilitation Department. All this is in-house because of the versatility of the members. Many of the HRD gurus are our members and they have developed programmes to build capacities not only in the social responsibility part but all aspects of life, on how to carry oneself, public speaking and personality development. Now many of us have been trained to be facilitators, who go out take sessions at schools and colleges, with youth on social responsibility and other issues.

Do you employ beneficiaries from the education programmes you support ?

Since we are in primary education there are still the beneficiaries to pass out and work. Yes, but before completely shifting our focus onto primary education, we were also into vocational training, teaching children typing, computers, stitching, sewing and other trades. We did employ lots of pass outs from these courses. One of the students who learned computers from one such course works for my company. With the shift to primary education, the efforts are instead on getting these children into secondary education.

How do you raise your resources ?

At the table level there are lots of fund raising events like movie premiers, musical and rock concerts. Here all the proceeds come for charity. Then at the National level we look for partners, e.g. Round Table Netherlands has adopted the Round Table India's Freedom Through Education program for six years.

The funding from Netherlands comes through some agencies who at times double the monies, like Novib and Codaid. For Gujarat Earthquake relief we had partnered with Azim Premji Foundation, which has also helped in the IT literacy part, especially by providing computers. We are also doing road shows in US with the NRI community to raise resources. We have also started a 'Six Degree of Separation Programme'. As a part of this programme we plan that each tabler asks 6 of his contacts abroad to contribute 100 dollars each.

We are confident to raise 7 crore rupees through this every year. Besides, our MOUs with the government are worked in a way where 70-80% of the funds for building the schools come from them. We pitch in the rest of it. Also a lot of Corporates in India are being approached to join hands with us under their Corporate Social Responsibility program