Ms. Shukla Bose, Founder - CEO, Parikrma Humanity Foundation

Our vision is to see every street and slum child gets this opportunity. Literacy does not mean just being able to write one’s name, and the number on public transport buses!

What is the mission of Parikrma Humanity Foundation ?
Our mission is to unleash the potential of under-served children which will provide them with equal opportunities and make them valuable contributing members of our society. Our motto "Love, Explore, Excel" aims at helping street and slum children to become model citizens through our ‘Circle of Life’ programme.

How did you start this Foundation ?
My corporate career in companies like the Oberoi and RCI both here and abroad gave me a lot. Then I was asked to start the Bangalore branch of Christel House, the multi-national NGO for under-privileged children. I later started feeling very strongly that Indian problems should be solved by Indian initiatives and with commitment from Indian communities. This made a few like-minded people start the Parikrma Humanity Foundation. Almost all of us come from strong corporate backgrounds and we are proud to say we run a not for profit business, rather than just a non profit organisation.

What is the Parikrma model ?
We believe that one of India’s biggest strengths is our human potential. Education of children is at the core of our aim to transform poor communities into self-sustaining, contributing communities. In our three Centres for Learning we provide slum children with high quality education, nutrition, healthcare and familycare. We call this the ‘circle of life’. The idea is simple—give the poorest of the poor what it takes to compete on equal terms, and they will not only break their cycle of poverty but also become valuable contributing members of our society.

While everyone talks about globalisation and urbanisation, we are disturbed by the ruralisation of Urban India. Thousands of rural people come into cities dreaming of success and happiness. Instead they add to the already choked infrastructure. With no skills, no education and no assistance, these adults lead to the growth of slums, where the next generation of uneducated, unskilled children come up. Born in poverty, these children have no means to break the cycle, and therefore continue to live in poverty. The ruralisation of urban India is unrecognised, but it needs to be urgently addressed.

The Parikrma Foundation set up in April 2003 has proved in a very short time that it is possible to break this poverty cycle. One needs to focus on giving children the skills and tools to compete equally for opportunities, a nurturing environment, and to focus on one child at a time. Our aim is to ensure 100% of our children get integrated into mainstream of society.

The Parikrma Model has three elements---e2e solution or end-to-end solution to each of our children. We take full responsibility of our children till they start earning a living. Secondly, a high quality programme, and thirdly, all round development of each child. Parikrma, which means a full revolution, believes that education by itself would not help much if it were not accompanied by a healthy family, nutrition and healthcare. Apart from having regular health check-ups and complete immunization, we send two of our children to NIMHANS for counselling because they have had a very traumatic early childhood. We’ve sent 18 fathers for de-addiction treatment funded by Parikrma. 24 adults in the slums that our children come from have been given tailoring training and have now started earning for themselves.

There are several schools for under-privileged children.
How are you different ?
Our Centres For Learning are happy places that encourage children to learn through experience, and to express themselves through various forms of art. The colourful expressions of art that you see on the walls of all our buildings is the work of our students. We follow the ICSE syllabus. Parikrma was the only ICSE school in the city to get the Derozio National Award for Excellence in Human Enrichment and Education. And this, when we had competition from the best schools in the country, some that are over a hundred years old!

Our rapid English programme works very well. Children who first come to us speaking just Kannada or Tamil, Telugu or Urdu, learn to answer in English in just three months. The high qualify educational processes in school have helped us have a 98% attendance, less than 1% drop-out rate, and the attendance in our Parent –Teacher Meetings is 90%.

Our programmes rest on four pillars---empower, explore, express and expose.

You have just completed some work with the government. How did this happen ?
Yes, we worked with 12 BMP (Bangalore Mahanagara Palike) schools. We created an after-school tutorial programme and ran it for four months. The results were stunning----we were able to take the pass percentage from 9% to 31%, an improvement of 300%!

It happened when the BMP Commissioner visited one of our centres. He was so impressed that children from slums could be taught so much in so little time---and in such a happy fashion. He immediately wanted us to do the same with children in BMP schools.

What is your USP ?
We believe Parikrma is the first NGO to be run as a successful business model. We apply corporate best practices in our day-to-day work, along with age-old human values. Our goals, projections and objectives are set out clearly. We measure our performance against standards we have set for ourselves. We believe in branding our company, and we believe in having professionals to do that job. We raise funds and scout for donors not just for education and community development, but also for important areas like documentation, public relations, image and the future of the company.

Some of your management best practices ?
Well, we have third party audit of all our systems. Our programmes are all process-driven. We follow simple values like punctuality, professionalism in all our dealings----like attending to a missed telephone call within 24 hours for instance----and we give performance bonus to out teachers. The teachers are highly motivated professionals who draw salaries as good as most good schools have to offer.

For the BMP project we spoke to officials first. We called it ‘Operation Recharge’, because the government has good teachers and infrastructure----we all just need to be charged every now and then, like old batteries. We hired 70 retired government teachers, who did an excellent job in the tutorials. I think they could perform so well because we followed modern management practices like giving them clear job descriptions, targets, goals and the expected results.

We started thinking of starting Parikrma Humanity Foundation in March 2003. On May 22, 2003, the Centre for Learning in Sahaharanagar became functional. You could call this speed of delivery, a management practice.

How do you get corporate support ?
Our work in the corporate world has helped us identify many well-wishers. The Koramangala Centre with 160 children is sponsored by Royal Resorts. The building for our latest Centre for Learning at Jayanagar has been donated by the Saraswathi Memorial Trust. Pratiksha Trust sponsored our after-school programme in slums. And now we have the ‘Change Your World in ½ a Day’ programme that is inviting the entire corporate world to become stakeholders in our work.

Donors can sponsor ‘circle of life’ for one child, sponsor one or more parts of the circle, sponsor the circle of life for an entire class, or an entire Centre.

Tell us a little more about the ‘½ a day’ programme.
Orange Savings from ING Vysya Bank is marketing this unique programme for Parikrma. We are inviting everyone to participate in making quality education and development accessible to slum and street children. There are over 550,000 children out of school in 800 slums in Bangalore, popularly called The Silicon Valley.

By donating half a day’s salary, we can raise enough money to take care of the complete needs of 200 children in our Sahakaranagar Centre. This includes three meals a day, clothing and all educational material. The Return on Investment is simply the way these children are shaping up.

Every donor becomes a Parikrma stakeholder, and will be given regular updates on the impact of the collective money on the lives of these children. Donors will also get free tickets to a retro rock concert on October 30. All donations get tax benefits under section 80 G to the extent allowed by the government.

What are the other activities of Parikrma Humanity Foundation ?
Apart from running the three Centres For Learning in Sahakaranagar, Koramangala and Jayanagar, we do placements for older siblings of children studying with us. We also organised our first leadership development programme in Sep 03. This conference was held in Goa and was attended by about 30 social workers involved in various areas of development from all over the country. Some social workers are involved in the prevention of child-traffic, some are involved in the education of the physically challenged, and many in the area of education for the poor. We invited internationally and nationally acclaimed trainers like Prof. Gourango Chattopadhyay, Zahid Gangjee, Manab Bose, and Josey Kuruvilla to name a few.

Do you encourage volunteers ?
We have several volunteers coming in to teach different aspects to our stunts. There are several foreign volunteers who teach English here. Some teach games and art. We would definitely like to have more volunteers, especially from the local community to help us with making educational tools and so on.

If Parikrma is a brand, what is its DNA ?
Yes, we have definitely worked to project Parikrma as a brand. Many NGOs say they do not have funds for publicity. We didn’t either. But we went begging for money and got films done on Parikrama and had documents prepared. So Parikrma’s DNA says it must be driven by altruism, courage and hope. We want to give our children freedom, dignity, self-esteem, responsibility and the courage to dream. Our membership principle is to see whether the people we are hiring are selfless, courageous and have a passion for change.

Can Parikrma’s model be replicated ?
How does one extend this model to the millions of slum and street children in India ?
That is our biggest challenge---to maintain quality while striving hard to gain quantity. But it is possible. In just one year, PHF has grown to run three satellite Centres For Learning. We are working towards having a Hub where teacher training, research and creating educational tools will take place. And with support from donors, especially the corporate world, we can increase the number of satellite centres and have a successful network.

What motivates Parikrma Humanity Foundation ?
Well, we like this quote of Victor Hugo: "With every school door you open, you close a prison door." Parikrma’s tag line is ‘Making hope work’, and it takes just ½ a day to change the world, if everyone pitches in to work.