Mr. T. K. Mathew - Founder, Deepalaya

Work Focus for the year 2004
We have a very long time vision that has been written like, "a society based on legitimate rights, equity, justice, honesty, social sensitivity and a culture of service, in which all are self reliant". So the idea is that we have two classes of society and we look forward to a society, which has some equality, based on social justice, equity and sensitivity.

These are some of the important aspects that we say are necessary for a dynamic society. This being the overall vision we continue to actively implement our mission, which is in pipeline like Education, Healthcare, Gender Equity, Differently Abled, and institutional Care.

There are various programs going under each of this heads and with that we also provide support for advocacy and volunteering. So the vision is a long time affair and it is achieved in parts every year and some of the aspects like empowerment capacity building, resource management these things don't happen in a year. For example when we do activities with women, what all things will empower them in terms of taking their own decision, handling their own resources?

These are the part of the annual program and related to that we want to have more of self-help groups for women; we want more runaway children or disabled people to be rehabilitated as a part of our programme.

As far as year 2004 is concerned our target is;
1. Completing the girls hostel and then trying to find resources for a boys hostel.
2. Expanding on the self-help groups and women equity programmes.
3. Establishing our new project in Uttranchal " Naya Gram Swaraj". A programme where you do bottom of activity rather than top down and within the capacity of community so that it is owned and managed by them our role in this programme is that of a catalyst or a enabler.

Then we have launched our programme into open basic certification it is basically providing certificates at different standards third, fifth and eight. We are accredited to that and this year we are taking it up very seriously because there are a lot non-formal educated people.

Through this they will get the opportunity to be tested before 10th grade and can get a certification, which can be used in further education as well as getting employment. We will also be continuing our ongoing projects but target wise the above mentioned are the task assigned for this particular year.

Corporate partnerships of Deepalaya

There are quite a few partners working with us or funding for various projects. Infact lately we are able to get in touch of many more of those. Very recently we had Target Corporation and AMC (Associated Merchandize Corporation).

They came for the first time to India and were looking for an Ngo to fund and we are the one who got the funds out of the half a dozen short listed Ngos in the whole South Asia. We felt that it is a good credit although the funds are not very large.

We have Amex, with their support program and sponsorships etc. Covergence is there then Coca -Cola came in for water harvesting structure for schools, juniper foundation has come, Mahindra came in with the program called 'Nanahi Kali" and there are many more such organisations, who are providing their support.

Most of them are mostly one or two year projects. The problem with the corporate funding is that it is not an ongoing funding. It will either be for a very specific periods or a for a very specific purpose.

On making programs self sustainable

Largely the sectors of education, health, community mobilization etc are non-sustainable characters. Education becomes sustainable only when we educated, get a certificate and finally start earning our living.

The incubation period for our programmes are fifteen-twenty years, whether it is community health beginning with a child to an adult without disease which is a big achievement and that takes a long time.

Education to be productive takes a long time but then lively hood programmes, income generation programs and Sresource management programs are the ones where we are making a difference in the lives of those people. Our programmes are all social in nature but the productive aspects linkage by way of conserving resources, managing one's own resources or improving productivity by starting new ventures, micro enterprises. So that is where the balance comes in.

From the point of view of the sustainability of the programme it is happening and it's happening slowly. For example at the level of families, if they are motivated to mange their resources, look at their income and budget it properly and then spend it on priority then that makes a difference. People are helped to save money and recycled the save money for productive purposes is another area of intervention.

We have also developed a programme : "Social Entrepreneur'. The idea was to make the program self-reliant. From that point of view to start on education program, health care program, you require few people in order to animate, mobilize people and help them become self reliant in their own way. So to facilitate that we have found the person called Social Entrepreneur, a person who already has some enterprise that can be further improved by training and capacity building and then who has a social consciousness and a commitment to serve the marginalized. And then with the co-operation of community who is motivated to pay for the services.

The tendency is that the poor wants everything for free but we believe that nothing is for free, the services should be paid. That kind of an approach is helping us to make family pay user fee to an individual who is self employed. At this point of time we have 150 such Social Entrepreneurs. It is more of a relationship between community and social entrepreneur, which is facilitated by Deepalaya and self-reliant is fostered.

We have a policy of phasing out from any location after ten-twelve years, when we will see the mechanism of survival and self-reliance through this process of SEs giving services to community and community in turn paying back for the services. All the Government grants, subsidies, funds are not last longing; finally the families have to pay for themselves. So first of all we make them serious about their resources and help them to manage that and budget it properly.

We have phased out from twenty such locations. Theses locations are going on and Social Entrepreneur are working ok. Social Entrepreneurs are not only self-employed but also in turn they are getting respect as they are giving so much to the community. That is where you have to look self-reliance from the point of view of our programs.

Three most important aspects NGOs in general need to improve upon

The three most important thing NGOs to improve upon are
1. Transparency, If you are transparent you can survive; this is my experience in last twenty-five years.
2. Accountability, NGOs are looked at with suspicion because they don't render their annual report or accounts. For example we are among the first very few NGOs, who have brought the page of accountability in our Annual report. The Credibility Alliance has brought up idea. Even some of the very active members of CA have not incorporated it yet. We have acted upon the idea. According to the norms of Credibility Alliance, this is not a norm which is dictated, but it is something that has to be voluntarily accepted. So, we have accepted it and we say that we are transparent and accountable.
3. Third important thing is Credibility- you should have result orientation. You should worry about what brings out. Being an Ngo you should worry about transparency, Accountability and Credibility.

If you follow all these three factors nobody can stop you from growing, developing and establishing. By following policy directions one can give an impression of being large as in the case of advocacy. Whereas, we have done work at the grassroot.

We have touched children, we have educated almost 40, 000-45000 children. Depending upon these policies smallness and bigness is there but the success finally depends upon your credibility. Are you able to produce results? Are you able to convert donation in to something tangible for that person for whom the donation has been provided?

Mantra of enhancing the credibility of NGO sector

Anybody who follows Transparency, Accountability, Credibility they definitely enhance their own and the credibility of the whole NGO sector. If the sector is going to be blamed then you are the one bad fruit in the whole basket, and will make the entire basket of no use.

The whole attitude of the public, who wants to give will get affected if the few NGOs are bad so the reform process has to start and that is where the Credibility Alliance is advocating that there is nothing to be imposed but has to be voluntarily accepted, which is not very easy.

Enforcement of laws or rules has their own problems as if you try to enforce and you find loopholes to get out of it, the way it is happening in tax laws. This only brings out corruption and will not reach anywhere,. This is something to be accepted voluntarily.

Corporate Volunteering
There are various opportunities for corporate volunteers and it all depends upon what profession they follow. Engineers can provide support in construction of the buildings required for our programs like hostel, schools etc.

IT people can help us by teaching, guiding also if they wish they can support individual child. Hr professional can also come and help in training.

These are not cash component but these are all technical component. That is where volunteer can help.

Even if they want, they can spend some time with children, narrate them stories or do some tuitions with them. There is unlimited scope of volunteering.

As you have mentioned that almost twenty -thirty thousand students are educated by Deepalaya till now, so have any of those people come back to be a part of the reform process ?
I am glad to share that almost half a dozen teachers working with us are our old students and there are other involved in different capacities with Deepalaya.

After ten-fifteen years they have come back to join us and now they are working as teachers, workers and facilitators.

In fact now we are going to bring out a publication with taking an example of twenty-five such people cases working with Deepalaya or around Deepalaya, where they have come back to social sector, they have been enabled to that.

Monitoring the Programmes
We have almost twenty Cost Centres. These cost centers are all at the back end and they plan actions for India. Like this is our corporate office and it has certain functions and for these functions we have plans in place. Again for implementing these plans you require certain number of people.

We have system in which every person has to give a weekly report and a consolidated report is made out of these weekly reports. This consolidated report is then hosted on the mother server, which is for internal people. Everybody in the organisation has an access to these reports through intranet.

So that is where, everybody come to know about what is happening in a particular project. Again at each cost center there is a person in charge, every person has to submit the weekly report to him and the person is supposed to give these reports in a consolidated form.

The second tool for monitoring is that we have monthly staff meeting, where these head of centers come and we fix an agenda for the meeting, through which we do some kind of feed backing, reporting, monitoring etc. Another instrument is quarterly inspection of the project sites.

The idea actually is to do on the spot study and planning. We see if the project is happening according to the norms and policies and then the review of the projects. Quarterly we look what was the project plan, how is it being implemented, if there is any problem, how can we rectify it etc?

We also look at the budget analysis and the expenditure style so there is a strict monitoring of the program implementation as well as the fund utilization and then there is an internal audit.

So, all these are our monitoring mechanism. We also give half yearly or yearly reports to our donors, who provide us with money. They also get feed back from us of the analysis in the form of annual report, monthly newsletter and various kinds of publications.

Evaluation of the program and its impact

Again the impact is not a long-term affair. For different project there are different indicators. For example when we talk about education; the indicators are like what is the enrolment rate, who are enrolled, are they regular, are they punctual, are they sitting in exam etc, so like that we have a range of indicators against which we make our assessment.

In case of health you will see continuous health awareness whether we have reduced water borne diseases, whether we have improved personal hygiene, whether we have improved environmental sanitation or where we have helped people to go and consult doctors so these are all indicators that are part of our assessment. So over a period of time we can say there is an improvement that every child is coming to school they are regular and every parent is willing to invest in the education of their children, which was earlier not.

So these are the indicators through which we make the assessment and for the long term the impact. Take a particular slum and see what is the education activity as a whole. What was it when we started and what is it now after ten year? And If the fruit of the labor is coming back to educate others or if they have gone out to find employment? Whether the behavioral changes are taking place or not?

Like initially the handicap used be considered as curse, today it has changed. Now the handicap is been brought forward, to be identified and rehabilitated. They are being sent to the schools. Schools are enabled to accept them. So these are some of the impacts, which we are making over a period of time.

Spread Deepalaya beyond Delhi
At this point of time we are at almost 76 slums in Delhi and 84 villages in Kavadu of Haryana ( Mewar Region) then we have recently gone to Uttranchal, where we have made an entry with the project " Naya Gram Swaraj" for the development work. Other than that we are currently nowhere in India.

We did a strategic planning exercise two years back, resulting that we have identified our strength vis a vis our resource. Twenty-five years of our experience in some sectors like education, health and even some livelihood areas, we felt now we should work like a resource and make these resources available to small NGO's in remote areas. For that we can even think of using our own senior staff as franchise. They will go and establish themselves, transplant themselves and work with communities, empower them and act more in terms of facilitators.

Again in this era of advocacy and related things resources are not easily coming by not in this kind of a venture as this is more of a capacity building exercise where we don't implement but we facilitate others to do that. This is going to be our agenda where will be scouting for resources.

We will not be limiting ourselves in Delhi or neighborhood. As it is not necessarily to be operative always, if our resources are able to be utilized for building capacity for others then it's much like a dividend over a period of time.

Points to share with audience of IndianNGOs.com

My concern is that with economic progress, liberalization, globalisation the materialism is increasing which is not avoided but then if you have to live in an equitable society then you cannot but look at the need of people who are poor today but they are made poor because their rights were denied. If you have rights then the other person who is poor today also has equal rights.

His rights are not accredited to him because of your wrongdoing, may be not conscious but because of the systems. Today everything is governed by systems the capital system, the social system has probably failed because they oriented themselves towards socialism without necessarily improving productivity.

In this case my concern is that equity, social justice have to be taken along with productivity, capital formation, liberalization and globalisation. The inequality cannot exist for long so the rights of the poor will have to be taken in to account even at some expense of those who are into business.