An experiment in trust
Despite one month of living and working in a new place and interacting in a language and culture I had only a passing familiarity with, I have not yet taken the time to write about my experience. Friends have encouraged me to write both about my time in Bagar and about specific successes and disappointments. My work at the Bagar Employment Exchange has definitely provided much material to write about as we have had a string of successes recently. Yet it was not until a group discussion last weekend that I really felt the impulse to write. Despite being such a seemingly simple concept, it was this idea of “trust” and its role in development that finally pushed me to write. So much of what one reads in development literature and encounters in a developing country such as institutional problems, lack of rule of law, public goods becoming de-facto privatized, etc. boils down to a lack of trust. And, in my experience thus far, this lack of trust is so widespread that personal relationships are needed to get anything done, business can become a painful ordeal, and one must always be on the offensive when dealing with others as written rules may not be respected. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma that one lives each and every time they interact with others and it perpetuates itself each time someone gets burned. Yet I’m also hopeful because once a process begins to be understood, alternatives can be imagined. What is my vision of a developed India? It’s one where trust exists between people and in public institutions and norms. It is of a broad, increased level of public trust rather than the intensely personal relationships I’ve encountered thus far that seem to trump any attempts to create trust beyond the individual. So let us see. My whole time here, everything I do, every person I meet on behalf of BEX, GDL, and the Piramal Foundation, is an experiment with trust. I’m looking forward to what it brings.
BEX scaling to new heights
BEX is now scaling to new heights. We have over 400 aspirants registered, and in less than 2 months since our inauguration on April 20, we have already placed over 60 students.
Many more updates to come soon.
Good luck Football Campers!
As part of it’s community leadership effort, GDL interns Akshay Singh and Anurag Dutta started a football training camp for the Bagar Youth this summer. The goal was to impart football skills, and also to impart equally valuable teamwork and leadership skills. The ultimate goal is to excite youth about coming together through sport, and leading this effort every year.
The football camp, along with some of the GDL interns this summer, entered an open tournament being held in Bagar, and have achieved great success. The football camp team has been the sole representative for Bagar, and it’s progress is starting to create a buzz in the community. Here’s an article in the local newspaper featuring their performance:
The Newspaper: (click to enlarge)
The Article: (click to enlarge)
Good luck on the upcoming matches Team Bagar!
Source For Change featured on Economic Times
Economic Times article featuring Source For Change (June 25, 2008)
The article was in All-India edition.
Congratulations to Shrot, Gagan, Alim and all the SFC interns on achieving this. This comes on the back of two other major milestones this week: SFC inaugurated it’s new office and computer lab on Monday, and has now expanded to 20 women!
BEI’s Spoken English Students Land Retail Jobs
As indicated in my last post, four Spoken English students appeared for interviews at a top retail company this past week. All of them made it to the third and final interview.
Two of the four students, Balveer Bundela and Praveen Bundela of Bagar, were chosen for the CSR (Customer Service Representative) position. They have both accepted the job and have begun work today, June 23rd. Should they prove themselves committed, skillful and capable, they are likely to get promoted within the next six months to a year.
Up until the last interview the candidates’ communication skills were observed, their interest and commitment level tested, and a basic knowledge of retail and selling skills were sought. They were also tested on the content of their resumes. In addition, Balveer had noted that he had won a dance competition and was even asked to demonstrate his dancing skills at the last interview!
For those who didn’t get the job, their optimism is remarkable. This experience has served a motivating force for them to improve their English speaking skills and confidence. They admitted how much they learned from the week-long interview process and even shared their learnings with the two English batches that are now in session. In doing so, one of the students is so determined that he said that he knows he will get a job when he interviews again some time in the future. They know, recognize and are making a commitment to work hard. These students should be proud of themselves for extracting lessons from this experience.
Congratulations to Balveer and Praveen (below) and best of luck to the others! BEI is behind you 100%!
SourceForChange.in gets a makeover!
SourceForChange, the rural BPO that was incubated right here at GDL, has a website which recently got a makeover. Check out all the progress, recommend it to potential clients and be inspired by the stories of the all-women staff.
 The website: www.sourceforchange.in
Spoken English class students interview in Jaipur
To kick off the week, four students of the Bagar Employment Institute’s Spoken English class, interviewed at the Jaipur branch of one of India’s top retail stores. They hope to get jobs to earn, continue to build their English skills and to get experience before they pursue their MA or MBA.
As India’s middle class has grown, its retail sector has earned a sizable position in the market in terms of revenue generated and people employed. After agriculture, retail employs the most people in India. That said, the retail industry seems an excellent point from which to build one’s career, whether it be in the retail sector itself or only as a means to improve one’s English or gain corporate experience.
By the end of the week, we’ll find out whether any of the students get placed. Out of 10 who were shortlisted for the customer care executive positions, four were those from BEI’s Spoken English class. It is hoped that several of them get placed at this company so that they may find an apartment together and so that the transition to city life is less alarming. Let’s hope for the best!
Interns are tackling Personality Development
This past week two interns, Stephanie and Akshay (hailing from the U.S. and BITS Pilani!) took on the first of multiple Personality Development modules for BEI’s (Bagar Employment Institute’s) Spoken English Course. They are both working on a website for Bagar and a career handbook for secondary school students respectively, and the personality development modules are a side project that give them the opportunity to interact with the community on a regular basis in an in-depth manner.
Stephanie and Akshay began the Personality Development component of the class with a module on future plans and careers. Stephanie ran the first part of the lesson, getting students to think about their interests and skills. This set the stage for a discussion and information dissemination session by Akshay on the different career opportunities that exist in India, what positions are available within a particular field, and how to go about pursuing such opportunities.
It being the first time Stephanie and Akshay were teaching, they didn’t know whether the students would find the content interesting or relevant. To their pleasant surprise however, they were flooded with questions from which they learned what kind of career fields are most popular and where students’ interests lie.
Because we’ve identified that there is an obvious information asymmetry re: future job opportunities for rural youth, this session was supremely important. In the coming weeks as Stephanie and Akshay will continue to create and deliver the Personality Development lessons, they will play a critical role in providing the students the information and skills they need to advance in an increasingly competitive world.
Flying High
Since the arrival of our new English trainer, Arbind Singh, the Spoken English classes that we’re offering on behalf of Bagar Employment Institute (BEI) have taken new form. As someone who works to facilitate and support the Spoken English course and the trainer in various capacities, I have seen the new Spoken English batches since they began in the middle of May.
What’s so spectacular about our courses is our trainer. He’s been successful at solving one of the major challenges that stands in the face of running such training programs: keeping students engaged.
Arbind Ji’s secret to success stems from his resourcefulness and innovative teaching techniques. For example, in order to keep the classroom space dynamic, he invites different GDL interns to speak nearly everyday, he uses various audiovisual aids and he administers interesting debates and discussions. He also finds quite a bit of English content online and adapts it to meet his classroom needs. Observing his creativity in this process has been really inspiring.
Something else that he does well and that sets our classes apart from others is how he changes his teaching style and content to meet the learning levels of all students. If students fall behind, he sees it as his responsibility and adjusts the lesson plans accordingly. Kudos to Arbind Ji!
Our success in implementing a stellar Spoken English program does not come without its obstacles, however. In the coming days we have to make sure students become independent learners - not relying on the trainer, their peers, or Hindi to hold their hands through the course each day. We also have to pay special attention to those students who need extra help. Lastly, those students who have performed well in the class will be afforded the opportunity to graduate from the class early. For such students we have to work on helping them find the right job for them. However, I think that if we’re moving at the pace we are, these supposed challenges will become opportunities from which we can learn, improve our program, and deliver Bagar the kind of quality education its people deserve.
A take on Leaders
A few of my friends [and fellow Interns :)] are running a Summer Camp for 11th and 12th graders at Bagar [soon, I would not need to hyperlink Bagar to the Wiki article, @ Steph :D]. In much of urban India, summer camps are a fad. There are camps for all sort of activities, the funniest I have heard is a Summer Camp to complete summer assignments doled out by schools!
But, here in heart of rural Rajasthan, a summer camp makes a lot of sense. Supplementing the school education, Neeraj, Abhishodh and Antara are introducing the summer camp kids to computers, functional English and trying to inculcate leadership in them. Last week, the Summer Camp team wanted me to talk about Leadership.
Turning up an hour late made me look like the unpunctual lazy sloth that I am. But, the audience I got was way better than any of my expectations. Due to lack of any preparation, I started with polling names of leaders from them. Indira Gandhi (from the Camp’s only girl. Women need to be empowered here. More on that later, some other day), Netaji, Bhagat Singh, Laluji, Saurav Ganguly, Ronaldo (!) and our very own Ashish Gupta. I was surprised to not find any business leaders in the list especially this being in the famed Shekhawati region.
But, when these 17-18 year olds started listing down qualities of these leaders, I realized why we came down to Bagar. For the 8 of us from Pilani, this place has no novelty attached to it. We live in rural India, [albeit with better internet :)] for ten painfully long months each year. Not going home, not interning in India’s leading nuclear reactor at Kalpakkam with Murthy, not working on India’s manned space flight at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center with Pandey… All those regrets vanished for that one hour.
I have had long discussions about leaders with my city friends. Every time, every single time, it is about communication skills, being good at people management, having a great vision yada, yada (and yes at times, when I have had the trademark fights with a certain opinionated individual named Vineet Pandey, I was the one harping on communication skills). But, these kids, they started with honesty. Somebody pointed out the difference to me between honesty and truthfulness too! And they too think leaders should be straightforward. Not very practical as popular opinion might concur, but I finally found somebody who thinks that leaders can be straightforward 
and don’t need to use guile 