Category Archives: Field Visits

Interns report on their field visits

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SIFI’s interns have been actively involved with our initiatives. In order to sustain our partnership with Ekam Foundation, they set about on a mission to identify scope for future projects. They went on field visits to get a fair idea of the state of affairs in the hospitals. Here are excerpts from their experiences.

Visit to Chengelpet Government Hospital (12/5/2012)

This being our first visit to a Government hospital, we were taken aback by the poor cleanliness level there. After some enquiry, we figured that they were low on manpower and the few cleaners who they had were frustrated by the number of times they had to clean each area. The reason for their frustration was the lack of brooms and cleaning equipment which forced them to clean everything by hand. Secondly, we noticed the lack of beds. The mothers’ room in the maternity ward had no beds and all the mothers were sitting on the floor. Similarly, the rooms where the newborns were had a huge shortage of beds and ventilators. There were 2-3 babies under each ventilator.  Another issue was the shortage of power. The government had provided a generator, but it doesn’t last too long as the hospital was too huge to be supported by one generator.  The doctor was talking to us about how if they had atleast one solar power ventilator, it could help a baby during an emergency.

Visit to Egmore Children’s Hospital (13/5/2012)

At the Egmore Hospital, we visited the IMCU, the surgical, pediatric ward, blood bank. The IMCU was the busiest. There were many children with a lot of painful injuries. We saw a girl with a burnt head and a baby who wearing an oxygen mask on her face and the like. We then went to the surgical ward, where small children of age 5 – 10 were resting after surgeries. The head doctor there spoke to us and told us his requirements such as infusion pumps, monitors etc. We noticed in this hospital too that, there was lack of beds and cots. There was also lack of manpower as they did not have the people to clean the hospital. It was the done by the nurses themselves. They seemed to have no problem with the power supply.  Visiting the blood bank was a great experience and we saw how blood was collected, screened, tested and stored. It was a very well-maintained and well stocked-up place.

Genesis of Project Little Stars

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Two of SIFI’s team members (Venkatesh and Aarthi) visited Little’s Trust in Madurai to chalk out the final details of Project Little Stars that will focus on education of children with special needs. Here is a personal account of their field visit.

We reached Little’s Trust at 7 am, in the wee hours of 22nd April. Chinamma, the source of inspiration behind executing this project was the first to arrive along with her mother. The clinical psychologist followed. He began examining the kids one by one. Chinamma was the first as her confident smile and cheerfulness exuded a positive aura. The teacher assigned for the special kids sat beside the psychologist, taking notes for each child.

We connected with the people there on a personal note. Many revelations surfaced from our understanding of the people, their relationships, attitudes, and problems. A few parents were not aware of their child’s birth date. And a few others were frustrated dealing with their kids who had special needs. There were others faced with the household problems like alcoholic husband, extreme poverty and indebtness etc. It was evident from our interactions that a lot needed to be done to improve the state of affairs for the family as a whole and not just the children.

Post lunch, Mrs Vardhini, founder of Little’s Trust addressed the parents assembled there. The following points were communicated.

1. Project Little Stars will benefit 11 kids with special needs.
2. Evening classes will be conducted from Monday to Thursday, beginning at 4pm and ending at 6pm.
3. Day long classes (from 9am to 6pm) with adequate breaks will be conducted on Friday and Saturday, for which Little’s Trust will arrange transport.
4. A nominal fee of Rs 100 will be charged for each kid. This gives a sense of responsibility and parents would be more interested in their kid’s progress.
5. There will be an evaluation once in 4 months to appraise the benefits of the project and measure the progress of kids. This will be done by the same clinical psychologist.

During the interaction, she urged parents to be understanding of their kid’s special needs and extend as much support and encouragement as possible. She reiterated that the future of these kids would improve only if we all worked together and provided a positive environment.

Most parents resonated with hope and optimism about Project Little Stars. It was a great feeling to have spent the day with kids, who have great dreams and ambitions. It felt good to know that SIFI will change the lives of 10 kids who will live to change the lives of many more. Our work may be just a tiny drop in a vast ocean, but it is a collection of drops that makes an ocean. SIFI is happy that Project Little Stars articulates our motto – collective action for sustainable empowerment.

A challenge worth fighting for

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Autism is a medically famous concept. It affects more children than other neurological disorders and this is because autism is a spectrum disorder. But in reality, Autism is not only a challenge for those who are affected by it, but also those who are trying to battle it, for those who are affected. When the projects team of SIFI went to ‘We Can’ a school for autistic children in Neelankari, Chennai, we find that not only are we blessed to be born as the people we are, but our creator sends us a message, loud and clear that we have to roll up our sleeves and get to working on finding the golden solution that would help us, help them lead a normal life every day.

Venkatesh and Aparajith, from the projects team went to We Can, to study and learn on what it takes to take up teaching as a challenge, and where simple concepts feature on a steeper learning curve. The first lesson was patience, with different children having difference levels of understanding, Mrs. Geetha made it clear that as of today, the fight against autism isnt a losing battle not with advancement in neuroscience and standardized lesson plans to benefit autistic children. Even while teaching, one student might take a week to learn to sit in one place for a simple 10 counts, while another might take the same week to learn to cut carrots properly The second lesson wasn’t for the students, but the parents. When asked, Mrs Geetha said, there are 3 kinds of parents, one who accept their child and work to ease his/her daily life from unwanted complications and two, parents who accept their child but still work hard and push the child to excel in mainstream education and three, those who sadly live in denial and wish to push their child only to fall each time.

Autism does not know caste, religion and social status. Albeit it is three times common in boys than in girls. More than anything else, the battle to help autistic children is a very arduous one as very few well trained and qualified people are there in the field, and they themselves are concentrated at the tier-1 cities out of sheer passion to help more than anything else. Autism in the urban regions where parents, doctors and teachers work in tandem to battle it out, arming themselves with information, medical infrastructure and paper qualifications, for the sole goal of helping the autistic child lead a smoother day-to-day life. Public perception of any neurological disorder makes one wonder if the public is of sound mind in the first place, as it is quite absurd to battle out an issue with only passion without rationale or with only rationale sans passion. With a distinct disparity between medical care in urban and rural areas, autism is a challenge worth battling it out. Autism, being a spectrum disorder, has a fundamental problem, of how a solution to one boy cannot and need not be a viable solution to another boy. But basic ground zero planning helps them all, irrespective of what type of autism they have. For instance, We Can, is a specially designed school with small rooms that facilitate one on one teaching, the walls are textured to provide a certain grip and have facilities such as ‘pictorial timetable’ they have an in-house garden and a miniature kitchen to train them to perform simple tasks. Mrs Geetha boasts of i-pads that have apps which help autistic kids in learning.

The visit to We Can on world autism awareness day was a learning experience for the projects team, we needed guidance as SIFI ventures into its next project, on helping an NGO tackle Learning Disability, We Can was a school to SIFI and its students, our teachers.

If you wish to socially-invest in this cause or if you would like to clarify with us on our operations drop a mail at mailsifi@gmail.com with ‘Projects Team’ as the subject.

A Photo-walk for Raising funds

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We conducted a photo-walk on 26th January, 2011 to raised funds for EKAM. Their inaugural photo-walk was a roaring success with 18 participants. Starting at the ‘Light-House’ MRTS station, the walk took the participants across a lot of color, crowd and children.

Set amidst a Republic day parade on Marina Beach & the slums of Triplicane, we were able to reach out to newer volunteers & donors. One of the participants, Mr.Santosh, came all the way from Bangalore to participate in the walk as he thought ‘he really wanted to do this’.  Participants for the walk included students, working professionals & professional photographers. Mobile, point & shoot and high-end were the different kind of cameras seen at the walk. This diversity is unlikely to be seen in other photo-walks around the city. “Thanks to SIFI, this is the first time I attended a Republic day parade & walked through a slum-lane in my own city” said Anu, one of the participants.

 

The display of India’s military might & a walk with the children in the urban slums subtly jelled with SIFI’s goals. The proceeds raised from the walk where through registration & would go towards our project ‘Vision Ventilator’, which funds a ventilator for the Chengalpet Government Hospital. We started our journey in 2011 & currently fund small NGO’s in Healthcare and Education like EKAM.

To attend their next photo-walk, you can log on to: www.sifindia.com or Like them on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/social.investment.foundation.of.india

India Urban Conference

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I was privileged to attend the India Urban Conference in the Infosys Campus at Mysore, Karnataka, India. The theme for the conference was ‘Evidence & Experience’. It was required that every anchor organization conducted sessions on their sector of expertise.

Let us begin with some facts here, by 2030, 60% of the World’s population is projected to be in Urban areas. In India, estimates suggest we would have over 40% of the population in urban areas. Find below a snap-shot taken from a McKinsey report on Urban settlement.

Cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore & Pune will be economically bigger than countries like Malaysia, Portugal, Columbia etc. Read McK report here.

{Interesting fact: India will have 68 cities with a population of more than a million by 2030, 63 cities have been recommended in the “multi-brand” FDI retail Bill. Contrary to the government’s claim of ‘JUST’ 63 cities }

The anchors were Pratham (Education), Janaagraha (Governance), IIHS(settlements), PHFI (Health), Arghyam (Water), IFMR (Finance), Dronah (Culture), IUSF/SPA (Planning)

As the sessions happened in-parallel, i was able to attend Deep-Dives (as it was called) of Pratham & IFMR.

DAY 1 : Thursday Nov 17th, 2011 – Field Visit
Pratham kicked off with field-visit to one of the urban settlements in Mysore. We conducted a survey in Kurubarahalli, Siddhartha Layout. Door-to-Door through the help of mobile phones. It was great to interact with the kids when you don’t speak their native language.
Door to Door in Kurubarahalli layout

Learnings

  • The smallest block in Urban India is no longer a ‘Ward’.
  • ‘Low-cost Private schools’ are no better
  • Urban areas with income diversity are tough to work with

DAY 2 : Friday Nov 18th, 2011 – Pratham on Education

In a session moderated by Mr.Subir Shukla (blog), we discussed on ‘what the learning outcomes are’ in the context of RTE. 3R’s are the all to learning? In school days I never valued ‘Moral education’ classes because there was no focus on outcomes.Apart from measuring ‘Letter, Para, Division’, what other things should we measure?

Subir Shukla moderating the session by Pratham

The final session for the day was ‘Sharing Data: Strategies and platform for Data Access’.  I was pleased to meet one of my seniors from NIT Calicut working on Accountability Initiative.

Have you ever wondered what CESS is? Read their Gov Budget spending on SSA here.

It is really interesting to see government data being projected in a ‘BETTER’ form as compared to the DISE data which is horrendous.

Learnings

  •  Data is never ready. Present the data you have
  • Keep it simple.
  • Story should go along with the data. Easy to understand.

BUT, there is plenty of data to show that the situation is bad. So, a lot of implementers do not fancy ‘Data’ folks especially in development.

DAY 3 : Saturday Nov 19th, 2011 – IFMR on Finance

IFMR sessions were REALLY interesting. In one of the sessions by Mr.Harvey Koh,who specializes on Impact measurement, I learnt how the Monitor Group is working on disbursing loans to people with salaries of Rs.10,000-15,000.

The final session which I attended, was by Mr.Vikram Kapur an IAS officer from Tamil Nadu, India. He spoke about financing local/municipal government through a Municipal bond market. He presented a concept of moving away from grant by Central to State or State to Local government to ‘Public Funds’.

Ensures

  •  Completion of the project on tim
  • Governments need not wait for ‘Grants’ for every project.

Look through this entire presentation here The default rate has been ‘NIL’ in his experience. NIL!!

What are you trying to say?

Rural development planning in India is extremely strong compared to Urban development. In my visits, I have found staying in villages more comfortable. Though the quality of education & health should improve, I find governance largely better in villages than it is in cities.

The lowest percentage of voting from any ward in the last Tamil Nadu State Assembly Elections was from T.Nagar, Chennai at 63%. Chennai polled at a measly 66% compared to Karur at over 85%.  Most of us treat cities like villages and adopt a wrong model for development. NGO’s & government alike.

SIFI is an organization based out of Chennai.  It is important for us to understand the approach NGO’s take in their respective area of work. Increasingly, we would try short-listing NGO’s that specialize in Urban Development especially working with Citizens & communities as Tamil Nadu & India become more urbanized than ever.

The story of a little girl called ‘Chinnamma’

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I met Chinnamma when I had gone to visit activities of an NGO in Madurai (TN) called Littles Trust. Littles were celebrating their 9th anniversary and had assembled kids from all their centers across 16 villages around Madurai. There were about 265 children and 20 volunteers and management members present, but there was this one little girl with a wonderful smile expressing a real ‘free bird’ feeling who attracted me most and in the end even inspired a bit. Curious to know more about her, I went to Mrs. Vardhini (Founder – Littles Trust) and started speaking about Chinnamma. What started as a funny conversation with Mrs. Vardhini and Chinnamma turned out to be something extremely poignant and thought provoking for me.

Chinnamma was (and is) an extremely sharp and smart kid – with good skills in Mathematics. Ask her what is the balance when you have spent 2 rupees out of 10 rupees, she points out to you and laughs saying ‘idu kuda teriyada ungalukku??’ (Don’t you know even this?) J Not only could she answer the question but she could also make good fun of you, sensibly. But only later did I learn that Chinnamma was ‘disgraphic’ – she cannot write her own name on a piece of paper. We definitely have heard of dyslexia (thanks to Tare Zameen Par!) but how many of us have heard about disgraphia?

Chinnamma has been studying in class II for probably 3 consecutive years now. Chinnama does not care about all these, and all she wants to do is to enjoy and have a good life – be smiling as always as in this photograph. Mrs. Vardhini has very encouragingly agreed to coach Chinnamma in the coming academic year and make her appear in Class V examinations independently, given that schools have lost hope on Chinnamma.

Thinking about the larger picture, few thought-provoking aspects:

  1. Every problem has a solution and until you figure that one out, it is ok, don’t freak out and freak the rest of the World out. Thinking of the larger picture, your problem was probably nothing!
  2. ‘Thank god’ Chinnamma. There are still ‘real people’ like Mrs. Vardhini on earth to help you, unconditionally.
  3. Kudos to the spirit of Chinnamma – the ever smiling and I don’t care attitude is something I and a lot of people today in cities need to learn. Just imagine what would you have done, had you flunked in a single paper in your school examinations?? (leave flunking a year or worse 2 years).
  4. Everything serious need not be showcased in an emotional manner – I refer to my interaction with Mrs. Vardhini and her introduction of Chinnamma. It was just said as a matter of fact, with no desperate attempt to evoke any kind of emotion or sympathy/empathy in me.

- Sriram Sabhapathy; Visited on November 12, 2011

Here is what Madurai Messenger – Times of Madurai, had to say about Littles Trust.

EKAM foundation – A visit to Kanchi Kamakoti Child Trust Hospital, Nungambakkam

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The ‘visiting hour’ at the Kanchi Kamakoti Child Trust Hopsital (KKCTH) is between 4 & 6 in the evening. Mr.Krishnamoorthy of EKAM foundation was kind enough to arrange a visit. The hospital is situated in Nungambakkam, Chennai. Being quite close to my house, I was able to reach the place 15 minutes in advance. I sat down with a cup of coffee in the waiting hall only to see anxious faces staring at me.

After a few minutes, Krishnamoorthy arrived and took me to the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Before entering the unit, I washed my hands diligently, dusted myself off and removed my footwear.  As I stepped inside the unit, I was greeted with a distinct hum of the machines.  I saw two babies ‘Baby of Gomathi’ & ‘Baby of Saritha’. Neo-natal care refers to treatment of new-born babies. These babies were the size of my hand and were not even named. Both of them have been battling for their lives since they were born. 15 days or so. While one of them sleeping, the other was being administered an injection on her leg. The baby was screaming with extreme pain on her face. I had to look away.

The ventilator support on which the babies were on is rented at Rs.1000 per day. I was also informed the government hospitals are always under-equipped when it comes to ventilators. KKCTH is paid 50% of the costs incurred by EKAM Foundation. These costs would include medicines, transportation, equipment, consultation, doctor charges etc.

Trying to understand the situation

After discussing with the committed nurses at the NICU, I wanted to talk to the parents. I first met Mrs.Gomathi & Mr.Suresh who are from Kumaravadi village near Chengalpattu district. They told me that the baby was born in Chengalpattu Government Hospital (G.H.) where she had developed ‘Muchu thenaral’ or acute-breathing problem. Dr.Satya from the Chengalpattu Government Hospital tied them up with EKAM Foundation. I learnt from the mother that this her 4th baby and earlier three had died. The first at Chengalpattu G.H., the second in Egmore G.H. and the third in SRM hospital, Chennai. Each time the child was first admitted to the Chengalpattu G.H. I was ashamed that our society has made them go through an outrageously costly learning curve.  The entire operation would cost 3 Lakhs excluding hidden costs such as travel, food & accommodation. Mr. Suresh earns around Rs. 3000 per month as a driver, giving very little scope for insurance or savings.

Mrs.Saritha breaking down while talking

I also met Mrs.Saritha, another mother. Saritha & Dhandapani come from Pernamet village of Gudiyatham block, Vellore District. Dhandapani works as a coolie & makes Rs.120 per day. They had to sell off their TVS bike for paying the expenses incurred on food & travel. They have 3 other children who are studying in Pernamet government school. Mrs.Saritha did break down while talking to me wondering how she would manage the food & travel.

At the end of it, I was quite disturbed. Firstly, that the value that we attach for life is very less. 3 babies of Mrs.Gomathy had died before she found a way to keep one of her child alive. I am terribly ashamed if a mother cannot give birth to a healthy child in a government hospital. Secondly, our Healthcare system is not even remotely inclusive. I would indeed term it as being ‘merciless’ on the poor. Most of them are afraid to talk to doctors and have little idea about the medication or the illness.

Just after finishing the last paragraph, I called Mr.Krishnamoorthy to enquire about the babies. Mrs.Gomathy has gone back home with her baby & Mrs.Saritha has started breast-feeding her baby. It brings a wide smile to my face. I am indeed happy that SIFI is supporting an organization like EKAM Foundation to deliver quality healthcare to the poorest.