The group was fun to work with.
Here are a group of villages describing their adoption of agricultural techniques featured in the videos.
Archive for the ‘India’ Category
Groups shots in Rural Orissa
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010Trial in Orissa
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010Spoke with Joe Madiath, of Gram Vikas last night. They are ready to conduct a trial but we need to raise the funds.
www.gramvikas.org/
Skoll Forum, Pratham and Digital Green
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010I depart Monday April 12th for a trip to London, Mumbai, Bohpal (Indore) to visit these 3 places..
http://www.skollworldforum.com/about/what/
Each year, around 800 of the world’s most impactful and influential social entrepreneurs and key partners gather at the University of Oxford to exchange ideas, contacts and information.Speakers and delegates arrive with the aim of using their ideas and organisations to shape the world for the better.Speakers and attendees are drawn from social, academic, finance, corporate and policy sectors.
http://www.pratham.org/
Pratham is the largest non governmental organization working to provide quality education to the underprivileged children of India. Pratham was established in 1994 to provide education to the children in the slums of Mumbai city. Since then, the organization has grown both in scope and geographical coverage.
http://www.digitalgreen.org/
Digital Green is a young and dynamic organization that uses tools of information and communication technology for social change. It creates enabling environments for communities to adopt new and better behaviors to bring about sustainable change in the quality of life among populations living at the base of social pyramid. In its first intervention, it demonstrated immense potential in improving the lives of small and marginal farmers in a highly cost effective manner.
thoughts from the field
Monday, August 3rd, 2009It would have been easy if I came here to achieve something incremental. To fulfill penance so I could go on with my life (to earn a better spot in heaven). But it just seems like I was made to come to these places to give help to the teachers. There is no unit of satisfaction, there is only seemingly endless opportunity to stem the suffering in the coming years by helping the teachers and trainers to enlighten those who are trapped in an unimaginable deep hole where things seem to have failed. A hole in humanity, blight on our collective sole, a broken down place of washed out dreams. A place we’d never wish upon our worst enemies. A place we’d is ashamed to show visitors from another planet.
It would have been easy if I came here to achieve something inc
It would have been easy if I came here to achieve something incremental. To fulfill pentence so I could go on with my life (to earn a better spot in heaven). But it just seems like I was made to come to these places to give help to the teachers. There is no unit of satisfaction, there is only seemingly endless opportunity to stem the suffering in the coming years by helping the teachers and trainers to enlighten those who are trapped in an unimaginable deep hole where things seem to have failed. A hole in humanity, blight on our collective sole, a broken down place of washed out dreams. A place we’d never wish upon our worst enemies. A place we’d is ashamed to show visitors from another planet.
If only I were guilty of the fame I am accused of seeking. All I’d need to do is snap a few photos and leave. If only I were guilty of profiting from a market opportunity. A mid life crisis.
There are so many distractions from this (personal income, corporate structure, non-profit status, meetings to set, goals to achieve, mission statements to fulfill, people to pursuade, grants to seek, donations to solicit. All this time the people are trapped, while we wither and waste the hours preparing to help them forgetting about them, going on as if they really aren’t suffering all that badly. wondering if those who believe it can’t be solved are right. Wondering if the world can accommodate 1 billion people moving from $1 a day to $2 a day. How would the social structure change? Where would they work or live? It is tempting to assume that achievement is a fleeting notion at best.
But some of us (too few I suppose) are haunted by the possibility that humanity can achieve true greatness, not by sending people into space, but by rescuing people on the edge.
The edge near the slums is the place I am drawn to most, where there is deep suffering on a massive scale. Where the women was their cloths I waste water, where the children seem unaware of their poorness. Where the crippled and not insulted by the term and have no wheelchairs, no less a ramp.
It is where humanity has failed and continues to fail each day these people go on with so little hope. Where they live in the dust or the mud. Where it is often too hot or too cold. Where the sick have no nursing or drug store. Where there is little room, tiny dwellings and crowding. Where a family lives in a dwelling not quite as good as a camping tent.
fleeting
Friday, February 27th, 2009Things are going well here in Bangalore. I was in Lucknow until yesterday Everything has gone without a hitch.
I am meeting many NGOs “on the fly” that I didn’t even know about when I departed Chico.
This is my first trip with extensive independent traveling. I am spending sometimes just a few hours with people, rather than being hosted for the entire trip.
I can’t speak even one word of any local language.
Yesterday while traveling in something that the driver thought was a taxi (looked like a really old unreliable regular car to me) I realized how vulnerable I am. If I lost my mobile phone or my wallet, life would suddenly become very complex.
When I arrive at the NGOs they see the potential of the technology. One NGO is really focused upon slums and they can see using portable media players for training on solid waste management (where to put the poop).
The people are very kind here. Most of the time, I am the only white guy around.
I enjoyed shopping for 2′ X 3′ solar panels in a crowded market and then transporting them back to an office as a passenger on the back of a motorcycle. Other times, while in meetings, I can sense that people are thinking “What is this guy really doing here?” and then near the middle of the meeting I can sense them realize that I have come to help with no strings attached.
I have visited many classrooms using radios or TVs. Seeing the hope on the faces of the teachers and the students is heart warming.
The poverty is gut wrenching.
Beggars come to the car door when we stop for very long.
In the slums people, live in a space about 10X10 made of tarps, thatch, tin or whatever they can scrounge.
I saw a lady at my hotel in Lucknow picking through the garbage which was so putrid that my dog wouldn’t be have touched it.
Another day I watched two ladies washing their laundry in waste water that was running down the street. The water was filthy yet more clean than their laundry.
Poverty like this is a failure of humanity.
I am sure that God is disappointed in us.
Preparing for our first trip to India
Monday, February 2nd, 2009In preparing for our first trip to India we have been very busy.
We are working closely with Randy Wang of the Digital Study Hall. We exchanged several e-mails in an effort to fine tune the PMP kit comprised of a screenless PMP and a pico projector. This will be the world’s first deployment of a Pico projector in ICT for Development. We plan to arrive in Lucknow in late February.
We spoke with Randy’s colleagues at Digital Green Kentaro Toyama & Rikin Gandi of Microsoft Research. We would like to visit one of their intervention sites where they help advise farmers in Jharkhand and/or Orissa.
We have been in contact with EDC in an effort to visit their T4 projects. Things are not going as smoothly as we had hoped.
We are in contact with Aakash Sethi Executive Director of QUEST. We hope to visit him in Bangalore.
Dr. Lakshmi N BALAJI, Head of Strategic Planning for UNICEF has introduced us to someone at Education section in UNICEF, India and Community Systems Foundation. We hope to visit their colleagues in Bangalore and Lucknow.
We received and tested half a terabyte screenless PMP. An incredible value at $200.
In other news…
We registered to attend the Skoll World Forum in Oxford.
We submitted a proposal for an OMPT Demo at the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009)
http://www.ictd2009.org/
We began working with California State University Chico on a testing and research project surrounding the technology that OMPT relies upon; crank battery chargers, low powered audio amplifiers and the chipsets that do the work inside of PMPs.
We participated in the Vital Wave Consulting Emerging Market Speaker Series entitled Low-cost Computing Device Landscape.
We are persuading them to begin tracking “ultra low cost non-computing devices” like PMPs.
We learned that the Lifeline Adapter is working as planned at the EDC project in Somalia.
We received quotes for Chinese foot powered battery charger.
Beginning with Digital Study Hall
Monday, January 19th, 2009Update on our work with Randy Wang of the Digital Study Hall:
We are collaborating with DSH in an effort to increase reliability, reduce complexity and cost. We are now testing a display-less PMP and a pico video projector for them. We plan to deliver the products in Lucknow, India and learn more about their accomplishments.
While traveling through India we plan to visit some of the T4 sites established by USAID and EDC.
http://ies.edc.org/T4India/overview/
We also plan to visit Aakash Sethi of The Quality Education and Skills Training (QUEST) Alliance
http://quest.eeaonline.org/india/quest.asp
We may get a chance to visit with Audio Green (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/india/projects/digitalgreen/audio.htm). They are working in south Karnataka, but recently expanded their pilot operations in Jharkhand and Orissa.
It would be nice to visit the OLPC site using Cow Power.