Drew Jensen is Global Citizen’s 2015 Curtis Scholar. The scholarship provides an immersive experience highlighting effective development programs focused on sanitation, girls and women, and education. Drew is traveling with Global Poverty Project staff, meeting key partners and working in India. Below are photos and blog entries from Drew’s journey. This is day 5, follow the rest of his trip here.
Greetings again from New Delhi!
As I'm nearing the end of my time here in India, I've tried to start thinking about some of the overarching themes and conclusions that I've taken out of this opportunity. In pondering this question, I've found the most important lesson to be how complex the relationships are between the many variables in the problem of extreme poverty.
The link between issues like education and women's rights is pretty obvious: if women aren't as highly valued as men in a society, it's much less likely that girls will finish school than boys. That relationship is pretty readily apparent. Yet, I believe it's a common misconception that issues like education and sanitation have little to do with each other, as they appear to exist in very different spheres. This is untrue. Not only are these two issues connected, but they are connected to literally every other issue that impoverished people deal with. When people talk about ending extreme poverty, they tend to look at the parts rather than the whole. How are children in the slums going to complete school if they're constantly battling illness from unsanitary water? Or maybe some of these children have access to clean water, but they need to walk a mile and a half each way to get to it. Where do these children find time for their studies? These relationships, at least to me, are less obvious.
This seems to indicate that effective solutions for eradicating extreme poverty are much more complex than many might initially anticipate. In considering this personal revelation, my visit to SWECHHA could not have been more perfectly timed.
SWECHHA is an organization that was founded on the basis of three core principles: education, environment, and enterprise. In a global society that often values intense focus on a single area of expertise, SWECHHA is an organization that operates contrary to "conventional wisdom"--an attribute that I see as innovative. Considering the multi-faceted approach that Global Citizen takes in their fight against poverty, there seems to be a lot of common interest on which a productive partnership could be based.
Heading to SWECHHA
While the primary interest of SWECHHA is fostering socially responsible development, founder Vimlendu Jha recognizes the vitality of resources in any effort to build a better world. SWECHHA utilizes grants and partnerships with other organizations to fund their organization, but they don't rely on them. Mr. Jha has also developed socially conscious businesses that seek to both empower individuals in poverty and supplement the non-profit work SWECHHA does in India. These businesses are based on using the skills that individuals already have, while also helping them develop new skills.
One such enterprise that SWECHHA operates is Million Kitchen, a business that allows individuals, frequently women in poverty, to utilize a skill they already possess: amazing cooking. The idea started as a program called Lunchbox 17, where women in a specific slum of Delhi were approached and asked to cook meals that SWECHHA would help them sell. After the success of this idea, SWECHHA decided to scale the idea to a mobile platform that could be used in a number of other locales. Now anyone in a number of Delhi neighborhoods can download the Million Kitchen App and upload dishes they've prepared, which can then be purchased and delivered to other users of the app. This business model is reflective of another trend emerging in India, wherein most people are gaining their first access to the Internet via mobile devices rather than the traditional PC or Laptop.
SWECHHA also operates an online store that allows individuals to sell goods like wallets, purses, vases, and countless other items, all of which have been made using recycled material. The proceeds from these businesses then in-part go towards funding educational programs and environmental advocacy initiatives.
Touring the SWECHHA office.
All of these businesses and social programs operate out of India's first fully up-cycled office. Witnessing the ingenuity of this organization's diverse approach to improving our society and lifting people out of poverty was truly a transformational experience. Visit swechha.in for more information on the phenomenal work Vimlendu and his team are doing.
Vimlendu Jha and I after he showed me around SWECHHA's office.