Two Community Initiatives for Poverty Reduction and Empowerment

1. Two Community Initiatives for Poverty Reduction and Empowerment Min Bista Programme Specialist for Education & He Pei National Programme Officer UNESCO Beijing

2. Scope of Presentation • The Barefoot College India • Microfranchising in Latin America, Africa and Asia

3. India’s Barefoot College: An Alternative Learning Institution • Established in February 1971 as a place of learning and a centre of development • External experts can do little in community development • In development, there are no experts • Solutions to poverty lie within the community • Any village member can acquire the knowledge and skills • For the people, with the people and by the people

4. Men are restless, ambitious, compulsively mobile, and want a certificate • Training grandmothers is much easier than training men • The college trains local people as doctors, teachers, engineers, architects, designers, mechanics, communicators and accountants • Women, without degrees and many without the ability to read, do incredible things at the Barefoot College.

5. Illiterate women have fabricated a sophisticated solar cooker, and they make 60 meals twice a day using this technology • Women use their own unique technology to waterproof the roof, and “since 1986, it hasn’t leaked” • The college has an illiterate grandmother who works as a dentist, taking care of the teeth of 7,000 children • Every 5 years, the children elect someone between 6-14 years old to serve as prime minister, complete with a cabinet and the duty to supervise 150 schools; one girl who was elected went on to win the World’s Children’s Prize

6. The Barefoot Engineers • Solar-powered cookers are constructed to break dependence on wood or costly kerosene. • Some lessons at the college are recorded and uploaded to the internet. • There is no hierarchy: everyone eats sitting on the floor and no one receives a salary of more than $150 per month. • Importantly, there is financial transparency. Staff bank accounts are published, as are company finances.

7. First woman who graduated as a solar engineer • Fi=

8. Sophisticated equipment A pioneering solar engineer helps install and maintain solar panels that keep the local villages supplied with electricity. Solar panels in Tilonia produce electricity for most homes, besides feeding barefoot college facilities that include 20 computers, a telephone exchange, 700 lights, fans, a photocopying machine and an audiovisual system.

9. Recycled reports An artist from the Barefoot College, prepares masks for plays and puppet shows with material from recycled World Bank reports.

10. Drop-outs, wash-outs The college gives simple school lessons in reading, writing and accounting to adults and children through its night schools. Night schools impart skills that people need in their everyday lives

11. Female strength Women gather in a village square to raise their voices in protest against cases of rape. Girls heavily outnumber boys in the night schools and many of the engineers trained in the college are women. Women mobilize support for community development initiatives.

12. The success of the college is being replicated, and its impact extends beyond India’s borders. There are now at least 20 Barefoot College field centers scattered throughout the country. • Semi-literate middle-aged women have traveled from places as divergent as Afghanistan, Cameroon, Gambia, Mali, and Sierra Leone to develop the skills to solar electrify their own villages.

13. Microfranchising: creating wealth at the bottom of the pyramid • Has its roots in traditional franchising (TF) • Relies on a business model that has been tested and proven to work • With the proven model, franchisees can operate subsequent outlets at lower risk • The franchisor provides training and support • The franchisor has better negotiating power with the suppliers and is able to reach economies of scale in several areas

14. Microfranchising already successful social entrepreneurs together with people who are motivated to create their own small enterprises but who often lack skills and capital that can lead to success • Together they can grow the overall impact of a business and create a local ownership and management opportunity • Different from franchising in size and scale, MF has been a powerful economic accelerator in the developing world

15. ‘Micro’ refers to _ Little capital • Low income customers • Low investments • Initial investments needed may range from almost nothing to $1500 (in contrast to $3000 to set up a shop as an individual entrepreneur or $25,000 to start a fast food franchise)

16. Can be beneficial in economies where educational options are limited, markets are less developed, and there is a weak business community • For people who are just getting by, do not want to invest time and resources to test new ideas and do not have the means to make investments • MF reduces the risk to the microfranchisees because the business model is proven

17. Example of Famous Microfranchising in Ghana In 2005, Fan Milk employed 350 people directly and 8000 people indirectly, of which 7000 are street vendors. Each day a street vendor buys $33 of inventory and can make a profit of $5.50, which is higher than the average income of Ghana $1.90. All vendors are required to save 0.55 per day, almost $200 a year, which Fan Milk saves in a bank. The saving is available to the microfranchisees once they leave the company.

18. Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL'S) PROJECT SHAKTI • HUL, the Indian subsidiary of the multinational company Unilever whose nutrition, hygiene and personal care products and brands are widely recognized worldwide. • HUL launched Project Shakti in 2001, a Base of the Pyramid initiative for rural women, or Shakti Entrepreneurs (SE), who sell HUL products such as soap, toothpaste, and detergent, in their villages and nearby communities for a profit. As of now there are more than 40,000 SEs covering over 100,000 villages throughout India.

19. Members of the Shakti network penetrate and reach out to some of the most unfrequented corners of rural India. • Project Shakti creates income generating capabilities for underprivileged rural women, by providing a sustainable micro-enterprise opportunity, and improves rural living standards through health and hygiene awareness. • HUL claims the creation of 100,000 SEs covering 500,000 villages and touching the lives of 600 million rural people.

20. VISIONSPRING • VisionSpring (VS), formerly called Scojo Foundation, is a nonprofit social enterprise that reduces poverty and generates opportunity by enabling partners to diagnose minor eyesight problems and sell affordable reading glasses that correct those problems. • VisionSpring targets rural areas with the explicit goals of increasing the number of people with access to reading glasses, creating jobs for local entrepreneurs and facilitating access to comprehensive eye care.

21. To scale rapidly, VS uses a variety of different channel approaches, including Vision Entrepreneurs (micro-franchisees) dedicated solely to selling VS products and a network of partners that carry multiple products. • VisionSpring has also developed a referral network for people with vision disorders that can not be helped by reading glasses alone. • It provides a "business in a box" along with training for rural vendors, who learn to use simple testing charts for vision and then make appropriate spectacles.

22. The vendors' cost of production is $2 per pair of spectacles and they sell these at $3 each. This is affordable for Indian villagers, yet yields a decent profit for VisionSpring, intermediaries and rural vendors. • Hence the scheme is viable and can be scaled up to cover thousands, possibly millions of vendors across developing countries. • Hopes to sell one million spectacles by 2016.

23. Village Phone Microfranchising in Indonesia A local small-business enterpreneur purchases a pre-packaged kit that includes a mobile phone with a micro-finance loan and then re-sells the ‘airtime minutes’ to neighbours. The mobile phone serves as a platform to provide additional applications and services to further increase their revenues and margines One example of its services is called ‘Day Job Search,’ which connects the poor in Indonesia to informal sector job opportunities, increasing the chances of stable income for the household. Through subscription, job seekers pay less than 30 cents per week in order to receive SMS with a job listing that meets 3 criteria: location, specified job category and preferred salary range. The programme has recruited 6,876 VPOs serving more than 600000 customers. Owned by women mostly. 57 percent participants have moved above the poverty line in 4 months (USD 2.50 per day)

24. Role of CLCs • Information (about skills training, financing, materials, market, franchising opportunity) • Gatekeeping (a link between businesses and local people) • Training and capacity development • Risk analysis (needs, demand, capacity, constraints) • Create microfranchise as per participants’ needs and demands or to invest in existing micro-enterprise and make it suitable for replication (or help set up individual businesses)

25. Continued research • Protection of members against fraud or business failure • Social networking • Identify groups in need of support

26. Research