Archive for April, 2010
Enterprises We Work With: Coir Atlas
In this series on the various enterprises Villgro works with, we asked our Villgro Fellows 2010, to write about the social enterprises they have been assigned to during their time here. Jeanne Chen reports from Jamshedpur where she is working with Coir Atlas. This post is also available on her personal blog, Crossworld.
Given that today is Earth Day, it seems an appropriate time to introduce Coir Atlas, the green innovation company to which I dedicate my waking hours. The product is a simple one, that serves a niche market, but which has an amazing potential to impact the environment and lives. Let me explain:
Context:
India’s steel industry is the third largest in the world today at 80 million tons per year, which is expected to grow to 120 over the next 2 years. About 50% of these are flat sheets and coils, which are transported by road, rail, and sea to their destinations. An estimated 400,000 trees are required each year to sustain the packaging needs of the Indian steel industry and this number will grow in correlation to the growth of steel production.
It takes 20 years for the trees to mature enough to suit the requirements of the industry – at 400,000 trees annually this is a highly unsustainable situation. Procurement officers of steel plants are having an increasingly difficult time obtaining the needed timber as forests disappear.
In a few developed countries, the steel industry has looked to create synthetic alternatives to wood pallets (e.g., hard plastics). But even these synthetic alternatives come at a hefty price to the environment, because what happens after their useful life is finished?
So, Coir Atlas was born as the all natural, sustainable alternative for “packaging” wood. Its composition of bamboo and jute are completely bio-degradable and eco-friendly.
What is it?
Coir Atlas is a range of products, made of bamboo and jute, which are meant to replace the timber used during the packaging of steel for transportation. The main product is essentially an imitation wood log.
Cross sections of bamboo are placed in a row and enveloped in layers of jute fabric. The end result is used like a wooden log, where steel sheets or plates can be placed on top.
Coir Atlas supporting steel plates
Other products under development include a bamboo pallet that will substitute wood pallets and could have a wider application beyond the steel industry.
Why bamboo?
I often get asked the question of how using bamboo is any more sustainable than wood and the answer boils down to: bamboo is not a tree, it is grass and therefore its growth is different. Bamboo grows 6x faster than wood, so while it takes 20 years to grow a tree to industry standards, it takes 4 years for bamboo to become viable. You can also grow 20x the amount of bamboo on the same amount of land as compared to timber.
The kicker is that bamboo forests actually die if not harvested regularly, so by harvesting mature bamboo, it actually helps to maintain the forest. And given that India’s 10,000 hectares of bamboo forest are underutilized, it’s actually beneficial to find more uses of bamboo.
*Did you know that bamboo has a tensile strength of 26,000, which is stronger than steel? One Coir Atlas unit of 4 bamboo sections can support up to 50 tons of pressure!
What is the potential impact?
The dual mission of the company is to have a positive environmental as well as social impact. The environmental impact is quite clear – save trees by using a more sustainable alternative. The potential to save 400,000 trees is quite encouraging.
The social impact is less obvious, but just as important. The design of Coir Atlas is simple enough that given a week’s training, unskilled women can easily be taught to make the units. An experienced woman can make hundreds of units per day, which translates into an average of Rs. 300 in earnings. That’s 3x the amount provided by government employment programs (i.e., NREG) and a decent wage for her family. What’s more, many steel plants are located in the poorer regions of the country where rural unemployment is high. Jharkhand, which is home to both Tata and Bokaro Steel, the two largest steel plants in the country, is also one of the poorest states. The creation of small cottage industry groups to produce Coir Atlas would have a significant impact on the lives of the people in the area as well.
Where we are at:
While Coir Atlas sounds like a dreamboat, there are many challenges that we face in dealing with an industry that is slow to change and isn’t well known for innovation. The steel industry is an insulated group of target customers that is difficult to break through. Even when contacts are made, it’s difficult to convince the various chains of command that they should take the risk and try something new when the old ways work just fine. The mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” can be difficult to overcome. The inertia against which we’re fighting is huge, but slowly the tides are turning.
Most recently we received an order from JSW, part of the Jindal Group, to begin using Coir Atlas at their Bellary plants in Karnataka. The Jindals are particularly forward thinking and progressive with their CSR initiative, which is rare in this industry. They see and understand the potential benefits of saving trees and increasing employment. I see this as a milestone for us, as we continue to push into this industry. And so we keep prodding and pushing to move these tons of resistance.
Spark A Rural Revolution in 10 Months!
Villgro Fellowship Programme programme provides you an opportunity to do this!
What does the Villgro Fellowship offer you?
The Villgro Fellowship gives you an exciting opportunity to work for 10 months both independently and alongside Villgro professionals.
During the program, you will contribute to rural prosperity through:
- Applying your entrepreneurial skills to enable the successful commercialization of an innovation
- Mentoring and engaging with an Innovator through practical, imaginative and decisive leadership
- Acquiring an in-depth understanding of the innovation and social enterprise sectors
- Developing specific expertise in technology development and business planning
- Learning and implementing industry best practices
- Gaining knowledge and familiarity with Villgro and other social enterprise models through structured monthly learning sessions
Who are Villgro Fellows?
Villgro Fellows are passionate and motivated leaders who want to contribute to ending rural poverty. Most often, fellows are:
- Professionals with corporate business experience who want to have a social impact
- Engineering or agriculture studies graduates with 3-5 years of work experience who want to apply their skills to practical solutions
- Social entrepreneurs who wish develop their capacity in a challenging environment
- Emerging entrepreneurs who aspire to understand and work in the rural sector
Additionally, demonstrated success / experience in the following areas are highly valued:
- Product development, Project Management or Business planning
- Venture capital investing
- Individuals who have: Led change management, Executed on business plans, Championed entrepreneurial initiatives
- Adaptability to new cultures / environments is a must
How to apply?
Send us a statement of purpose (not more than 500 words), and an updated CV to fellowship@Villgro.org
Dead line for applications: April 21, 2010
For more details about fellowship programme visit www.villgro.org
Notes from the field: Clean Water Initiatives
Continuing our series on private sector initiatives, we have Jeanne Chen, a Villgro Fellow share her perspective on clean water initiatives by the Naandi Foundation and the Byrraju Foundation, both based in Hyderabad. The original article, published on her blog Crossworlds, is featured below.
Yesterday (March 22nd) was World Water day and my recent visits to the field made me pause and think about the tremendous strides that have been made in parts of India to bring clean water to every village. Just last week, the Villgro fellows were in Hyderabad, visiting the rural water plants of Naandi and Byrraju Foundations. Both organizations have similar operations of establishing water filtration plants in rural villages, which provide clean water for consumption at a price of ~Rs. 2 per day for each family (assuming a consumption of 12L).
How it works:
1. Villages demonstrate that they want and can support a water plant by collecting a portion of the funds to contribute to the building costs, which also creates a sense of ownership
2. Naandi and Byrraju Foundations conduct due diligence on the village including a feasibility study and evaluation of need
3. Local panchayats (village heads) allocate land or a building for the installation of the water plant; Naandi and Byrraju work with the community to plan the building to make sure that the community’s needs are incorporated
4. Naandi and Byrraju raise the additional funds for the cost of building and installation of the water filtration system
5. Local people are trained and employed to be the plant supervisors and managers (Naandi’s model has 2 employees per plant vs. 4 employees per Byrraju plant)
6. One employee serves as a sales and awareness building representative, who encourages village households to use the facility
7. Each household pays an initial ~Rs.100 – 150 for a 12L or 20L water jug as a membership fee and then pays a monthly ~Rs. 60 for daily water usage; purchases are tracked with a membership card
8. Operational costs of employee salaries and filtration system maintenance are covered by the pay-per-use model
Best Practices
Byrraju Water Plant
Visiting both facilities, there were also a few best practices which I think are worth sharing:
1. Instill practices to encourage usage of clean water – Naandi’s membership card has 30 slots for each day of the month. When households come to collect their water each day, the appropriate slot is marked off. Households pay Rs.60 for the monthly card of 30 days and cannot roll over any missed days. According to health studies, 12L is the amount that an average household needs to consume daily, so the objective here is to encourage households to consumer only clean water by forcing them to collect 12L per day or losing that option value.
2. Make it a water party - the water plant in Nellutla that we visited was a community center as much as it was a clean water source. The multiple taps and self-service model encouraged villagers to come in the mornings and evenings around the same time to commune as well as to collect their water. The plant was also located right by the village temple. The village also hosted parties around the water plant, since it was centrally located and was a natural gathering place.
3. Increase transparency and accountability of the NGO – at the Nellutla water plant, there was a prominent plaque on the building displaying the donors who contributed to the building. But what was more remarkable was the display of the responsible parties and their contact information. The manager of Naandi’s water project was clearly listed along with his mobile number. Any time that the villagers had a problem with the plant, they knew who to call.
It may sound simple, but it is truly impressive what Naandi and Byrraju have done in just the last few years. Naandi aims to be in 400 villages by the end of the year, which at an estimated 2,000 people per village could potentially impact 800K people! Both Naandi and Byrraju currently operate in Andhra Pradesh, which has one of the country’s greatest needs for clean water. The lessons learned there will certainly need to be brought to other states in India – there are still millions of people waiting for access to clean water.
Notes from the field of Education
The Villgro fellows spent time out on the field two weeks ago looking at various private sector interventions in the field of education, healthcare, water and sanitation. Their visit to Hyderabad took them to the Naandi Foundation, where they learned more about their Ensuring Children Learn Program. Villgro Fellow Mayank Jaiswal tells us more about the program.
The Naandi Foundation’s Ensuring Children Learn Program is based on the approach that every child can learn. The approach is called Cooperative and Reflective Learning approach. The classrooms used are learning-oriented and child focused; the teachers act as facilitators and not lecturers. The ECL program works with government schools to ensure that students enrolled receive a minimum level of competency in language, mathematics and social sciences.
To ensure that children don’t drop out of school because of poor grades, Naandi invested in developing a curriculum that suits ‘B’ level students. Typically this target group consists of 3rd, 4th and 5th graders who are on par with a 2nd grader in terms of their skill set. Recognizing that students would not have all day to be brought up to speed, Naandi developed an integrated remedial curriculum incorporating Language, Social sciences and Science. It is annoted to the school curriculum books, and is spread across 3 levels.
At Level 1, the assumption is a 3rd, 4th and 5th graders who enter the system have skills of a 2nd grader. Level 1 A and B are courses that act as a bridge. The course brings the students on to a level of basic mathematics and language.
At Level 2, the curriculum is integrated for a specific grade’s curriculum. Each chapter has 6 modules, which use different teaching techniques – a picture card, a vocabulary card, reading card, and so on. Each module is referenced with chapters from the state curriculum.
Level 3 focuses on the state curriculum tests.
ECL employs the Cooperative and Reflective Learning Approach which maximizes the scarcest of resources – the teacher. In this approach a teacher selects a leader in a group of 5 children. The leader usually understand the subjects well and he then makes sure that the group is doing the tasks that it is supposed to as assigned by the teacher. This decreases the load of the teacher and at the same time the students learn leadership.
Instruction at all 3 levels uses the physical infrastructure of the school for 2 hours after regular schooling hours.
The ECL is headed by 6 Project officers who in turn supervise the work of 500 community activists. These activists, with a graduate degree in Arts or Education are trained by the ARCs, who are in turn trained by the Naandi Material Development Team.
Each Community Activist maintains a register of what they did each day, the performance of each student in state tests, attendance and so on. This acts as a handy indicator of the student’s progress.
The approach followed by Naandi will have a wide ranging impact. It will be pivotal in bridging the gap between ‘documented’ literacy levels and ‘actual’ literacy levels, thus leading to a betterment in the quality of life of India’s young population.