Day Two in the Dirty South

This ain't the crunk dirty south. It's the dirty one.

Southern India, to me, looks and feels very much like Northern India (except for the weather, which is about 35°F less soul crushing). Although I know that it only seems like the same because I never got to fully understand what the hell the north was all about so coming to the south feels abit like visiting Rajasthan 2.0. More on the good old north south divide to come, but for now I'll just type up some purdy words bouts the ornery projects our group members are a hankerin' to git started on here in the Dirty South:

1. Creating a transition plan for waste management companies who are started/run by our NGO. So far, the waste management firms Hand in Hand runs have a pretty solid business plan but no exit strategy- they want to be able to give ownership to the locals.

2. Creating a report evaluating/looking into the effectiveness and results of giving out vocational training alongside microloans (loans to poor entrepreneurs who do not have any collateral).

3. Assessing the state of so called bridge schools which try to transition and prep child laborers back into normal schooling (like the one i taught at in the summer)

4. Developing a pricing scheme for rural hospitals to become more financially independant because Hand in Hand is now worried their clinics are too dependent on government subsidies

5. Figure out how to deliver IT services and computer literacy to the7000 villages worth of rural Indian's who've never used a PC before. And make a business plan that impoverished women can follow which delivers on that goal.

Also, the side projects are to found an NGO in another state of India and start a Microfinance program in Iowa City, for which there is about $75 thousand in funding that is just waiting for our business plan telling them how to use it.

Some more side projects to be had are a possible University of Iowa research partnership with the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology on looking into the long term health benefits of giving out micro entrepreneurship loans to the poor. And another thing is that we are trying to pioneer a sort of social networking site for social entrepreneurship (think Facebook for groups of people that want to fix the world). As you can imagine, things are quite organic/dynamic/hectic with all these side projects flying around.


Update: It seems as though our Hand in Hand initiatives are seemingly more complex than I thought when I typed this (on my second day here). I guess there isn't any reason for them not to be, changing the world isn't an easy business. More to come on the more intricate details of the projects soon.