Talk with Johanna Mair | Example of Gram Vikas
Johanna Mair, Professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin
Gram Vikas based in Orissa, India works with mission to bring equality and empower rural womens. Gram Vikas works in the village only if everyone in the village is on board which means that the village, across cast, across gender, has to be on board for Gram Vikas to actually work with them.
Gram Vikas started with good intention of helping people in rural areas. But they soon had to understand and learn to twist & tweak their intervention, their innovation to the needs of the population they serve.
Initially, they started with providing irrigation to land owners and helping poor farmers. But they learned very quickly that once benefitted from irrigation, land owners don’t stick to their commitment of sharing the benefits. Then they tried to bring dairy products, dairy farming to very remote villages, tribal villages. But they found that tribes actually do not drink milk because it is against their beliefs.
What they do today is they work on water and sanitation as a way to actually break down power structures in these rural villages. Water and sanitation is one of those areas that disadvantage women a lot. Having access to actually running water and toilets, therefore, provides a whole new kind of social dimension to their lives.
Gram Vikas based in Orissa, India works with mission to bring equality and empower rural womens. Gram Vikas works in the village only if everyone in the village is on board which means that the village, across cast, across gender, has to be on board for Gram Vikas to actually work with them.
Gram Vikas started with good intention of helping people in rural areas. But they soon had to understand and learn to twist & tweak their intervention, their innovation to the needs of the population they serve.
Initially, they started with providing irrigation to land owners and helping poor farmers. But they learned very quickly that once benefitted from irrigation, land owners don’t stick to their commitment of sharing the benefits. Then they tried to bring dairy products, dairy farming to very remote villages, tribal villages. But they found that tribes actually do not drink milk because it is against their beliefs.
What they do today is they work on water and sanitation as a way to actually break down power structures in these rural villages. Water and sanitation is one of those areas that disadvantage women a lot. Having access to actually running water and toilets, therefore, provides a whole new kind of social dimension to their lives.
This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘social entrepreneurship’ offered by Copenhagen Business School through Coursera (2014).
Comments
Post a Comment