Prerna announced the acceptance of nominations for the 2008 Manthan Awards back in March, and Livemint.com now provides highlights of the innovative winners. The full list of winners can be found here.

On first glance, I was amazed by the sheer number of categories (there are 13) and the diversity of tech products out there. Here are a few personal favorites, but I encourage you to look through the list to get the full view:

• Wall newspaper – broadcast sheet pasted on the walls of milk cooperatives and Panchayat buildings in 40,000 villages, targeting the rural and low literate
• Safal National Exchange of India Limited (SNX) – pursuing a One India One Market vision, creating an opportunity for small farmers to gain access to national markets through negotiating prices in a transparent way that eliminates as many intermediaries as possible
• Lipikaar – an e-localization method that allows typing in 16 different languages using a normal keyboard, making it extremely user-friendly for non-English speakers
• Learn with Fun – making maths an enjoyable subject through satelitte communications in a vernacular language, to reach out to rural areas where drop out rates are high

There are seemingly endless ways to marry technology and development, and these winners provide just a taste of the current landscape.

Today, October 15th, is Blog Action Day, and as Aishwarya mentioned before, the theme this year happens to be “poverty” – a topic that TC-I touches on in all of its posts and through the belief that social innovation and social enterprises can contribute to alleviating poverty.

TC-I is rife with examples of how social enterprises work in action, and this week’s announcement from the Members Project American Express competition includes yet another success story from India. The Akshaya Patra Foundation was a finalist in the competition, receiving $100,000 towards its goal of feeding 1 million children daily.

The impact of the foundation is described:

For less than $30 a year, a child in India can receive a school lunch for the 220-day whole year. These programs have resulted in greater attendance, reduced drop out and truancy rates, and better cognitive development for children – often by 10-20%. It will also shield many children from the impact of these tough economic times and the rising cost of food around the world.

WIth organizations like this, large-scale solutions to lessen poverty are becoming more and more successful. TC-I encourages its readers to get involved with the issues surrounding poverty, both through Blog Action Day and in countless other ways.

Your daily dose of headlines:

• Technology: Trak.in reports that a DesiWiki will help Indian start ups to increase their knowledge base on the technical aspects of starting a new venture.
• Education: In order to encourage students to stay in school, the government approved a merit scholarship that will award deserving students of lower income sections with Rs 6,000 annually.
• SMEs: Indo American Chamber of Commerce (IACC), in association with the World Trade Centre (WTC), aims to host the fifth Indo-US economic summit in September 2008 to strengthen links between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and USA and create opportunities for them to work with each other in areas of mutual interest, access technologies, form joint ventures and sign trading arrangements. [Source: Business Standard]

According to international NGO WaterAid, India has the second worst sanitation access in the world, accounting for 43% of the world’s unserved sanitation population.  Moreover, as per a UNICEF country survey from 2004, rural areas of India are particularly lacking in sanitation infrastructure, with only 33% of villages using “adequate sanitation facilities.”

The effect of inadequate sanitation facilities and practices is staggering, resulting in poor community health, low education levels, and unforeseen economic costs for poor families.  This problem is especially acute with respect to schools, as unhygienic pratices within school translate into unhygienic practices within the home.  Moreover, in schools where separate toilet facilities are not provided for girls, a higher proportion of girls drop out of school, especially after the onset of menstruation.  Unfortunately, the majority of schools in developing countries do not have access to either basic sanitation facilities or clean drinking water, a problem that activists such as Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, believe can be ameliorated through minimal funding and a concerted effort on behalf of NGOs, governments, and local communities.   In fact, as quoted in an article published by OneWorld South Asia, “water experts estimate that an additional $15 billion a year for the next seven years could bring safe water and sanitation facilities to half the communities in the world that still need them.”

With this thinking in mind,  the Wash-In-Schools initative, spearheaded by Water Advocates, was launched yesterday.  The program aims to “bring clean drinking water, toilet facilities, and hygiene education to 1,000 schools in developing countries during its first phase.”  In order to maximize impact, the initiative is bringing together a host of actors from a variety of sectors – NGOs, corporate executives, bankers, school children, and government officials.  Aside from the direct benefits,

 The initiative would also have significant spillover benefits, participants said, as women and children wouldn’t have to walk such long distances to gather water for their families, thus leaving more time for studying, working, and other activities. Fewer sick community members would mean fewer girls and boys leaving school to care for relatives, and children would be expected to pass on the health-safety information they learn at school to their parents, out-of-school peers, and others in the community. 

At ThinkChange India, we laud this partnership, but hope that the money infused into this campaign for building sanitation facilities is also supplemented by a more long-term, education-based campaign in order to alter individual/community behavior/attitudes towards sanitation.  Often, culture, tradition, religion, and lack of education serve as barriers to safe sanitation practices, and even in instances where communities have access to sanitation infrastructure, they do not capitalize on usage.  The installation of sanitation facilities or clean water without a significant attitudinal shift with regards to sanitation practices would, I believe, have minimal impact.  In this instance, the integration of sanitation and clean water practices into the school curriculum would address both physical needs and long-term mindset.

Source:  OneWorld South Asia