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And the future? | |||
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Income and basic needs in Mandya. Vikasana and Poverty Alleviation Existing project: Beedi makers. What we want to help Vikasana to do for poor rural women in Mandya |
Think that your choice of clothes shows your aspirational lifestyle? Well... Here's a lifestyle aspiration: be part of ending world poverty, and let the garments you wear show you mean it. In 2009 we want to expand our assistance to Vikasana in providing the following to as many of their 9000 self-help groups as we can. As I'm writing this, I'm wearing clothes made by Vikasana co-op members. Some people identify with the image of Nike or Adidas, of DKNY or YSL - without asking how the workers who made those clothes live... Answer, pretty badly, often, on slave wages in third world countries. The clothes I wear empower the makers. Vikasana organises rural poor in a way which improve the lives of collective members, usually very poor women. We aim within two years to increase their income from $2.50 - $3.50 a day to $7.50- $9.50 a day. Every village co-operative needs a web-page, an e-commerce site, and at the very least broadband connection and computer. In December 2009 Marion and I will return to India and I am looking for travelling companions who will assist me in
for as many of the 9000 self-help groups as I can, groups involved in everything from textile production to organic farming and from shoemaking to making packaging from recycled product. Grameen style banks to date has operated only “savings and loan” type investments which do not expand outside the communities of the participants. It operates from the ground up, often in a “self-help” group situation, wherein borrowers identify the need for a business to serve their community, borrow micro-amounts with only their responsiveness to community sanction as collateral, and operate micro-businesses inside their local community. This generally means that they are limited to the imaginations of the participants. Trouble is, if you’ve always been too poor to travel outside your own village, you’d have a pretty limited imagination. Join me for the experience of a lifetime! Cost including
for 10 days - not including airfares or airport transfers, not including workshops and not including tours- is 25 000 Rupees (at whatever the rate of exchange is on the day you pay if you're paying in Australia) The tour is designed for students of international development, international community building, and international trade, students enrolling in MBA programs, and students enrolling in the UQ Graduate Diploma in not-for-profit groups and philanthropy. Vikasana accepts investments from individuals and self-managed superannuation funds for its development programs and offers AUD denominated 5 year bonds at a healthy 9.095% - 500 basis points above the current yield on Australian Treasury bonds expiring at the same time. (Product disclosure statement is on their website).
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Instead of throwaway items which cost the planet, we provide durable, unique garments which save you money because they're made to last. Beautiful Silks is helping you to buy beautiful, handmade designer items direct from the makers. When you buy a Vikasana product , you reject the global brand strategy. You're voting to build a healthier and more secure society, where people are connected in ways and places beyond Internet chatrooms. You're building, small step by small step, a pilot project amongst rural poor in a small town in South India where every woman can feel they have skills and can Contribute and where every child will be educated. Vikasana's makers have started with silk string and silk designer collector dolls. They aim, once they've raised enough money for equipment, to move to sustainable clothing and footwear. Each collectable doll you buy pays a woman's daily wage - with a portion in addition set aside for the housing program, as well as education, health and child welfare. The housing program contribution from each 1000 dolls sold buys a house, so each woman can pay off her own house in 8 years. When you buy a Vikasana product, you're building a link between producer and consumer that makes a statement: you as the wearer say that your social worth is not measured according to unrealistic benchmarks of consumption . You're saying that you believe that people are more important than money, and recognise an opportunity to redirect your purchasing power to help real people in need. Every cent from every dollar of the wholesale price of a Vikasana product flows back to self-help organisations which provide education, health, Grameen-style lending and insurance, housing and sanitation to the poorest of the world's poor rural women. There is no minimum wage for rural poor women in India. They work for what they can get. We've already helped Vikasana raise worker's wages from 80 (what they were making before we began working with them) to 140 Rs (that's from around A$2.50 to A$4.25) per day a day. We want to double that again ... All the makers are organised in self-help-groups run by elected representatives. There is no child labour or slavery in these self-help-groups. The relationship between Beautiful Silks and Vikasana is a small step, but we can make it grow. Please support Vikasana by coming to our Product Launch on 4 March 2009 in Melbourne. More details including product photos and maker profiles are available at www.beautifulsilks.com.  Businessman and philanthropist Ray Thorpe of Happy High Herbs, who also made a major onation to Vikasana, assists partner Elizabeth during a craft workshop. More Vikasana products are for sale in Happy High herbs shops
Dolls mean Houses Locally we are trying to build strong communal harmony. Vikasana combines Muslims and Hindus - all working together and living together. We are creating hopes and possibilities in the minds of our people.
Dev, now computer software engineer in Bangalore, writes about his mum: Hi Marion,
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