Men in India stand up against violence to Women.

Yes, you read right. In 1991, a prominent Indian journalist put an ad in a major paper reading “WANTED: Men who believe that woman are not for battering.” 205 men responded to the ad. It mayn’t seem like many. But a year later after several meetings of these like-minded men, one very special man, Harish Sadani, decided to launch a non-profit organisation: Men Against Violence and Abuse or MAVA. It is the first organisation in India where men are standing up against gender-based violence against women. And it sends out a strong message in a country where men are major perpetrators of violence against women.

Harish Sadani

MAVA educates men and explores their roles in society as stakeholders and partners in gender issues dealing with women, including the role they play in helping empower women. They do this through cultural advocacy, intervention and youth education. He believes that women’s violence is a public health concern and a human right issue.

He works at deconstructing masculinity, and replacing a patriarchal value system that is disrespectful to women, with a more egalitarian one that empowers them. And he and MAVA teach men that they play a role in improving women’s lives.

Sadani has a new and intelligent perspective on women’s violence and abuse. He feels that the focus has always been on empowering women in order to tackle gender based violence. But this “isolates and insulates men from  the process of transformation and keeps them embedded in their patriarchal mould.”

In 2006, he founded Yuva Maitri, a youth-based initiative, it’s Marathi for “Friendship Amongst Youth” It teaches young men to respect women from an early age, to see them as friends and equals vs. sex objects or their subordinates in society. He works with men in Maharashtra aged  18-20 and educates them on issues like masculinity, sexual health and gender sensitivity. Sadani believes young men are open to attitude change, more impressionable and willing to question, rather than just take things at face value.

Learning through games. Teaching young men to respect women

Sadani and MAVA believe that “the children are the future,” and that a focused and long-term effort with these young men, will create a new generation that won’t believe in gender-based violence and will help prevent it amongst their fellow-men. They select young men who they feel have leadership skills and creativity to be ‘communicators’ and can help train peers and share the egalitarian ideals their peers, who in turn will embrace these and pass on the message further. This ensures that other men their own age now have people with proper knowledge that are ‘safe’ to talk to about dilemmas, fears and perceptions and be given the right advice and info. To date,  20,000 men have been reached and 5000 women through MAVA and Yuva Maitri’s awareness and outreach programs.

Yuva Maitra's "communicators" share booklets and knowledge

Through their work they’ve now noticed significant changes in men’s attitudes in colleges, from harassing and teasing their female colleagues, to an ease in communicating with them, studying together, helping one another and more. Some of the young men have begun to share in the workload at home, including tasks traditionally seen as “women’s work,” like washing dishes, sweeping and laundry. Some students fight home battles to get more freedom for their mothers and sisters and one even against an arranged marriage his sister didn’t want. That is amazing in India and a real breakthrough.

Sadani is well aware that this is just the beginning and this is a long-term educational process that in truth, needs the help of governments, other organisations, communities and more.

It is really beautiful to see men taking such a massive and active role in changing patriarchal mindsets amongst their own and helping to empower women – a role traditionally taken on by women in society – especially in India. Sadani sends out the message that men aren’t just perpetrators, they are change makers. All you need to do is give them the education, the knowledge, and the opportunity to change and spread change.

Links:

http://www.mavaindia.org/

http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/men-against-violence-and-abuse

“The Minds on the Margin are not Marginalised Minds” Anil Gupta

Anil Gupta at TEDIndia Nov 2009, Mysore India.

A beautiful, incredibly true and inspiring thought from Anil Gupta, at the TEDIndia Conference last November, 2009.

Too often we think education is necessary to be a thinker and an innovator, Anil Gupta, suggests what makes us these things is purely the need and that in a remote, marginalised, or developing area, you need to get it done, as there is no one else there who will do it for you.

Anil Gupta is a down-to-earth yet incredibly humanitarian and enlightened thinker. He tells us that he looked at his published papers or his salary one day and realised, that really any innovation or thought comes from a group of thinkers, or collaboration. But nowhere in his salary do these people feature, they don’t get a cut for their contribution, nor do they get a byline and he felt, this was an injustice in itself. And how could he preach this, without living it.

So he set up the Honey Bee Network. Why Honey Bee? Because bees do it right, the bee cross-pollinates, it takes the best of one flower, then spreads it and takes it to another and so on. That’s how the best innovations and ideas come, and that’s what should be done with the best ideas. If someone invents a great device for a village in India, it should be shared and made available for rural communities in Africa or Brazil, where it could also be relevant and helpful and affordable.

Honey Bee is a place where an unknown, “marginalised” innovator can come and show his idea or even product. He can then get a patent and with it a chance to get a name for him or herself, earn some income off it. With help from Honey Bee he can basically create, promote and get the product out there and talked about and passed around.

Anil Gupta has numerous remarkable examples of innovation in the world, including ones that Honey Bee has helped produce.

In China, (Shanzhai), family and villagers made a makeshift device to help a girl breathe, when there were no hospital machines or medical aid available to do so. Allowing this young girl to live.

In another case, a 70-year-old builds a bicycle with attachments. They sit on either side of the bicycle and allow it to float, and he can then pedal to and from work, across the river, to where he and his wife live.  Before he would be dependent on the boat, and if he missed he, he couldn’t get home again. Anil Gupta said they havent managed to convince others of the use of this Amphibious Bike yet. But he suggested some useful implications for it, in the bigger picture: in floods in India, these can be used to help people get out or still move in flooded areas till the water drains and even to help rescue workers reach smaller alleyways that jeeps and other transport can’t get to.

It goes on… one man has placed a small washing machine cum dryer at the back of his motorbike, and charges just 1 paise in India for laundry. The same man also has a small mill, powered by the bicycle motor, to help grind small amounts of grain. This creates a service for his surrounding communities and income for him.

Another fixes a pipe onto a pressure cooker, and turns it into a coffee machine for 1 rupee – that’s it.

Anil Gupta feels this is where we need to change our thinking and where we need to invest our thinking, time and money. We need to change our mindset that only those with an education, with a background and experience in such areas can be and will be the best inventors. That the privileged get the privilege and the credit. Far from it, it is exactly as the old saying goes – “Necessity is the mother of all invention”

And necessity and a sense of urgency creates action and a drive to do something and create that something too.

I have spent a day watching talks at TED.com and encourage you to do so too. It has been moving and inspiring and I promise, if you watch one video – watch Anil Gupta, his Honey Bee Network and the amazing innovators he showcases.

It not only shows the good and the best in the world, it makes you want to be somebody as good in the world.

Anil Gupta’s TED Talk can be found here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/anil_gupta_india_s_hidden_hotbeds_of_invention.html

The write-up/sum-up here:

http://blog.ted.com/2009/11/the_buzzanil_gu.php

The Honey Bee Network is here:

http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/

http://knownetgrin.honeybee.org/innovation_database.asp

How adding Micronutrients to Staples can Save a Child

David Dodson

Imagine that just adding a simple micronutrient to a basic like rice or flour, could prevent birth defects via malnourished mothers or prevent growing children from developing a defect that has otherwise been common in their community for decades.

That’s what David Dodson’s Project Healthy Children has been doing since the year 2000.

Over one billion people in the world suffer from malnutrition due to a lack of critical vitamins and minerals in their diets. This is due to having a lack of access to centrally processed foods that can be manufactured with these additions.

David Dodson realised this when he accompanied his wife to Honduras. She was part of a group of physicians sent to surgically repair the growing number of cleft lip cases there. When David realised that simple malnutrition was the key cause of this, he decided he would leave his business ambitions and instead do something to solve this problem.

Realising no organisations had departments focused on this area, or that none had a strategy for solving this issue, he set up his own organisation.

His only criteria: PHC had to be invited in by a government. And the government of a country had to or has to be willing to tackle the problem on a broad scale, and be committed to seeing it through and maintaining the fortification programme. Once they said yes, Dodson would go in with his team and first conduct a nutrition survey: what do people eat, how much do they eat, and how they store it – or how well even they store it. They use this to then come up with a ‘food fortification strategy.’

For example, in countries where rice is a staple, this could be a good base product to fortify, as more mothers and children are likely to benefit from the nutrients regularly and naturally/ as part of their usual diet.

And Project Healthy Children does just this, they sprinkle a vitamin and mineral premix into bags of rice (one grain of premix for every 200 rice grains), to create a new ‘uber rice.’

In association with Stanford, Dodson is trying to develop a weighing device under $US100 that would actually allow small scale electric millers to weight and proportionately put fortified mixes into their grains. It would work unobtrusively with their existing mills so that take-up rates would be higher and fixing them to their existing mills, would be simple, affordable and painless.

Imagine now that every mother who shows up with a bag of unmilled rice can choose between regular, or the enriched one at the same cost. As Dodson says “100% percent of the time” they will choose the enriched one. Because they’ve seen enough deaths and defects due to malnutrition to know this will give their family and child a fighting chance at a life where enough stakes are otherwise stacked up against each of them.

Simple Weighing and Proportion/Distribution Device for Mills

Key micronutrients used in fortifying foods are: Folic Acid, Iron, Vitamin A and Iodine. And food staples fortified include: Bread, Rice, Flour, Sugar, Cooking Oil and Legumes.

Rwanda: Adding premix to fortify food.

Project Healthy Children is changing lives in the most vulnerable parts of Nepal, Honduras, Haiti, Rwanda, Malawi and Liberia. Mothers and children are not just living better, they say they feel better than before.

These fortifications are reducing risks by as much as 50% for these countries and communities.

Just log onto Dodson’s PHC website and as you take the time to surf, it tells you exactly how many children are dying of malnutrition with every minute that you spend on the site. So you can imagine the difference PHC is making.

Dodson was recognised for his efforts in Dubai where he won The Improved Nutrition through Solutions competition. And he recently presented Project Healthy Children at a GAIN conference, where he was greeted with much applause and increased support- from a new business model for his programme, to a health initiative partner for Nepal.

The concept seems so obvious and simple, yet it took one man vs. the hundreds of existing organisations to figure out the way to make it happen and make it work better and better, across more and more places.

It’s easy in times of unsurity and despair to feel like you are a drop in the ocean of humanity and that you are being swallowed by it. But really, all it takes is you and a vision to make a ripple in that ocean, that can be felt by many, even from afar.

If you feel passionate and moved enough, please donate to the project.

Website:

http://www.projecthealthychildren.org

sOccket: Children play to create electricity

The sOccket was invented by Jessica Lin, Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman and Hemali Thakkar, 4 Harvard students.

When played with, this  ball captures all the energy made from  being kicked, dribbled or thrown and stores it for later use. It is cheap and requires no grid. Which means it can provide entertainment and energy / electricity to villages that have no electrical grids/ infrastructure.

What started as a team project for an engineering science class has become a social innovation that could change the lives of African children and their families, by combining fun with genuine need.

Jess and friends were inspired by the knowledge that dance floors capture the energy of dancers that are moving on them.

How it works

Like those flashlights that you shake to power up, it is based on inductive coil technology. When you play football for 15 minutes, it will generate and store enough power to light an LED lamp for up to 3 hours, a full game, or playing with it for the full length of a game, could provide a family with enough light for over 1 night. Imagine this: 95 percent of the population in Africa, live with no access to electricity. Now imagine flying over all of Africa and seeing it lit up. Not by dangerous and costly kerosene lamps, (that are also causing breathing problems via their smoke), but the same electricity that pumps through our homes and that we take for granted every night, when we switch it on after work, till we go to bed.

That’s the potential of this one small invention. It can even charge a cellphone or battery, making communication a more viable option as well. So, in theory, sOccket can now allow for mobile tech into these villages and to connect these villages to what is our there in the rest of their country and the world.

The current prototype is just 5 ounces more than a regular football. To make it more affordable, in Africa and therefore minimal in cost, the girls are exploring constructing the ball from materials local to Africa and making it even lighter/closer to the original weight of an everyday, normal football. They also want to make it durable and last through dust, rain and intense heat.

The plan: sell it at a higher-cost in the US and Europe and use the profits from these sales to help begin fund the distribution of  the balls at little to no cost in developing countries, like Africa.

sOccket has won a $1500 award from the Clinton Global Initiative University, to help buy more balls and internal parts.

Awista Ayub, another amazing example of good in the world (an Afghani author and founder of Afghani football teams for girls) is promoting the initiative in Afghanistan amongst her team and worldwide.

The latest: Julia is at the World Cup in South Africa pushing the sOccket to grassroots divisions and organisations in South Africa and at matches. She has tied up with Hoops for Hope – at a township in Cape Town and a Grassroots Football for Hope centre in Khayelitsha – another township. Meanwhile, Hemali is in Liberia and Jessica Matthews is in Nigeria.

They held a Mini Youth World Cup in Boston to get youth into the sOccket and were recently featured on CNN with their invention.

CNN Interview with the Girls

http://tinyurl.com/26xflck

For anyone who is convinced through watching American dramas and sitcoms that American teens and university students are  busy guzzling beers, having toga parties, sleeping around and cruising malls for sales and studs, these girls make us rethink our stereotypes.

What could have been a simple university project they got a grade for and then moved on from, has become an invention that they have set aside their lives, passions, energy and spare time for, on top of their university degrees.

Some of us have never experienced power outages, some of us who have, see it as an excuse for some old-fashioned evenings without electronics and a romantic dinner. But most of the world today lives that way everyday and it is far from anything out of a novel or a novelty, for that matter.

This group of Harvard women (go WOMEN!) show us that there is good in the world, and they have poured themselves into it. They have prioritised changing the lives of those in the developing world, over their own life-changing college years.

I can’t wait to see what happens. Follow them on their blog and on twitter:

http://soccket.posterous.com

www.twitter.com/soccket