What’s your idea?
Migrants from India have settled and prospered in Britain. The first generation of migrants are now reaching the twilight of their lives and the second and third generations are culturally moving further away from their ancestral roots.
What’s really new about your idea?
One way of maintaining roots is through development. Migrants and their children can be encouraged to give those from their ancestral homes an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty through education. I want to use the web to make it easy for people of Indian descent living in Britain to make social investments in the villages of their ancestral roots.
What inspired you to come up with the idea in the first place?
My parents came from the Punjab, India. My family have always sent money back there to buy land, build big houses, and give to the temple. This money does not go to build local schools, educate and give the children of my parent’s village an opportunity to achieve their potential.
What if we could use the web to make it easy for my parents (or me) to support the school in their home village? Houses, land and temples give my parents impermanent respect. Helping the village prosper through education will give my parents a legacy.
When I went back to India recently, I realised how fortunate I am to have the access to the opportunities being born in Britain affords me. These opportunities have allowed me and family to (in relative terms) prosper. We should try and give back. This is not easy unless you physically go to India; I do not think there is a direct mechanism to invest in the place my family came from. I know many others that would give back if it could be done at the click of a button…
From 1-5, what stage of development would you say your idea was in?
This project is at stage 1.
What can we do for you?
I think this project could use a mentor. If you can help me, then I can take this idea forward. If someone else is better placed, then they can take it forward.
This idea was submitted by Mandeep Hothi.
Mandeep is an associate in the Local Innovation Team at the Young Foundation. He works on both the Wellbeing project and the Neighbourhood Action Network.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Hi Mandeep – your idea has similarities with our campaign to support children in Malawi to be able to attend secondary school (details here):
http://www.breakfastsociety.com/2008/11/an-education-for-xmas/
http://www.breakfastsociety.com/2008/03/zomba-children-off-to-school/
I think the point you make about how difficult it is to make a donation is very important. Its also critical to be able to trust that donations will be used in the way donors expect them to be and not be lost in corruption or waste. How do you imagine that technology could be developed/used to facilitate this?
November 5th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
heres another site that might help with ideas….
http://www.donorschoose.org/homepage/main.html
November 5th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
hm seems my last comment got stuck in the spam list? – original comment was…
Hi Mandeep – your idea has similarities with our campaign to support children in Malawi to be able to attend secondary school (details here):
http://www.breakfastsociety.com/2008/11/an-education-for-xmas/
http://www.breakfastsociety.com/2008/03/zomba-children-off-to-school/
I think the point you make about how difficult it is to make a donation is very important. Its also critical to be able to trust that donations will be used in the way donors expect them to be and not be lost in corruption or waste. How do you imagine that technology could be developed/used to facilitate this?
November 6th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Hi Masyomo,
I dont have any exact answer to this question and i suspect it could be one of the biggest barriers to overcome. I guess it would require work with local agencies – either NGO or governmental – to ensure that the money gets to the schools.
We could also design donations so that contribute to specific, tangible developments -maybe schools could list equipment they need and donations could go directly to purchasing these via the website?
Your thoughts would be appreciated as this is very much a ‘one line’ idea at the moment!
thanks,
Mandeep.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I think being very specific about usage of funds will be important. Your emphasis on supporting the school helps too – for us its more complex as we’re supporting individuals and so we need to have somebody in the country who we can rely on to make the judgements about which children receive support. But if you’re donating to a school I imagine it can be a bit simpler and so long as you can figure out the complexities of exchanging currencies and translating receipts (ie. knowing you’re paying the true cost not the ‘western cost!’ its (just!) a case of having somebody administer all that.
I’d be a little wary of involving too many external agencies as you risk further complexities and entering into NGO politics so ideally I think you’d want as direct a relationship with the individual schools as possible.
The listing equipment idea is good – that could maybe be developed to encourage schools to involve children in making decisions about the equipment they would most like for their school and if internet access were possible theres the possibility of some interaction between the school and donors which might make the site more attractive for potential funders. Obviously you then have the challenge of facilitating those schools with no internet access but I guess like us you then get to use snail mail and update online on their behalf.
A variation could be to allow schools here in the UK to send old equipment they have to schools in need of that equipment – this would be similar to the READ scheme that uses old UK text books to send to schools in Tanzania:
http://www.readinternational.org.uk/
(of course you would still need to fundraise to cover shipping costs though but thats the sort of thing schools in the UK can be good at if you think of ways to encourage them to creatively fundraise)
November 7th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Masyomo your comments and thoughts are very valuable and thank you for giving me some more direction with this idea. At the moment the idea is basic so hopefully with some further discovery we can turn it into something tangible.
Many thanks,
Mandeep.
November 7th, 2008 at 11:52 am
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