Awarded the Judd Fellowship!!

I have been awarded money from the Judd Fellowship to fund this little adventure. Hooray!!
I am going to post most of my proposal because I think it is a nice succinct way to introduce people to, "What is it that Anna is doing in India anyway?"
I'll try to provide links to further information and something more in depth for those who are interested, but for now this is about as specific as I can be.
Anna

Highrange Tea Plantations; Idukki, Kerala, India

Over the past decade the tea plantation workers in Idukki have experienced a deep economic recession and have felt the negative effects of globalization as their work moved across the border to Sri Lanka. Well over half, 77%, of the district’s population relies on commercial agriculture for their livelihood. With 47,650 regional laborers losing their employment, the community is facing many challenges. Additionally, the terrain of the region makes farming difficult and has led to the overuse of chemicals and overall land degradation. This community is facing food insecurity, inability to access assets, health problems of chemical exposure, and a high rate of suicide.

Highrange Plantation Workers’ Development Society (HPWDS)

HPWDS was founded in 1995 to provide a directed effort for community rebuilding and development. HPWDS has been serving the community by hosting educational programs, providing training in financial management and leadership, developing self-help groups, and engaging in micro-credit activities. As funding becomes available they have a three-pronged development plan in place which includes: (1) an agricultural knowledge center for environmental and crop-diversification education, (2) a rural marketing system to expand access to new markets, and (3) land lease promotion utilizing micro-lending and training to increase participants’ assets. HPWDS has served an estimated 15,000 people since 1995 and is aware that they need a way to evaluate their efforts while maintaining their inclusive and empowering perspective.

Internal Learning System (ILS) Diaries

ILS is a participatory impact assessment and planning system, that is used most often in the context of micro-finance and livelihood creation programs. Humphrey Institute Professor Helzi Noponen, through over 20 years of consultancy work to non-governmental organizations in India, developed this system. ILS is a pictorial diary (to serve an illiterate population) which is given to all participants involved in self-help groups or micro-finance. Through depictions of impact and development indicators and the use of simple tick marks, circles and lines, participants are able to record and see changes over time. ILS is administered program-wide, but provides evaluation information through statistical analysis on a sample basis. The pictorial diaries become an integral part of the program as “learning elements” via good-scene/bad-scene, dream scenes, problem-solving stories, and others, are inserted throughout the personal record keeping to teach skills.

The Internship

HPWDS has been in contact with Professor Noponen for the past seven years asking her to come and create an ILS diary suited to their programmatic needs. Due to the heavy demands on her time, she has been unable to honor this request. The goal of the internship is to send a graduate student trained by Professor Noponen in the creation and utilization of ILS diaries to serve in her stead. I would be developing indicators for the diary, collaborating with an artist to draw the diary, pilot test the diary and train resident staff in its use. HPWDS has also requested help with grant writing and other capacity-building activities, for which having ILS in place will play an integral part.

Professional Experience and Development

As a Master’s of Social Work student focusing on community practice issues particular to international development, I am energized by this opportunity to put my new skills to work. I have tailored my time at the University toward building skills for use in exactly this type of setting. I have learned about program development, marketing and evaluation; issues of global social welfare; planning with development-sector NGOs; and international trade and development. Last semester, Professor Helzi Noponen introduced me to her unique ILS pictorial diaries and I will further prepare for the summer with a one-credit course from Professor Noponen.

At my current internship with Rainbow Research, I am a research assistant for the social service sector evaluations they perform, gaining experience in data collection, analysis and reporting. I am also a volunteer trainer and special events manager for Ten Thousand Villages, an international fair trader focused on livelihood creation. I enjoy my role of training and teaching others and look forward to working with the staff of HPWDS. I have lived in another country for 11 months, interned with a refugee receiving center in Norway and done refugee resettlement work here in the Twin Cities. My appreciation for, and comfort with, working in and with other cultures is very high—in fact, it is what I prefer. My choice of previous experiences has been to prepare myself for a career abroad. Through three months working in India, I am eager to determine finally that overseas consultancy to NGOs is, in fact, the career that I want to pursue.