The Srinivasan Services Trust (SST) has appealed to industries to adapt its model to make the country once again highly competitive. SST has uplifted 2.1 million people out of poverty with a very small staff and is offering their model, plus their assistance, absolutely free to any corporation that understands what it will mean for them and for India when everyone is out of poverty, and has their own toilet. The trust is a non-profit organisation to help lift people out of
poverty.
Explaining the model, Ashoke Joshi, director, SST, says each industry will select two energetic employees wanting to grow new skills and SST would integrate these employees for a short period of time into their team to learn all details to convert a village out of poverty. Then the two will have their own corporate model to continue the process of uplifting villages.
Nineteen years ago, Venu Srinivasan, CEO of TVS Motors, started renovating places of worship, Hindu temples, mosques and churches with the hope that this would attract village people to these places, which would result in a greater volume of business for them.
Renovated places of worship did attract businesses but benefited only those who had their shops in and around the places of worship. Others, particularly children, women, age-old elder citizens, farmers, etc. did not derive any benefit from this effort. Having realised this, a decision was taken that something should be done to impact the lives of every individual living in the community. Thus SST was born, explains Joshi.
Uniquely, the SST model surveys first the basic needs of a village and the opportunities to lead people to become self-reliant and financially secure.
The key is getting around 15 to 20 women primarily into Self-Help Groups (SHG) whereby they, the most disenfranchised, learn, work and encourage each other to open bank accounts, build new skills, improve their literacy, create ways to
earn money and to also develop the needs of their community.
Take Tamil Selvi for instance. She was a housewife living in a village in Thirukkurungudi TP with her husband, an agricultural labourer earning very little, with three small children.
She met an SST coordinator who introduced her to a self-help group (SHG). Once she joined the SHG, she was trained in basic accounting, numeracy skills, team dynamics and leadership. SST also put her through an advanced five-day enterprise development-training module and also taught her how to produce nutritious cattle feed.
Through the self-help group, she was able to acquire a loan from the bank, which helped her to begin a cattle feed production unit in the front hall of her small thatched house.
The trust currently has a staff of over 250 working in the rural villages. It would like to attract enlightened CEOs to help expand the process throughout India. It will surely benefit the corporations with new esteem and as people gain new wealth the corporations will surely have new customers.
Joshi recently visited a village that was below the poverty level just six years ago. The houses were all cement and painted, the streets were clean of garbage, there was running water for all, and at one house he saw an automobile, two motorcycles, a TV, refrigerator and even two cows.
‘“Just give me two motivated people. We will train them on our model and within a short period of time, they will be able to replicate what we do under your name, not ours,” Ashoke tells CEOs.
It can be started anywhere in India. The need is everywhere. The opportunities are just waiting for necessary help to get started. SST does not have to go out and search for villages, people have heard and seen the successes and come now and ask for SST to come and help their village get started.
Ashoke hopes that CEOs would meet the challenge and help to transform India and uplift the underprivileged out of poverty. It takes so little money to get started, he says.
Contact Ashoke Joshi, ashoke.joshi43@gmail.com
