Gram Vikas Skoll Awardee Profile

Organization Overview

Key Info

Social Entrepreneur Joe Madiath

Year Awarded 2007

Issue Area Addressed Economic Opportunity, Health

Sub Issue Area Addressed Arresting Deforestation, Clean Energy, Clean Water, Human Rights, Livelihoods, Living Conditions, Sanitation, Smallholder Productivity, Water Management, Youth Job Skills

Countries Served India

Website https://www.gramvikas.org/

Twitter handle @GramVikasIN

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/gramvikasodisha/

Youtube www.youtube.com/gramvikasodisha

About the Organization Gram Vikas is a village development organisation partnering with rural communities to enable people to lead a dignified life. Based in Odisha, India, Gram Vikas builds capabilities, strengthens mobilizes resources to respond to the needs of the communities.

Our work in six programmatic pillars—water, livelihoods, sanitation & hygiene, habitat & technologies, village institutions—interact to manage the interconnectedness of development problems and their solutions. Our development approach, the Movement and Action Network for Transformation of Rural Areas (MANTRA), promotes a socially inclusive, gender equitable, self- managed and financially viable model of sustainable and holistic development, where everybody benefits.

Gram Vikas has impacted over 400,000 individuals and 70,000 families through its various programs and interventions. They have trained other like-minded organizations across India to replicate the Gram Vikas model of development, and recently began working in The Gambia and Tanzania.

Impact

Gram Vikas has supported over 60 villages to reclaim their rights over land, trees, and other resources through mobilizing people’s movements,and regenerated more than 10,000 acres of wastelands into productive community managed fuel/fodder and fruit plantations. Helping communities create infrastructure for improved livelihoods, Gram Vikas has worked to build 54,000 biogas plants, enabling as many families to access a safe and renewable source of energy for cooking; supported 19,500 families to build permanent, disaster-proof housing; and supported 80,000 families in 1,400 villages to build household toilets & bathing rooms and connect to pure piped water. In 2018, Gram Vikas won the FICCI-India Sanitation Coalition Award in the Not-for-Profit (Rural) category for sanitation.

America = mobilizing [

suggest changing to: connect to pure piped water.

Path to Scale

Fine-tuned implementation systems, clarity on processes, and experienced teams; effective government collaboration and long-term community partnerships enable effective scaling up of programs. Currently building smarter internal systems, with learning capacities to match the fast- changing external environment.

American = programs.

Social Entrepreneur

Joe Madiath began to champion the marginalized at 12, when he organized the workers on his family’s farms to lobby for better treatment. During his university studies, he founded the young Students’ Movement for Development (YSMD). In 1971, he led a group of YSMD volunteers to assist in refugee camps in Bangladesh, and then to the flood-ravaged Indian state of Orissa. After the “charity” phase was over, he stayed on to consolidate efforts into lasting development, which became his life work. He established Gram Vikas in 1979 with an initial focus on health, education and livelihood for tribal communities and eventually led the installation of biogas plants and improved cookstoves on a large scale in rural Odisha. After realizing in the early ‘90s that health was the underlying problem in rural communities, Gram Vikas began working on sanitation and integrating it into its holistic approach to rural development.

Joe retired from his role as CEO in 2014, and remains actively involved with Gram Vikas as the Chairman of the Board. Liby Johnson is the current Executive Director, having assumed the role in October 2017.

Equilibrium Overview

Current Equilibrium

In the current equilibrium, villages across India have limited access to clean water and safe sanitation. The poorest communities are marginalized with little or no voice in their government and little incentive or trust to participate in development efforts. 77M people do not have access to safe water, and 769M lack access to adequate sanitation. [i] In the state of Odisha, with a population of 42M, 85% households in rural areas practice open defecation and 75% of the population lacks access to safe drinking water. [ii] Despite many attempts by the government, including large campaigns to address the issue of open defecation, there is lack of popular demand for safe sanitation and government approaches to sanitation do not integrate household water supply with provision of toilets. They are also selective, focusing on individual households without considering the community input needed to ensure sustainable sanitation solutions. The negative results of all this is stark - high morbidity, low levels of nutrition among women and children, and most importantly the lack of self-respect and dignity among the villagers. [i] Annual Report 2015-2016 [ii] MANTRA 2016

New Equilibrium

In the new equilibrium, an inclusive social structure enables every member of the community to access clean water and sanitation, irrespective of their social or economic status. The government engages poor communities and works cooperatively with them to develop sustainable WASH solutions, with efforts from corporations and civil society organizations channeled through a participatory, democratic decision making process. Each of the actors contributes upfront and ongoing support of institutional and human capacity building to ensure that adoption of safe sanitation and good hygiene practices, leading to better health, increased productivity, improved socio-economic status and human dignity.

Innovation

Gram Vikas’ innovation involves a comprehensive approach called MANTRA (Movement and Action Network for Transformation of Rural Areas). The process begins at the village level with a water and sanitation project and progressively engages community members in improving livelihoods, women’s rights, education, health, and housing, breaking down exclusionary barriers of tribe, caste and gender/marital status. Key elements include (a) a community capital fund to which every household contributes at least a few rupees, and richer households contribute more; (b) local governance and decision making bodies working with established local government structures; (c) every family accepting responsibility to contribute labor to infrastructure projects; and (d) village-level activity plans and monthly progress reports for mutual accountability. Using these elements, Gram Vikas implements MANTRA programs across four program areas: 1) Health, 2) Education, 3) Livelihoods, and 4) Institutions and Human Development. Gram Vikas’ approach to development is grounded in the belief that the problem of rural poverty cannot be solved without addressing its root causes. With water and sanitation as the starting point, villagers can invest their time, ingenuity, and resources to productive activities that improve their livelihood. A core component of WASH interventions is behavior change, and Gram Vikas employs a variety of strategies to shift attitudes and cultural norms around rural sanitation, including codes of behavior set by village committees, fines for noncompliance, social pressure and regular toilet cleanliness checks. Gram Vikas has evolved its model over time to focus on its strengths and the needs of its beneficiaries. Can you provide more information GV’s intervention strategy at the village/household level after WASH services are in place? Please explain the concept of ‘MANTRA villages’ vs. ‘village societies’ and how these are implemented.Can you provide more context on how Gram Vikas has evolved its model over time? What was the rationale for shifting the model and what has changed as a result?What is the relationship between the four program areas? How are projects (housing, energy, education, microfinance, disaster relief etc.) prioritized?Which other partners and actors are you engaging (government, private sector) to carry out your work in an efficient and cost effective manner?

Ambition for Change

Gram Vikas seeks to build deeper ties to community where they currently work, and reach out to new communities region-wide. In the coming decades Gram Vikas aims to extend their achievements and accellerate their achievements in order to reach a million people.