Jaya Singh: SAM's India-Based Director of Research and Program Development

It is a hot September day in Musafirkhana, Uttar Pradesh.  We’ve been driving on the Lucknow-Benaras highway for several hours before swerving off onto a dirt path, rice fields on either side, our driver honking away the few bicyclists and pedestrians we encounter.  The car pulls up to a temple that rises abruptly from the fields.  Next to the temple is the asbestos-roofed shack that serves as an assembly hall.  We’ve reached our destination: a meeting of women from 4-5 adjoining villages with Save A Mother Swasthya Sakhis (health activists).

I am prepared for the smell of grime, and the heat and dust that pervades rural India.  I am unprepared for the reception – bouquets of hibiscus and marigold encased in thin pink and white paper before being ushered onto a dhurrie to face the audience.  About a hundred women stare back, most of them in saris, glass bangles gleaming at their wrists, many with a thick line of bright orange vermilion in their hair.  They sit in perfect order, cross-legged in rows of eight each.  A handful of girls in salwar kameezes, dupattas neatly pinned, sit in the first two rows.  Some stare straight at us, a few giggle and hold hands looking down at the grey cement floor.  A girl who could be anywhere from  twelve to fifteen is seated in the front row wearing a black, short-sleeved T-shirt and blue jeans.  Change is afoot in Musafirkhana.

A Swasthya Sakhi, her hair coiled into a knot on her uncovered head, stands.   “I was nine when I got married.  Sixteen when I had my first child.  They bathed my child in cold water after it was born.  He died.  My second child also died.  No one told us what to do.  Now that we know, staying healthy is the most important work we can do.  Whether girls or boys, we cannot be careless about our children.”  The hall reverberates with applause.

A second woman rises.  No more than forty years of age, she is bent over.   “I was married at five.  I had my first child at fourteen.  My labor lasted four days.  The pain . . . ”  Her voice catches.  “After four days, they brought a woman to help, she cut the cord with a blade.  For ten days I remained in a dark room, in the same clothes, without bathing.  My child died.”

A third woman stands.  You sense the determination in her stance before she utters a word.  “I do not want to share my story.  Perhaps you’ll cry if you hear it, perhaps I’ll cry.”  She pauses.  Her voice breaks.  Her eyes flash.  Breakdown.  She resumes, “I do not want to share my story, just that now we want to educate our children.”

She starts singing a song.  I recognize the popular film tune, but the lyrics are about immunizations during pregnancy.  About five things to do during pregnancy and child birth.  About cord care and kangaroo care in newborns.  The crowd joins in the chorus.

Another song.  Am I hearing this right?  She just sang that using dirty cloth pads during menstruation can cause germs to traverse the birth canal and lead to infection, even cancer.

Another song by a Mehr un Nissa, a Muslim woman standing on the grounds of a Hindu temple, sings about marrying after age twenty and having a child only after twenty-one.

The constant refrain in the meeting?  We will not let our daughters suffer what we went through.  The energy in the room is electrifying.  The determination palpable.

The meeting concludes with a Q&A session.  A scrawny teenager, eyes sparkling, body twitching with energy, stands up and says in perfectly enunciated Hindi:  “I heard you’ve come from America on an airplane.  Give us the formula to become rich so that we may take an airplane to go to America to see you.”

Are you up to her challenge?  Change is afoot in the villages where Save A Mother works.

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96 Swasthya Sakhis attended one day refresher training workshops in 7 blocks-  Dubey pur, Musafirkhana, Lalganj, Satava, Jagdishpur, Khiro, Mahrajganj

In 27 villages, half-day sensitization workshops were conducted in two districts-Sultanpur and Rae Bareli.

Save a Mother participated in 20 CLA (village organization) meetings and 2 BLA (block level) meetings.

Periodic field visits to program areas

We expanded to two new districts with the help of local NGOs, who wanted to add a health care component to their existing activities. 49 women attended the 3-day induction training in Chikballapur district of Karnataka and 31 women attended the induction training in Mijwan in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh. We are closely monitoring the progress in the new districts to validate the applicability of our program.

As of the end of February 2010, our activists are working in more than 700 villages in five districts of Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. We plan to expand our work to more villages of these districts and consolidate our work for the rest of 2010.

• Ten one-day refresher trainings were conducted in eight blocks of Uttar Pradesh during December ’09. A total of 83 Swasthya Sakhis (Health Activists) received the refresher trainings.
• We conducted a three-day induction training of Swasthya Sakhis in Rahi block. 21 Swasthya Sakhis were trained and 15 other local women attended the training.
• We trained nine volunteer Master Trainers from Karnataka. We will officially be starting our work in Karnataka on 26th January, 2010 by introducing our program in Chikballapur district.
• Dr Satish Khera, professor of maxillofacial surgery in the U.S., attended our training sessions in Uttar Pradesh. We hope to start an oral health program in the region with his support very soon

Photo taken by Save A Mother staff at Lal Ganji.

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Solutions from Tsunami-hit Tamil Nadu. Click on the link below to find a heartwarming article about the transformation that has taken place in parts of Tamil Nadu that were hit hard by the tsunami. It shows how donation, global aid, and local government efforts can come together and not only successfully reconstruct devastated regions but also create long-term social transformation. Read on… Contributed by Hemant Kashyap

An Invisible Revolution in Rural India. Self Help Groups (SHGs) are a transformational phenomenon that has swept rural India over the last decade and a half. In a country where almost two-thirds of the population have no access to formal financial services, SHGs are a unique route to financial inclusion, increasing incomes, and building productive assets among the poor. Click on the link below to learn more about SHGs and the turning point of the SHG movement in early 1990 when the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) in India pilot tested the SHG-Bank Linkage Program. Today more than 400 women join a SHG every hour in India! Contributed by Ravi Grover

We crossed our target of training 400 new health activists in 2009 by November. December trainees will be an added bonus. Over 1,000 women have attended training sessions in 2009 and 412 have been designated as health activists. We have loftier targets for 2010.

We have expanded to a new district. Our team of trainers went to Babina, Jhansi and trained over 20 women. We are attempting to replicate our program there. We will also launch our program in Azamgarh on 6th January, 2010. Starting this month we are for the first time expanding our work to another state, Karnataka. Our trainers will conduct their first training in Chikbalapur, Karnataka. Our training books are currently being translated into Kannada. Mr Kamalkar Hallambi, Ex-Director of the Rural Literacy Mission of Karnataka will lead this program.

We are evolving into a health literacy organization with maternal mortality as our entry point into a community. Recognizing our potential to promote health literacy, our program is getting noticed. The Ministry of Health has asked us to participate in a national health literacy program through a national health portal.  The Ministry of Health will own and manage the portal with private-public partnership. We have already started on this project and in the next few months we will see the launch of the national program to spread health literacy.

• In September, we conducted four, three-day long trainings for new health activists. We trained 79 new activists in all
• We conducted eight refresher training courses for those already in the field
• We are now working in 459 villages and will reach our target of 600 villages by the end of December 2009

REPLICATION

• Our project manager visited Phoolpur in Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh to conduct a preliminary survey. The district does not have a larger NGO for us to piggy back on, as we are doing in Sultanpur district. But the district does have a well run girls school, so we will launch our Save A Mother program (health education, trainings, activism) in that school and see how far we can progress. This is a new district for us with a new twist
• Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh has a micro-credit NGO of moderate size. We will enter this new district by launching our program using that NGO’s support base

LINKAGE WITH ASHA

• Our project manager attended a master training program for training ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers (they are part of the Government of India’s National Rural Health Mission). The program was conducted by Shabhagi Kendra and PATH in Lucknow. This gives us a better understanding of the ASHA methodology and stronger links with ASHA workers in our area.

USA CHAPTERS

• We are launching a Los Angeles chapter on 7th November, 2009. The chapter will have a small function in Niravana Restaurant
• Our New York Chapter will have a gathering at Sundaram Tagore Gallery on 11th November, 2009. Our Board Chairperson, Ms. Shabana Azmi will attend
• Our Chicago chapter will have a fundraising event – a Masquerade Ball – on 24th October, 2009
• We are exploring chapters in Toronto, San Francisco, and Philadelphia

OTHER UPDATES

• Our Chairperson, Ms Shabana Azmi spoke at FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) in Delhi in September on health care and talked about Save A Mother’s work. A full transcript of her speech can be found here
• This is an amazing, inspirational story about what one person can do to bring about change to the lives of so many. And, that one person is only 16 years old!! Introducing Babar Ali…

One of our objectives in 2009 is to expand to another district. We conducted our first survey of Phoolpur in Uttar Pradesh to understand local need. Even though membership of the local NGO is not large, we will start a small pilot program. Our program manager Anoop Pant and I will visit the area to start the program at the end of November.

Anoop Pant will also attend a training program in Lucknow, conducted by PATH – an international NGO. Subsequently, he will become a master trainer for ASHA workers of the National Rural Health Mission. This will bring us even closer to the public health workers in our area, with whom we already have a working relationship. We will supplement the public health programs sponsored by the government.

Solution: Changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything. The empowerment of women could help solve many of the world’s problems, from poverty to child mortality to terrorism. Click on the link below to read how – contributed by Hemant Kashyap

Which got me to wonder why do we get involved? Usually, we can relate to the cause in some way, but, for me, as a lawyer, it’s because I can see the results. I believe that in tough times like this while each of us have a limited amount of capital to invest in the things that interest us, the organization or cause that shows tangible results will succeed more rapidly than the one based on good intentions or slick marketing.

I chose to get involved in the Save a Mother cause not just because of the passion of its founder and some members, but because of its budding use of social media. Before you snidely think “oh so because they are on Facebook/Twitter, you joined?,” let me clarify. To me, it represented several things that most well meaning organizations consistently fail to do.

Transparency: Anytime, anyone actively becomes part of a media that is built on communication, information, and community it is forward thinking and showing a willingness to be an actor in that world rather than just soliciting. Don’t get me wrong, creating a profile can be done by any 14 year old (case in point, my nieces), however participating, disseminating information, and laying it out for all to see shows great faith, trust, and confidence in what the organization stands for.

Viral Marketing: the greatest promise of social media is its ability to connect others with similar interests anywhere across the world. It is as, author Malcolm Gladwell stated, a great “flattener.” In a sense, social media marketing is about giving your fans a platform to talk about you in a positive way – something Facebook makes seamless. If a fan of your Facebook business page decides to comment on something you’ve posted, their friends will see that action in their news feed. If your fans mark a photo as something that they “like” then their friends will see that, likewise, if they sign up to attend an event by sending in their RSVP, it shows up for all of their friends to see. In this way, Facebook can make any content viral.

Participation: Any community is only as good as its communication. If you only talk about yourself, and do not interact with others, you are guaranteeing very few followers and worse, a push back into the closet mentality. Everyone can speak, but what’s important is what you are adding to the conversation. Using social media is an opportunity to grow, and that expansion can only happen if people like you, and want to hear from you. That occurs only when it’s a 2 way conversation. If that doesn’t appeal to you, then social media is not for you.

Examples: So you signed up, you are ready to make change happen in the world, but you are not exactly sure what to do. I have always believed that copying is the sincerest form of flattery, and my initial research took me to http://www.gauravonomics.com/ , a great resource on using social media to create social change in India.

Perhaps the best example that’s stuck with me was this: On April 14, 2009 actor Hugh Jackman pledged to give AUS $100,000 to the charity that could best convince him, via Twitter, that it was deserving of the award. On Friday, Jackman announced that, unable to decide, he had chosen two winners to split the prize: Operation of Hope, a medical foundation that donates surgical procedures to children in developing countries born with facial deformities, and Charity: Water, a non-profit dedicated to providing safe drinking water in developing countries. One of the winning tweets came from Charity: Water president and founder Scott Harrison, who tweeted a link to a photo of a group of Ethiopian children holding up a hand-made sign with the simple message “Dear Mr. Hugh Jackman, thank you for helping us!” Harrison added: “dear @realhughjackman — just snapped this near Eritrean border at a school of 1400 w/o clean water.” (courtesy of PBS.org).

And that is the power of Social Media.

Sanjay Sabarwal is a Save A Mother volunteer. He is also the General Counsel as well as co-owner of Ziba Beauty, a chain of brow lounges in Southern California that specializes in The Art of Threading ® and The Art of Mehndi.

100% of the proceeds from the event went towards training village health activists to reduce maternal mortality and improve health in rural Uttar Pradesh, in India.

Solution: In Africa and South Asia pregnancy and childbirth complications are still the leading cause of death for women. 85 percent of maternal mortality occurs in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Click on this link to learn more about the problems and solutions of maternal mortality in the developing world today – contributed by Shiban Ganju

The participants came from Sultanpur district and two other districts: Azamgarh and Jhansi. The syllabus included extensive interactive training pertinent to rural health. We hope that these participants will help in carrying out further training in their regions with minimal outside help. We will closely monitor the progress and take action to improve. They will also assist with our ongoing training program.

We also continue to train local women to be village health activists who educate and assist the villagers. In July 2009 we will conduct four training sessions at Bhadar, Gauriganj, Amava, and Singhpur Blocks in Uttar Pradesh. 15 to 20 participants will attend each training and the recently trained trainers will assist. 

We will continue to keep you informed of our progress through our newsletters.

• Trained 32 new women health activists from different villages
• Conducted three refresher training courses for activists who have been trained in the past
• Signed a collaboration agreement with the International Institute of Health Management Research, Delhi, to train 40 block level trainers who will conduct trainings for village activists in their locations. This is an effort to scale up the program

Please visit Save-A-Mother Volunteer page to find out how you can get involved today!

 

Photo taken by Save A Mother staff.