Self-sufficiency

Finding ways for individuals to lead a debt-free life and to educate individuals (partly as a way to make them and others self-reliant) are core Focus Areas of Timeless Changes Foundation.

The major projects in this area of focus are:

1. Micro-Finance Project in Tanzania with DTF

2. Drinking Water in Rural India with CCN

3. Housing project in Texas, USA with Habitat for Humanity

4. Fellowship to a dedicated individual with a long record of selfless service, to help his organization to get to the next level

5. Supporting efforts by a team of volunteers to raise funds by starting a nursery, so they could free up more of their time for volunteer work.

Micro-finance Project in Tanzania

We're working with DTF in Tanzania, Africa on this project.   We'd agreed in principle to work with DTF on this project and handed a phase one check.

We received the initial proposal in September 2011 and we're studying it.

Drinking water project in rural India

A project to provide safe drinking water to people in the Dabuguda village - a  remote tribal village at the border of two  states in  India: Andhra  Pradesh and Orissa, two southern states of India.  Most of these indigenous tribals ("adivasis", meaning first settlers - native people) were displaced by the Machkand and related hydroelectric dams in the 1960s.  They retain their traditional lifestyle.  The women in the village fetch water each day from quite a distance, walking across trails in the hilly terrain.  This project helps the villagers build a pipeline from a waterfall to their home.  Timeless Changes Foundation has provided the money to buy the materials as a loan, while the villagers are providing the labor ("sramadhan" - donation of their services).

The first collaboration between Timeless Changes Foundation and CCN was a Micro Project to create a safe and reliable supply of drinking water to Dabbuguda, a remote village in Andhra Pradesh, India. See a Photo Gallery of this Micro Project. These men and women live in an area that has many free-running streams and beautiful waterfalls, yet the women and girls trudged up to two miles (each way) daily to get their family’s drinking water. Timeless Changes Foundation funded the PVC pipes and other materials with the caveat that the villagers provide the labor (sweat equity). The photos in Exhibit 11 and the written report in Exhibit 5 demonstrates that as a result of this project, not only are the villagers able to get safe, reliable drinking water straight from the natural streams, but now have a surplus of water – that they are beginning to use it for irrigation thus providing them with some unexpected extra income.

A BRIEF REPORT ON INTERVENTION IN DABUGUDA VILLAGE:
The Original Source of water-2600 meters distance from original source to Dabuguda.

The current situation: -Water for life and Water for livelihood –First we thought for safe drinking water for Dabuguda village, and later we found water for livelihood too.

The project was initiated with the idea of providing drinking water to the village. The project was completed on the 10th May 2008.After the completion of the project it was found the water very much in excess of what is actually required.
 



a) Approximately 1% of the total water was being tapped for drinking purpose. Remaining 99% excess water from the same source was running away to the drainage.
b) It was realized that this water could be tapped for irrigation for agriculture, horticulture and for vegetable cultivation with some initial investment and a sustainable model of livelihood could developed.
Previous source of drinking water where people use to collect water for drinking purpose.

Details of the project
The source of water is 2600 meters away from the village. A Channel has been dug in the ground and PVC pipes have been laid in this channel to carry the water.

  

Fixing the pipe in to main source

At receiving point the area was cleared and taps were fixed. Three receptions points were arranged in the village. The villagers were asked to maintain the drinking water points very clean.
The total amount spent on the project was Rs.1,71000.Of this Rs.1,00000 was given by Timeless Changes Foundation, which has been extended as loan to the villagers.The community had contributed Rs.41,000 as their labour and the balance amount of Rs. 30,000 is being raised from the government through the Self Help Group at the village.
The project was jointly executed and supervised by the CCT Lakshmipuram and a water committee formed by the villagers of Dabuguda.



Lessons learned:-
The villagers of Dabuguda had entered into the agreement on the condition that all the expenditure on the project would be treated as a loan from CCN. However after the execution of the project they raised questions on the repayment condition as prior to this all the projects had been executed in a grant mode from CARE. In addition to this they had insisted that CCT(or CCN) had never charged for its services in the past fifteen years so they demanded to know the reason why their case was being treated as an exception. The villagers in Dabuguda belong to the PTG (Primitive Tribal Group) of Kondhs and Gadaba Porjas. These tribes are soft by nature and are easily influenced by others. Discussions with curious villagers from the surrounding villages had brought about this change in their attitude.

It was an uphill task for the CCT Lakshmipuram to explain to them on the participation ownership and rights issue. However in few days after seeing the tremendous change in the schedule of their women folk, who are hardly spending a few minutes now, to fetch water as compared to one hour or more before this, the community has come to terms with the agreement. In addition to this the villagers are also eager to plan more development activities with CCT Lakshmipuram

Joint discussion for maintenance plan

The next step:-
Profile of Dabuguda: There are 35 houses in Dabuguda. All the families are PTGs, 12 belonging to Gadaba Porja and the rest belonging to the kondhs. They speak a dislect of Oriya. The tribes are soft and slow in nature.The village is by natural resources of land, water and good forest. Each family is cultivating on a minimum of 10-15 acres under irrigation and non irrigated land category.
• Presence of Perennial sources of water

Water at door step


• Good amount of land under horticulture which needs technical intervention to increase the yield.
• Good forest yielding adda leaves, hillbrooms, and medicinal plants. Good potential for collective marketing of forest produce.
• Each family has a homestead yielding highly commercial species like turmeric,ginger,pippal modi and chillies.


Existing Problems
a) Expansion of size of existing streams, which leading massive land slides at bank of the stream.
b) High degree of soil erosion on top hills.
c) High degree of degeneration of forest.
d) 60% of families still depended on primitive cultivation Podu cultivation
e) 8.55 of literacy rate in this village
f) Existing alternative primary school almost defunct.
g) 100% women are illiterate.


Plan for future action
Make an integrated village development plan with the villagers aiming at both social and economic development.Dabuguda will be developed as a model village with the following indicators:
• 100% children will be in school
• 60% elders including women will become literate
• Incidence of water borne disease will be reduced
• 100% Pregnant women and new born children will be immunized.
• DSB (Dongar Sona Bonchao), committee for forest preservation will be strengthened and more forest land will be brought under preservation
• Improved methods of farming will be adopted on both irrigated and podu land and to increase the yield and preserve soil fertility.
• Farmers will be organized for collective marketing of both agricultural produce and non timber forest produce.
• Self help group will be strengthened.
The smiling lady


Further Scope
There are a total of 12 more villages with a profile similar to Dabuguda.9 of these villages have been adopted for intervention in the development of model village strategy in which provision of safe drinking water is a compulsory component.

We are currently looking for dependable partners in this field.  Ideally, the partner would be a not-for-profit [preferably a 501 (c) (3)] organization that is a legitimate credit counsellor - and not a "credit repair" organization.  If they already had an education program in place, we would consider funding such program to reach more at-risk individuals.  If not, we would consider partnering with this group to develop and deliver educational material to help individuals lead a debt-free lifestyle.

Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry. HFHI seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.

Habitat invites people of all backgrounds, races and religions to build houses together in partnership with families in need.

North Collin County Habitat for Humanity started in 1992 as McKinney Habitat for Humanity, an affiliate of Habitat International. In 2002, scope expanded to include North Collin County , so the name was changed to North Collin County Habitat for Humanity, Inc. The affiliate currently builds homes in McKinney , Frisco, Celina, Princeton and Melissa and also serves Prosper, Anna, Farmersville, Weston and unincorporated areas in the Northern County .

52 homes have been built as of January 2009, and 17 homes overseas.

Nursery to support Volunteers

The second collaboration between Timeless Changes Foundation and CCN was to provide a sustainable funding source for the volunteers of CCN, so they can continue to contribute to the good work being done by CCN. These volunteers are almost all indigenous people working in or close to the villages where they were born – while frequently educating themselves (up to Masters degree) via distance education methods. While CCN received funding for projects from other charitable organizations, these NGOs were not motivated to support the people who actually carried out their projects. This resulted in the volunteers having to make the difficult choice: continue to volunteer while going into debt or move away from CCN’s work to support their family, thus hobbling CCN. One way out, a win-win solution was the establishment of a nursery for commercial trees Labburu, Manchingpet Mandal, Andhra Pradesh, India. Timeless Changes Foundation looked at the business plan, which called for cultivating saplings to a stage where local farmers and home owners would buy the trees as loggable wood, wind-breaks and such – a dependable market, and thus a source of income for the volunteers. Exhibit 4 shows volunteers (and some sub-contractors) at work building the nursery. Exhibit 5 includes a write-up on the (partial) success of the nursery. Lack of water and pests caused this year’s yield to be less than optimal – but we are satisfied that a firm foundation was laid.

Fellowship for Lakhi Deuri

  In keeping with the guiding principles of Timeless Changes Foundation, Mr. Lakhi Deuri is a person that has done yeoman’s work in the field of social development, education and finding equity for indigenous people in an area of India that is literally off the map. A member of Indigenous people himself, Mr. Deuri obtained a degree in Social Work and moved from Assam (in Northeast India) to the remote tribal area near Machkand dam, on the border of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa (two Southeastern states in India). He taught himself the language and dialects of the tribes in the area, lived with the people in inaccessible hill areas and over the period of fifteen years, earned the trust of the indigenous people. During the process, he and others founded CCN – the Community Coordination Network, a not-for-profit NGO that helped make a positive impact in peoples’ lives. He was instrumental in at least thirty individuals being educated – sometimes the first among generations and first ever from their village, to get a high school diploma. During a visit to the CCN work area in December 2007, Prabu Ayyagari was introduced to Mr. Lakhi Deuri by Mr. Narender Kande, a Board Member of Timeless Changes Foundation. The Board of Timeless Changes Foundation discussed the issue in considerable detail and voted to support Mr. Deuri with a fellowship – initially for six months – to enable him to explore (Exhibit 8) new opportunities for the economic improvement of the indigenous people, including the establishment of a local market for their produce and agricultural products [they used to trek about five miles each way over hills without roads to attend the weekly market in the Plains, where the “townspeople” took advantage of their naiveté]. It turned out to be an opportune time, since all other funding dried up, so the Timeless Changes Foundation fellowship also served as a bridging-grant. Exhibit 9 is a report of the work done by Mr. Deuri during the time he was being funded by Timeless Changes Foundation.

Report from Lakhi Deuri on Fellowship from Timeless Changes Foundation