NGO Inc.

Gone are the days of people with a philanthropic bent, the kinds who would don khadhi kurtas, carry a jute bag and knock on doors of prospective donors asking for donation! Today, the NGO (non-governmental organisation) sector, with increasing professionalism, enhanced career growth opportunities and its transformation into a structured ‘industry’ with clear fundamentals (read: upliftment of the society), has turned into a hotspot for career aspirants

Viren Naidu

Experts say that the development/NGO sector, today, is in a transition phase. It is no longer unorganised. NGOs are ensuring transparency, accountability and good governance. Naresh Chaudhary, COO, Smile Foundation who puts forth the above adds, “Due to investments by international organisations in India and proactive participation of international donors, NGOs are becoming more professional and
structured. Today, the development sector is at par with any other customer service industry. It is helping bridge the gap between supply (resources) and need (social issues). Even the donors have become more responsible, wise and proactive. The donor today is an investor and not a mere giver.”

Priya Zutshi, manager, communications, CRY who has been a correspondent with a leading national news channel before moving in as a communication manager with CRY says that using the same professional skills that were earlier being used only to strengthen a certain company’s bottom-line are being used to make the world a better place for children and this, for her, is rewarding enough to make it a viable career move.

Today, Zutshi is working alongside a team of professionals who previously held jobs in highly respected corporate firms and quit in pursuit of helping children in need. Because of the fund flow and also pressure to bring results as well as pressurefrom donors, there is now a more scientific and established methodology to solve issues and problems in the social work industry. A lot of emphasis is placed on planning and monitoring, say experts involved in the development industry. Arbind Singh, founder of Nidan (a NGO that works towards the empowerment of the poor) who is one of the experts adds, “The practices and methods of the business enterprises are applied fully in social work, except for not making profit. Mere norms are no more important; written rules defining financial management, HR, investment policy, project planning and monitoring and so on are important.”

Singh enlists why a career in this industry is a lucrative move: 1) There is good ‘salary’ today, 2) there is a large opportunity to express oneself through work, workshops, seminars and trainings and 3) there is a lot of variation in the type of work you want to pursue– so if you want to work directly on the ground or if you want to play a supportive role in planning and monitoring or work in a donor agency, you can.

But unlike the other sectors that offer good pay packages, ensure career growth and provide several opportunities to hone one’s skills, does this sector do any of that? “Majority of the organisations are non patriarchal, so the growth prospects of an individual are only limited by the talent you showcase at work. The remuneration also depends on the organisation with which you are working as a lot of them now pay according to the set industry standards,” says Zutshi. Anuradha Sawhney, mentor for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India says, “Most NGOs do offer better pay packages, especially those NGOs working in the human sector. We offer our staff medical, retirement and insurance benefits.” Therefore, if you have the willingness to contribute towards the betterment of the society, this sector will provide you a lot of opportunities and much more!

GOODWILL HUNTING
How can a person go about looking for a job in this industry? There are different types of organisations working in different geographies and on different issues and across different scales- there are small to big to large NGOs as well as specialised organisations.There are some that only provide funds to others.There are some who only provide technical support and then there are those that are issue based.Singh who explains the above suggests that a candidate has to choose between:

a) what geography he/she likes to work – South,North or state, urban/rural,etc.

b) the organisation setup– larger the organisation smaller the role,smaller the organisation larger the role.

c) issues- children,micro finance,social security,education,health and so on.

d) type of organisation – grassroots,technical support agency,donors,multilateral institutions like UNICEF, UNDP,etc.

MYTHS SHATTERED!
Chaudhary enlightens us by drawing the line between myths and facts:

Myth 1:It is all about volunteering.

Fact: The sector is getting organised and people working here are true professionals.

Myth 2: NGOs are money minting agencies.

Fact: NGOs have set examples that they are transparent and adhere to good governance policies.

Myth 3: They are meant for retired people.

Fact: Today, the policies in NGOs are much structured and in place. Many youngsters are joining the sector.

Myth 4: Many people think the association will help them get only a tax exemption certificate.

Fact: It is high time people realise their Individual Social Responsibility (ISR), stand up and contribute in the development process.

Pioneers of IT revolution awarded Nobel for physics

Stockholm: Three physicists won the 2009 Nobel Prize on Tuesday for work on fibre optics and light sensing that helped unleash the Information Technology revolution.

Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith were hailed by the Nobel jury as “the masters of light” for transforming communications from copper-wire telephony and postal mail to the era of the Internet, email and instant messaging. “This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded for two scientific achievements that have helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies. They have created many practical innovations for everyday life and provided new tools for scientific exploration,” the Nobel jury said.

One of them is the fibre-optic cable, which enables transmission of data at the speed of light, and the other is the digital sensor that is the digital camera’s “electronic eye,” the Nobel jury said.

Kao, who has British and US nationality but has been based in Hong Kong, was awarded half of the prize for groundbreaking achievements in the use of glass fibres for optical communication. The 1966 discovery by Kao, now 75 and retired, means that “text, music, images and video can be transferred around the globe in a split second,” the Nobel jury added.

Boyle, a Canadian-US citizen, and Smith, a 79-year-old American, shared the other half of the prize for inventing an imaging semiconductor circuit — the charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor, which is the “electronic eye” of the digital camera. The CCD, which converts light into electrical signals was invented in 1969, inspired by the photo-electric theory that earned Albert Einstein the 1921 Nobel. “It revolutionised photography, as light could be now captured electronically instead of on film,” the committee said. AFP

Charles Kao

Willard Boyle

France pays kids to attend school

Rewards Students With € 10,000 For Good Grades

Katrin Bennhold

Paris: In poor Paris suburbs it now pays off to do well in school—literally. High school students can earn rewards worth up to € 10,000 for their class to share if they attend lessons and get good grades.

The pilot program, which took effect on Monday in three vocational schools in working-class neighbourhoods near the French capital, is the most eye-catching of a number of government measures aimed at tackling a chronic problem of poor class attendance, mass dropouts and high youth unemployment in France.

The idea relies on a combination of peer pressure and material incentives: Students jointly commit to an average attendance and performance target. Depending on how ambitious the target is, the government will pay from € 2,000, about $3,000, to € 10,000 into a group fund that can be spent on anything from driving lessons to class trips when the target is achieved.

“We’re trying to be creative—you have to be,” said Jean-Michel Blanquer,head of the greater Paris school district, who likened the initiative to a “moral contract.” But in the country of Victor Hugo and Voltaire, the idea of using money to motivate teenagers to learn has fuelled a debate that spans the political spectrum.

An independent organization, SOS Education, accused the government of “buying” students and undermining the values of the French Republic.

France’s costly and heavily unionized school system an iconic institution at the heart of the republic. It is where children are turned into French citizens since the days of the revolution.

But as high school dropout rates have swelled, particularly in ethnically diverse and poor neighbourhoods, calls for reform have grown louder. As many as 150,000 young people—about 13% of those aged 20 to 24—enter the labour market without a high school diploma. Four years ago a spell of rioting among youths of immigrant origin highlighted the frustrations suffered by many young people in the suburbs ringing major French cities.

Blanquer, at the Paris school district, said the opposition to the program missed the point. “If we had called it a scholarship everyone would have been on board.” he said. “Everyone agrees that we need to get young people off the streets and into class rooms and lower crime rates.” NYT NEWS SERVICE

Secondary edu lagging behind, says WB study

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: Caught between the emphasis on elementary and higher education, secondary education has suffered in the country, a World Bank report has said.

Calling secondary education a “forgotten middle”, Sam Carlson of World Bank, who prepared the report, pointed out how investment in secondary education had declined. While primary education gets the largest share of 52% of total spending on education, secondary education, which plays an important role in building up a skilled workforce, gets 30% of the spending, the report said.

Higher education gets 18% of the total spending on education. India’s gross enrolment rate (GER) at the secondary level of 52% is far inferior to the GERs of countries like Vietnam (72%), Sri Lanka (83%) and China (91%).

Carlson said the newlylaunched Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan has tremendous potential to bridge the gap in secondary education. World Bank is in the process of lending $500 million loan for RMSA. Projections, Carlson said, suggested an increase in absolute demand for secondary education between 2007-08 and 2017-18 of around 17 million students per year, with total enrolment growing from 40 to 57 million students. The report said there was a 40% point gap in secondary enrolment rates between students from the highest and lowest expenditure quintiles. It said there was a 20% point gap between urban and rural secondary enrolment rates, and a persistent 10% point gap between secondary enrolment rates of boys and girls.

Secondary enrolment also varies from state to state—22% in Bihar, 92% in Kerala, 4% in Jharkhand and 44% in Tamil Nadu. In some states like Rajasthan, UP and Madhya Pradesh, enrolment of the general population at secondary level is 80% higher than for SCs, STs and Muslims.

The report has recommended public-private partnership models including reform of the grant-in-aid system, public classroom and school construction in rural areas, hiring of more teachers and introduction of double-shift teaching. To raise demand for higher education, the Bank said number and quality of class eight students should be increased, there should be a provision of financial and in-kind aid for disadvantaged students. Emphasis has also been put on strengthening secondary education teacher training colleges, peer-based development of teachers, teacher performance standards and increased community monitoring of student learning.

The report, while recommending India to become part of international benchmarking like Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, carried out a test on the basis of published test items in schools of Rajasthan and Orissa. It was found that students’average scores placed them below 43 of the 51 countries tested, just above South Africa and Ghana. But, top 5% of students performed far higher, on average, than most of their peers around the world.

NUMBER CRUNCHING
Only 30% of the total expenditure on education is spent on secondary educationn
India’s gross enrolment rate (GER) at the secondary level of 52% is far inferior to the GERs of countries like Vietnam (72%), Sri Lanka (83%) and China (91%)

‘Kyoto Protocol murder will kill Copenhagen deal’

Bangkok: The gridlock at Bangkok climate negotiations worsened on Tuesday with key G77 members, including India and China, indicating that the “murder” of Kyoto Protocol could end up killing prospects of a deal at Copenhagen. The Kyoto Protocol converts the principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities” from the mother UN convention into quantified emission reduction targets for industrialised countries. The EU, which till date had been goading the US to put up targets under Kyoto, instead began to sidestep the issue of its own emission reduction targets for the mid term.

For the Indian delegation, the Obama administration’s decision to follow the Bush regime and refuse to sign on to Kyoto did not come as a great surprise. But, then came the Uturn by EU — a grouping that has always sought to gain the “leadership” role at climate talks. “The end of Kyoto Protocol is not acceptable to us. It is a legal pact with rights and duties for all member countries. A handful of countries wanting to abrogate their duties cannot kill it on their whim,” said a senior Indian official at Bangkok. TNN

US shirks green duty, turns screws on India

Nitin Sethi | TNN

New Delhi: With seven days of negotiations remaining before Copenhagen, the industrialised countries have still not made a single offer of financial compensation to poor and developing countries for their mitigation actions.

At Bangkok negotiations, the US turned around instead to demand that India and other developing countries put their entire set of emissions reducing actions under international scrutiny. The 192 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change had in Bali in 2007 agreed that the industrialised countries would undertake a higher level of emission cuts to counter the enhanced risks of climate change. The rest would undertake actions as per their national circumstances. The countries also agreed that the actions that were “enabled” by financial and technical support from the industrialised countries would be scrutinised by the UN process and verified. The logic then was simple, while developing countries were not responsible for the globe reaching a tipping point, it would undertake mitigation actions as long as those responsible for the climate crisis paid the full incremental cost of such actions.

But the US and the European Union, using the recession as a ruse in informal talks, have on several occasions indicated that it would be politically impossible for them to provide money to the “emerging economies”. Now, the US proposal demands that regardless of whether there is any money on the table, the developing countries too put up their actions for international scrutiny.

With just 7 days to Copenhagen meet, the 1st world nations are yet to stick by the 2007 Bali pact and offer financial compensation to developing nations for their mitigating actions for climate change