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1.
What is
the ant?
the
ant is registered
as a charitable trust under the Religious And Public Charitable Trusts Act in
Bongaigaon,
Assam.. It is a voluntary agency (also called a
non-governmental organisation or NGO) working towards rural development without
prejudice to caste, creed, religion, gender or tribe.
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2.
Why does it have a strange name like
the ant?
Do you know that an
ant can carry upto 50 times its weight? The ants are also well known for their
hard work, ceaseless activity, resourcefulness and their ability to work
together. Besides, they are known never to give up. Well! That should explain
why we are inspired by the ants. Hence we commit ourselves to work hard like
ants and work together with people. We also call ourselves
the
action
northeast
trust.
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3.
What is the objective of
the ant?
the
ant is committed towards bringing about sustainable
rural development in villages of the North East with the core values of
ahimsa, truth, honesty,
humility, trust and love. Dreaming of a world where there is peace, love,
respect and dignity for all, at present,
the ant is working at two levels: at one level-
directly in some villages of Chirang district
in the Bodo Territorial Administered Districts area of Assam, India and
on the other as a support and networking organisation to different development
agents in the North East region.
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4.
Where is the Head Office of
the ant?
the
ant is
registered in
Bongaigaon,
Assam
and presently has only one office that is at B.O.C. Gate in Bongaigaon. However
there is a field centre called the
Udandgshri Dera or the freedom camp, which
is situated in a village of Rowmari Gaon of Panchayat in Chirang
District.
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5.
Who started
the ant?
A two-year-old
organisation,
the ant was founded by three development
workers. They are also the founding Trustees of the organisation:
-
Rabindranath
Upadhyay, a known Sarvodaya worker who has since 1962, worked in
Nalbari district of Assam for rural upliftment through Khadi and Village
industries. He has vast experience and is associated with a number of
organisations at the regional and national levels.
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6.
Where does
the ant
get its resources from?
Monetarily, at the
moment, it has four sources of funds.
-
Grants
– Although for the first two and half years we never resorted to grants and
preferred to earn our way through, we have resorted to receiving project based
grants from various funding agencies. We have been proud recipients of grants
from National Foundation for
India
(
New Delhi), Sir Ratan Tata Trust (Mumbai), Aid
to Artisans (USA), Ford Foundation (
New Delhi), Indo-Global Social Services Society
– NER (Guwahati), Indians for Collective Action (USA), ActionAid – NER
(Guwahati) and British High Commission (
New Delhi
).
We have also
utilised resources in the form of voluntary service from people believing in
us. Getting free translations done, resource people for trainings at minimal
cost, designers for our weaving project are few of the types of invaluable help
we have received.
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7.
Who all are working with
the ant?
We
have a few volunteers working with us. Rani,
Binapani, Amrit, Deepali and
Krishna
have now moved to the weavers organisation called Aagor
Daagra Afad and take on a number of
responsibilities for this weaver controlled organisation. Nandini, the
secretary of the weavers organisation is also on the payrolls to learn
management issues- -. Nirila, our first employed staff from the field area now
looks after the cash disbursal and maintains accounts. Saito, a lawyer by
training lookas after the Entitlemenst issues with Dinonath, a cub reporter for
a Bodo daily. Rajesh ha trained in Rural Marketing and helps the women and
youth groups in developing entrepreneurial and income generating ideas. Rajib,
a mechanical engineer by training is passionate about silk rearing and is
helping local people raise it scientifically. Mohan and Swarna (one her way out
to start her own organisation) run the women’s Jagruti group programme although
Roshmi who has run her own Jagruti group very successfully, is fast developing
into an effective field worker for the programme. Raju looks after the youth
and women’s group in one of our clusters, but being a theatre enthusiast who
has trained in Theatre of The Opressed, is
likely to raise our communication team. Papori, a fresh postgraduate from Tata
Institute of Social Sciences has joined us to coordinate and assist the women
related programmes. Pushpa and Mithinga, the President and Secretary of the
Milonees, our health workers now get paid for ten days a month in order to
meet, encourage and supervise the other health workers once a month. Smitha,
who launched
the ant
into
the weaving arena with her spectacular textile designs is back with us and has
roped in her beau, Pradeep who is also a fashion designer. Both run the Design
Support Centre as our consultants. Jennifer coordinates
the ant’s
work and also handles most of the paper work
while Sunil takes charge of fund raising, and networking besides giving
inputs on the health programme.
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8.
Some of the members of
the ant
are from faraway places. Why?
It
is true that some of the members are not from the local area. Rural areas need
attention of development workers and agencies. Thus, believing that many areas
of the northeast could do with help in development, these members have
committed to work here.
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9.
What are
the ant’s
present activities in the villages of Chirang?
Currently we work
in around
50 hamlets . They can
be distinguished into different activities.
·
Village Health
Programme: almost all
villages in our area cannot access government health care facilities
easily. Thus women volunteers who were selected by the village have been
trained to handle about 30 medicines for common ailments.
Working as village pharmacists, they provide high quality, low-cost
generic medicines at no-profit no-loss basis and benefit the poor, especially
women and children.
·
Weaving
Programme: realizing that
the women in the area are skilled weavers
the ant
has tried to market this skill so that it can be an income
generation opportunity for women. Moreover, it hopes to create a distinct and
positive Bodo identity through the products of weaving.
·
Jagruti Groups:
believing in the
concept of self-help groups, these are women groups engaged in small savings
and investments. The objective is to lead the women towards consciousness or
Jagruti.
· Udangshri
Dera: or freedom camp
is centre that welcomes some of the poorest girls and women who have worked in
other people’s houses for monthly emoluments of about three hundred rupees
($30) plus food and shelter. In 3-4 months time 10-12 girls are expected to
earn and save about 3000 rupees that each of them can take back home to start a
small livelihood project or return their back crushing loan or feed into our
weaving programme. Other skills are also taught besides learning and writing
for those who are illiterate so that they can face the world later.
· Entitlements
work: the
ant has recently started collecting information on
the implementation of government schemes that affect the poorest and is trying
to generate awareness about the rules that govern the schemes. It hopes to stem
the corruption in order to help those below the poverty line to get their
legitimate entitlements.
Home stays, visits to villages, mobilizing people, understanding their context,
baseline survey etc are some of the strategies used to initiate the above
activities.
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10.
Why did
the ant
choose to work in
Rowmary?
During
their initial reconnaissance for a needy place to work, some people staying in
the Kokrjahar – Bongaigaon border had brought some of the founding trustees to
the areas north of Bongaigaon that were badly affected by lack of
communications and river erosion. Since they were convinced that the area
deserved the attention of a development agency and that they could contribute
from their experience, they set up
the ant in October 2000. By
March 2001, villages of Rowmary G.P. were chosen as the stepping stone for
future developmental activities. Presently our activities extend to other G.Ps
as well, like Malepara, Birhangaon, Amguri
and upto Koila Moila and Amteka on the
Bhutan
border . Moreover, Bongaigaon town being close
to the work area was chosen as the base, as it helps us to communicate with
other agencies and facilitates our activities at the second level.
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11.
How long will
the ant
stay in Bongaiagon?
We
believe in sustainable development. Thus all are activities are designed in
such a manner that the community members can start running them on their own
very early. Once that is achieved
the ant will work on other issues or in other
villages of the region, but even then will act as a support
organisation.
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12.
What are the present activities of
the ant
as a
support and training organisation in the northeast?
the
ant plays a supportive role for
organistions and volunteers in other parts of the northeast who are engaged in
development activities. It has worked chiefly in four ways:
·
Trainings:
We have been invited as a resource group
for training NGO personnel on issues in which we have expertise - community
health programmes; malaria prevention and management; essential drugs; social
analysis; NGO management; research methods, self help groups etc.
·
Consultations
& Evaluations: From
helping organisations in conceptualising a plan of action to assistance in
evaluation of projects of other organisations has been a role that
the ant uses to guide agencies
towards community - driven sustainable development.
·
Publications:
In order to reach out to a larger audience,
the ant published material that
has been translated into various languages, some of it by others. Some of these
include: A to Z of Malaria ....and
more, Your Medicine Box, Health Diary cum Manual and a Three Phase manual to
train village health workers.
·
Fellowships:
the ant
helps committed young people interested in working with village communities by
helping them get a small fellowship to enable them to continue their work
mainly through a commitment from the Bhoruka
Charitable Trust, Jaipur.
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13. What kind of salaries
and perks do the members of the organisation get?
Apart from the consultants, the highest TOTAL
emoluments of
the ant in August 2005 amount to Rs 5440/- (about
$125) a month while the lowest salary after the first three months of probation
is Rs 1860/- a month. Staff not having a house locally are given some subsidy
on rent for hiring accommodation on a shared basis. Everyone is expected to buy
his or her own cycle and cycling may range anywhere between 10 to 50 kilometres
a day. Everyone is expected to travel by second class train accommodation
unless there are no tickets available. Travel by the fastest economy mode is
resorted to when specific external funding is available for the same.
At least sixty percent of any money earned from
consultancy by any paid staff of
the ant is expected to be deposited into
the ant.
All
staff are allowed to take 4 days off in a month at their convenience and only
need to inform others about their absence in advance .
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14. Do
the Trustees draw any benefits from the organisation?
Jennifer and Sunil being married to each other try to earn about 10,000 Rupees a month to support themselves.
Jennifer draws a salary from the ant, while Sunil does occasional assignments to fulfill the deficit.
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15.
What is the staff turnover of
the ant
?
We
are proud of the fact that until August 2005, only one person working with
the
ant has voluntarily left us, that too for a teaching
assignment in social work. Any other who left us for greener pastures have
returned after a while. The only other turnover has been of people who have not
gelled with the team during their probation or were hired for short projects.
One staff member had been asked to leave for repeatedly disregarding our core
values.
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16.
How are work related decisions made in
the ant
?
We
have fortnightly meetings in which one member by turns is asked to chair and
anyone is allowed to put an issue on to the agenda. An open discussion is
encouraged on each issue until a consensus – or rarely an overwhelming majority
- is arrived at.
There is a voluntary of conduct that is read
out to new members and an administrative committee that has 4 members – having
more than 1 year experience with
the ant – by rotation is expected to deal with
discipline, salary or recruitment issues.
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17.
Is the work of
the ant reviewed
or evaluated?
As
far as all activities of
the ant are
concerned, from the first year itself, we has set up a periodic system of
review by all staff members of the organisation. Each member has to help
evaluate the activity – like weaving or health or group work
- on 5 parameters by allotting scores out of a maximum of 5 (lately
revised to 6 to avoid midpoint bias) for each of the parameters. These are
Effectivity, Efficiency (money, time, resources and emotional cost efficiency
also) Community Participation, Sustainability and Gandhiji’s Talisman, the last
one to assess the relevance of the programme to the poorest of our area.
Every
member of
the ant
also
has to face an anonymous 360 degree evaluation by every member of
the ant including
one’s own self against 20 parameters. This
evaluation is analysed on a percentile basis and upto 15% of one’s salary can
be enhanced based on this. Besides funding agencies assess and review our
progress while they giving or continuing grants to us. Formats for programme
and personal assessment can be found
here
for other organisations to adapt from.
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18.
Can
the ant
receive
funds from Indian and foreign donors?
Yes,
the ant is
registered with the home Ministry under the FCR Act of 1976 with a registration
number 020730005 as an Economic and Social organisation. It is also registered
under Section 12A of the Income Tax Act, 1961 and donations to
the ant have been
granted exemption since inception under Sec 80G of the Income Tax Act 1961 vide
595/80G/CIT/TECH/GHY/2000-01/610 dated 21st of May 2001.
Trust
rules do not allow for carrying over more than 15% of the receipts in one year
to the next financial year unless the money is specifically donated to the
Corpus. We are trying to raise a Corpus that will allow us to initiate work at
short notice without having to look for donors in emergencies and will also
help us prevent wasteful expenses at the end of the Financial year just to meet
the trust rules. A line in your letter saying that 'the donation is made to the
Corpus of
the ant ',
will help us to use the money according to
our convenience.
For
more details about where and under what name you can send in a contribution,
click
here.
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We do not publish our accounts on the web for
security reasons as we work in an insurgent area.
All accounts are audited annually and can be seen in person or may be
sent on demand after screening the request. |
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