About the Project: This charity is improving the lives of many children and families in a remote area of the state of West Bengal through sustainable development to ensure a quality of life through empowerment, and education, healthcare service and economic self-reliance. They are continually looking to improve their services and are also interested in hosting individuals interested in researching microfinance and rural livelihood generation. Your research will involve getting to know their systems and comparing them to other projects and methods. Your interests along with the charity’s requirements will inform the direction the research takes.
About the Organisation: This charity is committed to improving the lives of the villages on the mainland and across 4 islands in the Sunderbans (the largest mangrove forests in the world and the home of the famed Royal Bengal Tiger). They strive for the sustainable development of vulnerable people through empowerment and education. They have centres across the area which provide education, health care, livelihood development, women’s empowerment, and microfinance to communities. They are trying these interventions to stop the flow of child domestic workers migrating to urban centres. They support the children who attend government schools through coaching centres as well as teaching children through their own schools.
Your Role: You will be conducting research in the areas of micro-finance and rural livelihood generation. You will need to be proactive and independent in your research and produce a report for the charity at the end of your stay. Both yourself and the charity will decide the direction of your research, depending on your strengths and the charity’s interests. You will stay at the guest house in the centre and work closely with the staff to gain a better understanding of their work in the various different schemes that are linked to micro-finance to see exactly how a micro-finance project works on the ground. There is also a sanitation and drinking water section and several people looking at creating a ‘model’ village which has every child in school, every house with a separate lavatory, clean drinking water for everyone, a member of each family involved in a ‘self-help’ group and other criteria satisfied.
Areas that would be particularly useful for individuals to do research in would be: how to reduce the risks of micro-finance for the individuals, to clearly define what rural livelihood generation is and how it works for the ‘poorest of the poor’, how micro-finance and livelihood generation is closely linked. Also as there are different models of micro-finance it would benefit the NGO if individuals want to carry out comparisons of different methods and consider if alternative methods would also work in this particular socio-economic situation.
This would best suit a graduate in a discipline related to Economics as you would need to work fairly independently and produce a report at the end of their time here. This could also form part of your own portfolio or towards your studies.
What you gain: You will be able to experience and learn about life in rural areas of India. You will be challenged to adjust to living in rural India and to understand the problems the communities face. You will get valuable experience in doing research in the field and see how micro-finance works at the ground level.