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1.
What is
the ant?
the antis registered as a Charitable Trust
under the Religious And Public Charitable Trusts Act based in District Chirang,
Assam in India. 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?
You may be aware that an ant can carry up to 50 times its
weight. It is also the commonest animal, collectively making for an estimated
25% weight of all animals on our planet, although it does not attract much
attention. Ants are also well known for their social 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. 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?
Although the
ant was registered in
Bongaigaon
,
Assam
in the year 2000, it presently has its Head Office at Udangshri Dera, Rowmari,
Dist Chirang which is just a few kms away from Bongaigaon town. However there is
a Field Centre at Deosri that coordinates its work with the IDPs in the area.
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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.
-
Sunil
Kaul
is a public health activist who worked as a medical doctor in the army for some years, and then
left his job to work for primary health care in rural areas of Rajasthan and
Assam
. He has a Masters in Public Health (in Developing Countries) from the
London
School
of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. An Eisenhower Fellow, he has been working in
community health especially with respect to malaria and T.B. for many years and
has trained hundreds of village health workers.
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6.
Where does
the ant
get its resources from?
Monetarily, at the moment, it has five 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. At various
points of time, we have received small
and big grants from National
Foundation for India (New Delhi) – even a Sir Dorabji Tata Trust grant is routed through them, Sir Ratan
Tata Trust (Mumbai), Aid to Artisans (USA), Ford Foundation ( New Delhi),
Association for India’s Development (USA), Indo-Global Social Services Society –
NER (Guwahati), Indians for Collective Action (USA), ActionAid – NER (Guwahati),
the British High Commission (New Delhi ), Paul Hamlyn Foundation (UK) MIVA
(Holland), CMC (Holland) and Karuna Trust, Mumbai.
Consultancies – We
are proud to declare that we have earned a substantial amount of our funds for
the foundation years of
the ant through
this route. This has been through training and consultancy assignments with
other development organisations. Self- dependency begins at home.
Publications - We have been able to
publish booklets, manuals and diaries and earn funds from these for our work
Personal Contributions- We are
fortunate to have kind friends, relatives who believe in our endeavours and
kindly contribute for the work.
the ant is also registered under section 80G of the Income Tax Act for 50%
concession for donors on Income Tax.
Loans – We have been resorting to
loans from Banks and NGOs for our weaving projects, but have never defaulted in
repayments
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. MSF (
Holland
) left their vehicle and other items behind for us to use and many friends and
relatives have gifted us computers, generators and the like.
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7.
How big is
the ant?
the ant
has around 43 staff operating out of the Rowmari campus. 4 work on its Health project in
Kokrajhar while 9 people are employed at our
Bangalore
store. These figures do not include the 14 member staff of Aagor Daagra Afad.
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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 our work is spread in around 90 hamlets. This can be distinguished into different
activities.
· Village Health
Programme: Almost all villages in our area cannot access government health care facilities easily, although
since 2006, the National Rural Health Mission is trying to make a difference.
Thus women volunteers 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. We also have community laboratories that give correct Malaria results
to local people with a 95% technical veracity. Lately we are trying to work with
the community to keep an eye on the National Rural Health Mission guarantees and
are helping in building the capacity of the ASHAs (Accredited Social Health
Activists) of the NRHAM programme. Alongwith ASHADEEP, A NGO based in Guwahati,
we are running a monthly camp to treat Mental Health patients and working at
community level also to remove the stigma associated with Mental Health.
· 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. Larger Jagruti
Dals try the same too.
· 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 four or five hundred rupees
($10) plus food and shelter. In 3-4
months time about 20 girls are
expected to earn between 8 to 14000
rupees (USD 300) that each of them can use to start a small livelihood
project or return their loans 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 been trying to motivate people to ask
for their entitlements and fight for them. 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 VCDC
were chosen as the stepping stone for future developmental activities. Presently
our activities extend to other VCDCs
as well, like Malipara, Birhanggaon, Amguri and upto Koila Moila, Amteka and
Deosri on the
Bhutan
border. Moreover, Bongaigaon town being close to the work area was chosen as the
base initially, 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?
Everyone in the staff is allowed to take 4 days off in a month
at her/his convenience and only needs to inform others about the absence in
advance. Apart from this, ants can avail 15 days leave in a calendar year.
The lowest salary is just above that of a Daily Wage labourer,
at 3400 pm incl all cash perks. The highest salary based on experience and
qualifications in 2008 has been hiked to around 22000 per month. These scales
incl the Provident Fund. By early 2009, we plan to start a medical insurance
system for everyone
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14. Do
the Trustees draw any benefits from the organisation?
Jennifer draws a salary of approx 22000 per month incl of
Provident Fund Contribution . Sunil being married to her, lives on her largesse.
They pay a monthly rent of Rs 2000 for the house provided to them on the camps.
The other trustees do not draw any benefits.
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15.
How are work related decisions made in
the ant
?
We have monthly 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 code 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.
Strategic issues like salaries etc, are of course finalised by the Board of
Trustees.
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16.
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 had 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 (of 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 25 parameters. Besides, a
performance analysis has also been instituted to measure performance as the
earlier evaluation was seen only as a quality evaluation. This evaluation is
analysed on a percentile basis and upto one month a year of one’s salary can be
earned as bonus based on this. By rotation every staff member also forms part of
the Internal Audit team to get to see all the payments passed by the accounts
department.
Besides, funding agencies assess and review our progress while they are 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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17.
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 which is renewed every now
and then.
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
Income Tax 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 even after the end
of the Financial Year.
For more details about where and under what name you can send in a contribution,
click here.
All accounts are audited annually and can be seen in person at anytime or may be
sent on demand after screening the request. Locally we do not make public our
accounts for security reasons as we work in an insurgent region. However, we
invite anyone to walk in without notice to see our vouchers and bills and
inspect our documents.
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