The Millennium Campus Network (MCN), a nonprofit organization based in Boston, recently selected BUILD: India to participate in its fellowship program and receive a grant of up to $10,000.
According to Angad Bagai, a BUILD: India member who is representing the group in the MCN Fellowship Program, BUILD, which is an acronym of the groups mission statement Building Understanding through International Learning and Development, was one of several groups selected to participate and receive funding for its project.
[MCN] took in a lot of grants, went over them and the ones that they thought had the most potential ... [they] took them on as fellows, Bagai, a junior, said. What the fellowship entails is that anyone who is receiving these grants attends meetings in which we discuss our various projects [and] our various organizations.
According to the MCN website, the networks mission is to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of groups working toward the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Participation in the fellowship provides groups like BUILD: India with coaching on leadership and strategic planning.
Bagai explained that the chosen groups will receive their grants when the fellowship program ends in May. The grants will vary in size according to the groups needs, he said.
We will need to work with the MCN officials on how much we actually get it would be a budget that is agreed upon by them as well as us, he said. We are hoping to get the maximum $10,000 and, based on [this] project, we should be able to, but a lot of it depends on both of us coming to an agreement.
According to Bagai and fellow BUILD: India member Shobhita Narain, the Institute for Global Leadership-based program will use the funding on projects aimed at developing community health and education programs in the village of Thottiyapatti. BUILD: India has already been involved in the implementation of EcoSan toilets in Thottiyapatti.
For a long time we wanted to start community health clubs in the community we work with, Narain, a sophomore said. Basically, this was an initiative that would kind of complement our work with the toilets we started in the community, and basically involve women ... and discussing issues of health, nutrition, child health ... and build a sense of community within the women across different age groups.
BUILD: Indias idea was based off of a project with a proven track record according to group member Vidya Srinivasan.
This is a model that has been used in Africa, Svrinivasan, a sophomore who is also a copy editor for the Tufts Daily, said. We noted in our application we would be the first ones to try to implement it in India ... I think that [this] helped set our application apart because it [involves] taking something that has a proven success rate, but changing it.
According to Bagai, BUILD: India also hopes to work on other new endeavors to provide locals in Thottiyapatti with supplementary income in a sustainable way.
Srinivasan explained that these income-generation programs are meant to use skills people already possess.
One of the ideas ... was starting a cutting vegetables enterprise, where the women of the village would actually cut vegetables and supply [them] to [an] engineering college, Srinivasan said. ... Cutting vegetables is a skill that almost all the women, if not all the women, in Thottiyapatti have. So its really using their existing skills instead of trying to create these trainings in order to [teach them].
Bagai emphasized the important role the grant could play in making these initiatives come to fruition.
What were hoping for from MCN is that some of the money can also go into this new income-generation program, he said. As a student group, we dont have the capital to actually enable a startup, and at the same time, once we leave, its difficult for us to follow up [on it].
Bagai said that his experience as an MCN fellow has been rewarding and has provided BUILD: India with useful ideas.
Its been a really good experience so far because it has been good to interact with other organizations from other universities [that] have similar goals, he said.
