Information Providers
Information Providers are young boys and girls who ride the COW to provide information to the people in the villages. The live in one of the villages and cater to the village around their village.
(Photo - Hari Krishna who launched COW project at field with
Bhoopal Reddy IP chosen from Mohd. Hussain Palli)
Criteria
Given the despairing circumstances of the villages in the region, motives of the people serving rural areas will be of highest priority for the cause of rural development, and COW's work will continue to look at enhancing positive abilities of individuals for such a cause. It became evident after the pilot phase that it is important to choose Information Providers (IP's) who did not have political leanings or any specific sect interests. As the project is aiming at equipping the village youth with technical skills as torchbearers for positive change leading to rural development, it is not possible to get people from outside villages to work as Information providers. This would also take away village money to towns and promote migration, as the towns will continue to be viewed as places of technical advancements. COW information providers, it was decided were rural men and women in their youth with native intelligence.
Selection
IP’s should have some specific identifiable attributes as a job requirement and should be from the villages. Necessary attributes are in the fields of value and belief systems, so that the IP's do not diverge from the principles of COW goals, good verbal and non-verbal communication skills and management capabilities. COW uses story telling and simulation techniques for the selection process, creating an environment of trust and space for the candidates taking the selection test.
Second part of selection process covers a field trip. Most often these days’ youth from the villages often spend most of their time in the nearby towns for education or for other livelihood activities. Several of them are unaware of the realities of village life, as most of the parents are also choosing to not expose their children to the needs and challenges of rural living. For this reason, after completing the selection candidates were asked to take a field trip, with a given schedule for their visit with demographic details. The candidates need to feed in details about important people in the villages and their responsibilities; general conditions of the villages and the problems faced by people. They need to do one case study of a very poor family in the village. The field trip helps them to anchor their position as useful information providers for the villages.
Training
The training is in two stages. The first stage coveres formal training on the available tools and their use together with general village conditions and dynamics in reference to the service delivery of COW. The second stage involves visiting some of the institutions involved in similar services like information delivery for better agricultural practices. The second stage was a broader discussion on the issues of poverty with exposure to experienced people in the area of developmental services.
Topics covered under the first round of training were usage of equipment including software and hardware, internet and digital camera; socio- developmental aspects like community level communication, networking and broad understanding about poverty and related challenges.
Enterprise
Galen Drace had initiated work on IP enterprise development through COW project in early 2003. This work continues to form the basis for a lot of additional work taken up by several others on ongoing basis. Financial modeling of COW project is completed with help from experts on the subject. Ssustainability is looked from different angles in COW model- Information provider's livelihood needs and input, maintenance and R&D costs at field and operations level.
Information Providers livelihood opportunities need to be further stabilized and enhanced. There are ongoing efforts to link IP's with local administration, banking and other important sectors. Enterprise development of the IP's will continue to be one of the thrust areas of COW in the coming times.
Scope and service
COW information providers have the capability to provide services in three areas. Development, Commerce and Governance. However, current challenge for the project had been subscription to be paid by civilians as the region is mapped as one of the most disadvantaged and poor region in the world itself (Mahbubnagar District in Andhra Pradesh India). However, that does not reduce the demand and need for services by the people. COW information providers find a middle path in ensuring economic sustainability by getting paid for some of the services and serving the developmental cause without needing to be paid in education, health and agricultural services when engaged with poor populations. Current COW model is aiming at finding the government departments and other agencies that have a mandate to reach these remote areas pay for the services by engaging COW information providers. Two experiments with the State department of rural development and District Administration were taken up on pilot basis and gains were demonstrated to the departments. It is hoped that in the next six months COW will be establishing linkages with the departments for providing civilian services at a cost.
