Our mothers conference on Sunday was a great success. Over 2000 mothers turned up and marched about a kilometre from one school to another. Originally we had intended to have about 1500 of our sponsored children but the mother's indicated they would prefer to have a day out without the kids :-) . I suppose mothers are the same everywhere.Sunday was also national voters day and we used this to raise the profile of our partner here and I believe we were featured on the local News channels.In December I was contacted by Sigurdur, a retired video producer from Iceland and he offered to produce a short video for promotional use by Nandri. He videoed a lot of the march and the subsequent conference which we hope to edit over the next few weeks so that you can see the highlights. Today he spent shooting what will be a five minute video about the impact which we have had on one family. It really illustrates how all of our programs integrate for the benefit of the children and mothers in our various programs.I will tell you more about this in a separate blog
Mothers conference is on tomorrow.
Michael Sweeney my fellow director and I arrived in India today Saturday. We initially flew to Dubai which is an eight hour flight and then we flew from Dubai to Chennai where we were picked up. It is about three hour drive to Vellore where we will be based for the next 6 days.>
This is a photograph of a street banner advertising our mothers conference which is on Sunday, 25 January. 2000 mothers will attend.It does serve to publicise our local partner Child Aid Trust and the work that it is doing. I believe the other two in the photographs are local dignitaries and being associated with them also is beneficial to Child Aid Trust.
Jeremy O'Beirne
I want to say a big thank you very much to Irish chartered accountant Jeremy O'Beirne. He is just finishing three months volunteering with Nandri partners in India, Child Aid Trust . He has made a great contribution to improving the accounting and systems there. He offered valuable training and experience to the accounting staff. Working in rural India means electricity going down during the day. The backup power supply kicks in but it can be frustrating. The temperature and humidity would have been difficult but at least he was there during a time of year which would not have been the hottest. There is not a lot to do in rural India where 99% of the locals don't speak English. It gets dark at 6 o'clock every evening, no internet, not too many television channels. This time next year we hope to have our Rural Development Centre with accommodation for volunteers. We would hope to entice volunteers with different professional qualifications and experience to bring to our work in India. The photograph above is the house that Jeremy was staying in. Unfortunately the car was not his. I wouldn't advise anyone to drive in India. Well done and thank you to Jeremy
Fund Raiser in Perth Australia
Well done to Caoilfhionn Crowe and her friends who held a fundraiser with an Indian theme for the night. Caoilfhionn had brought back from India a dozen saris, one for each of her friends.They raised enough money to provide a family income generation loan to 5 families. The families will be presented with a cheque by Caoilfhionn in India on Sunday, 25 January.They will probably use the money to buy a cow which will provide the family with nutrition and milk and enough money to repay the loan over 20 months. At that point a second family will benefit from the money which was raised.Well done to all concerned
India here I come - again
On 23rd January I am heading to India again. Traditionally we make one visit to India each year as technology means that we can talk and communicate every day and it is not necessary to actually go there more often. In October last year I went there to review a number of different pieces of land and look at prices of land generally. I ended up recommending the purchase of 2 acres of land which is within walking distance of our Nandri Farm and Agriculture Training Centre which we acquired on a ten year lease a year ago.Over the last few months we have been developing with a local architect plans for the building of a Rural Development Centre. This will provide office accommodation, a reception area large enough to meet and talk to up to 30 mothers every day who may have questions about the various programmes in which they are involved. It will have a number of training rooms and accommodation for volunteers. There will be cooking facilities for up to 200. On this trip in January we hope to meet a number of builders and obtain quotations so that we can start building in February 2015. In India, at least in our part of India, you buy the land and then submit plans to the local mayor who will give you planning permission. It sounds a bit risky but that's the way it works and obviously we discussed with the local mayor what we had in mind for the land. In a twist that sounds a bit Irish the same mayor was also acting for the seller of the land as an agent.
Happy Christmas from 2000 families
Just before Christmas we received a box of over 1000 Christmas cards from India. it's a huge logistical job for our partner in India because the children attend over 200 different schools as far apart as Dundalk to Cork (200 miles). And it takes twice as long in India to travel the same distance.
Our field workers (Staff members who attend all of our mothers meetings) had to find each child either in school or at home, ask the child to write a short note to their sponsor or ask the very young children to make a little drawing.
The cards were then taken back to our office in India and because 90% of the children don't speak English their note had to be translated from Tamil.
Once the cards were completed they were scanned and then added to our computerized child sponsorship management system. Each of our sponsors can now see their Christmas card and other information about their child including photograph or school exam record.
The online access we give our sponsors to information about their sponsored children is quite unique either among Irish or international charities. It is also very cost-effective for us. But we do know that many sponsors don't have regular or any access to computers and we all know it's nice to receive something personal in the post. All cards were mailed before Christmas.
In the meantime you can access the card online if you are a sponsor .
Another part of our child sponsorship system is unique internationally. Each child has their own bank account and the sponsorship money is transferred into that account. The mother has the passbook and each mother feels a great sense of pride going to the bank to take out money which has been lodged into the account. These low caste Dalit women would not normally be allowed into a bank. We are also encouraging them to save and this is happening.
Over 700 of our mothers now have their own "business" which is changing their family's lives forever. Through our micro finance income generation program we have given them a loan to buy a cow or a sewing machine. Within a few years they will be earning so much money they won't need the child sponsorship and this will be passed on to another family to start the cycle again.
So thank you to our dedicated staff in India who worked very hard to get the thousand Christmas cards.
More than anything thank you to our many sponsors and donors without whom we wouldn't be able to change the lives of what is now almost 2000 impoverished families in India.
Fred Crowe
CEO
Rural Development Centre
In November 2014 we concluded the purchase of 2 acres of land near Chetpet, Tamil Nadu. This land is within 10 minutes walking distance from our Nandri farm, which in December 2013 was leased for 10 years.Since the charity started in 1996 we have probably spent over €2 million on houses, schools, medical dispensaries, toilet facilities and clean water bore wells and many other miscellaneous projects. During that time our office staff and fieldworkers have moved from one unsatisfactory rented accommodation to another.Finally, we will build a rural development centre which will provide a solid foundation for us in India through our partner Child Aid Trust. We already provide services for almost 2000 families, through our various programmes, including child sponsorship, mothers self-help groups, micro-finance income generation and medical programmes. We are developing a range of agricultural training programs at our Nandri farm. Our new rural development centre will provide accommodation for mothers who are being trained.
The RDC will have a reception area for the many mothers who visit us every day. It will have a medical room to attend to basic medical needs. There will be office accommodation for our office staff and a meeting room for our office and fieldworkers. We also expect to have volunteer accommodation and a large and small training room. There will be catering facilities for the hundreds which we expect to attend our training courses.The RDC should enable us to double the number of families we are serving within the next three years. All this is only being made possible by a small number of donors who have made substantial donations.We are currently reviewing plans with a local architect and hope to begin building in February 2015Fred Crowe
Mother benefits from micro-finance
Mrs Thilagavathi is one of our 1500 mothers, who meet every month in our 100+ self-help groups. She has a son who is being educated thorough the child sponsorship programme. Two years ago it was very difficult for her to maintain her family and to keep her son in education.Now things are changed with the help of NANDRI. What was NANDRI’S role?In 2013, she joined a mothers self group. Although she was in dire situation, she had the talent to stitch and sew . From the mothers group she received Rs. 5,000/- (€75) as group loan and bought two tailing machines “second hand”. she started her business to earn money.Later she got a micro finance loan from NANDRI, Rs. 20,000/- (€250) and bought two more machines to sustain her life. Now it was a great success after her hard work. Per month she is able to generate easily Rs. 4500/- to 5500/- through her work.She is able to pay rent for the shop Rs. 2000/- and repaying the loan Rs. 1000/- and also managing to get provision for her food and lastly sustaining the child in education.
Also she is teaching 10 poor children and through which she gets around Rs. 1000/- which is also useful to her savings. Above all she has the interest and determination to teach tailoring to poor children freely. Hence she has asked the field workers to bring the children so that the children will be taught. She is really proud to be part of the NANDRI family and grateful to her sponsors.A
Nandri farm is making money
Nandri.org is an Irish charity also called a not for profit organisation. All of the funds we raise are distributed through an Indian registered trust near Vellore in Tamil Nadu. We mainly work with Dalit and Dhobi communities. Although the local motto is "need not creed".Our objective is the education of children and the improvement of the living standards of our client mothers. We use micro-finance for income generation projects and various other programmes including child sponsorship, mothers’ self-help groups, training and health.In December 2013 we seized an opportunity to rent 10 acres of land. This land had reasonable water supply, but had not been utilised to its full due to lack of capital. We reckoned that with a small amount of investment in infrastructure and stock, this could turn into a profitable farm. We were right. We are well on the way to covering the operating costs of our partner in India, ensuring that more of our money is use on our projects. 
Almost a year later, we have built the infrastructure, including a building for cows who, unlike Irish cows don’t like the rain. It doesn't rain very much, but when it rains, it comes down very heavy. We have a number of units to house chicks which will later become free range organic chickens for the tables of Chennai. We have 3 acres in rice paddy and the rest in groundnuts or peanuts and feed for our cattle.Our 21 cows are now producing regular income from the sale of milk. All our feed is organic so we ultimately hope to get a premium price and milk prices are increasing anyway in India. We will sell our male calves normally at six months to a year old. Very little beef is consumed in India as cows are regarded as sacred. Our female calves will become mothers so we can increase our herd and our income. 
We built some units to house three day-old chicks which need to be kept in a constant temperature. Electricity is not a guarantee in India, so we have invested in solar panels to ensure a constant temperature. The solar panels are also used to provide electricity for lighting and for water pumps. Once the chicks are three weeks to a month old they are then allowed to run round in a fenced area, but free to eat the plants and insects. We have entered into a partnership with the company in Chennai to market our organic free range chickens or country chickens as they are called in India. We intend to set up a number of our 1500 mothers with small chicken units. We will provide them with feed, housing, fencing and 100 three week old chicks which we will then buy back at four months old. This will provide these mothers with an income. We intend to operate the same system with a number of local orphanages, which will also provide them with an income.We also created a large fish pond and stocked it with 2000 fish. We have 250 ducks and through the miracles of nature the residue from the ducks is eaten by the fish who in turn produce residue which ends up as food for the ducks. I am an accountant, so I don’t really understand these things, but it works and we have income from duck eggs and soon fish, without much costs.We currently have about 3000 chicks and once we have mastered the production of organic free range chicken we will increase our numbers. Shortly we will be running training programs for our mothers in how best to look after their cows and chickens. We are in the process of acquiring land close to the Nandri farm where we hope to build a rural development centre. This will have training rooms, sufficient space for a constant stream of visiting mothers. Accommodation for volunteers and of course, office accommodation for our staff.Overall, this is turning out to be a successful programme. We are making a profit for us and others. We are providing products for our client mothers to sell. We are also providing training. We will be pleased when the profit we make will cover the operating costs so that we can focus on diverting all of our money to our programmes.
Rural Development Centre for our Dalits and others.
For the last 10 years our partner in India Child Aid Trust has moved 6 times. They currently occupy small crowded offices.We are hoping to build a rural development centre which will incorporate training facilities, space for visitors, accommodation for volunteers and a medical dispensary and office facilities.Why - We currently have 1400 (growing by 50 a month) mainly illiterate Dalit mothers and this will double in 3 years. We need to run training courses in sanitation and hygiene, childrearing, their rights and many other topics including agriculture topics.Our mothers feel proud to be part of our organisation. They wear their uniform sari proudly.Every day at least 20 of our 1400 mothers come to the office. The means overcrowding for staff and mothers and lack of privacy.One reason for my visit is to look at different sites for this project and speak to builders. Renting is not an option. We were thrown out of the last place due to our many Dalit visitors arriving every day. This is more discrimination against them.Land prices are crazy in India. Think of a site on the road between, say Ardee and Dundalk. A site in India between 2 smallish towns is quoting €50,000 to €70000 for 1 acre. I suspect in Ireland today I might get a house thrown in for most that price.We were hoping we would find some land owner who would be motivated by the work that we are doing and price the land accordingly. I think we have found one.One of our Irish sponsors has already offered €20000 donation. We need small donations also.
"I need to sell one of my 18 month old twins"
Six months ago I wrote that a mother who had just joined a mother's self-help group announced that she needed to sell one of her twins as she could not afford to feed them and her other two children. Through our help and support we managed to convince her not to do so.Today I met her with the twins and everybody is very happy.We went to school in a slum area in the local city. During a visit the children were eating their lunch. I saw one child of about five walking from the school with her dinner plate partly eaten. She was evidently bringing the food home for her mother.We visited a small village this evening with a local mayor. He had arranged for solar based electricity lighting in this small village where they're often without electricity for three or four hours in the evening. This good man also supports the education of 60 children. We passed by one home where one teenager said she could not do her homework as her bottle of ink had run dry. The cost is about €.15.We take for granted being able to keep our children, having enough food and having electricity and biros. Many of our client families don't have this luxury.Thank you to our sponsors because without you I would not be here and experiencing some of the good stories and the way we are able to change peoples lives forever.
Down on our farm
For those of you who don't know, in December 2013 we leased a 10 acre farm. Well it was just 10 acres of bare ground which we have now turned into a farm.We built an accommodation unit for the people who work there. We have just completed a cow shed for 30 cows and calves.We built a number of chicken units to accommodate the organic free range chickens we are producing.We have installed three solar panels to ensure constant temperature for the chicks and electricity to pump water for irrigation.Our organic free range chickens will have a much higher value and of course the chickens will have had a much better life as they are free to run around in a large enclosure. Today I believe we have 3000 chicks.We also have 300 ducks, a fish pond a rice paddy, peanut fields and we are growing feed for the cows.We have a few goats and our next plan is for sheep.Using our micro finance income generation program we are going to roll out small chicken producing units for our mothers.We have two new trustees in Chennai who are setting up a website to market our free range organic chickens.Our plan is well underway to make almost enough profit to cover the costs of local salaries and overheads. We are also going to start training some of our mothers in better ways of looking after their cows.It's amazing how much you can do with 10 acres of land. A number of our local people are working very hard.
It's not always smiling faces
Most of my photos show happy children but this does not show the full picture. Included in recent photos is a boy who saw his father setting fire to his mother and killing her. Alcoholism may be the reason or family pride. The boy (not featured here) is now adopted by his mother's sister thank God. He is included in our sponsorship programme. The money which we receive from our sponsors every month make a huge difference to lives such as this child. Please keep it coming sponsors.Today we are meeting 30 children or should I say adults who graduated this year.
2 maths grads will work in the fields.
Life ain't easy for 2 sisters who did a maths degree. As they could not afford to pay 3rd year fees of Rs.14,000 (approx €180) each plus Rs.8,000 transport each the college won't give them their certificates so they will work in the fields to pay the fees and then they need Rs. 50,000 each to do post grad to become teachers.Their mother had received an income generation loan from us last year. She used the money to purchase a grinding machine. She grinds rice to make rice flour etc. She grinds rice for other people and also for herself and then with her own rice she makes a local rice product called idle, like a small pancake. The husband is a carpenter and earns relatively good money but he works in one of the cities and rarely sends money home.We will assist them next year with our third level loan programme to ensure they complete their education and achieve their full potential.I met the two girls today and have aphotograph which I will send to the sponsor of one of them but for privacy reasons I'm not showing it here.
India - country of contrasts
India today is a country of huge contrasts.Indian TV news reported that parents in this state of Tamil Nadu were arrested today for burning their daughter for marrying a Dalit, (low caste untouchables in India and these are the people which we mainly help)A few days ago a satellite which was launched three years ago reached Mars much to the pride of all India.Today Mr Modi the new Prime Minister launched a campaign called clean India. The whole country is absolutely filthy, lacking in sanitation, sewerage and people don't help by the amount of litter which is thrown around.Mr Modi evidently revolutionised his state of Gujarat. If he can do for the whole country what he did for that state then things will change.
Arrival in India
I arrived yesterday with Caoilfhionn, my daughter, who is joining us for a week. She is flabbergasted by India. I am used to it but she finds amazing the numbers of people everywhere, the cows on the streets, colourful saris, beautiful women, gorgeous children, the constant beeping, noise and litter but most of all the friendliness of everyone.Today we went to the farm where they are making great progress. Cowshed almost completed for 30 cows, free range organic chicken unit finished. They also have ducks and have filled a pond with fish. There is also a turkey running around who won't be there in January :-(Afterwards we went hunting for a site. More anon.
Goats can earn an income for a family
This week we have a life story sharing by Mrs Irudhayamary. She has her own reasons to thank the sponsors both in Nandri, Ireland and CAT, Polur.Mrs Irudhayamary migrated from a small village called Irudaiyampattil in search of employment and settled in Irudhayapuram. When she came to Irudhayapuram hardly had she known anybody and so nobody came forward to help her. Life was terrible for her. At this time, it is CAT which rescued her by sponsoring her son to educate in the second level education. It reduced one of the biggest burdens of hers.Secondly and more concretely, CAT had given a micro-finance income generating loan to buy three goats in 2013. It had become their property and saviours. Later on, once the goats multiplied, she started to get income from them. For example, once the goats kids grew up, they can sell it around Rs. 2000/- to Rs. 2500/- and thus the goats supported them. Therefore, for Irudhayamary, at least per year, she could earn Rs.20, 000 (€300). This would be great help for her to sustain the family. Now she is happy that she owns around 10 goats and gets some income from them.