A new experiment is completely changing lives in the rural areas of India by bringing luminosity where there used to be darkness.
An article was published in The New York Times named, "Husk Power for India". Current, which is routinely available in the lives of most in industrialized nations, is an unimaginable luxury in out-of-the-way corners of emerging countries. What was once fodder for cattle is now used to produce current - rice husks.
Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the skills to make a lifelong idea come alive. He led the development of his electricity equipment that generates power from rice husks and other farming waste and now he sells it to villages across India.
Sinha is what could be called a reformative businessman because he feels business is the answer to major social problems. "Business leaders must realise that the world's poor need investments more than handouts," he says, adding, "these are customers, not victims."
The article motivated me to think about offering things in a different way that made me ask myself, "what is the most perfect form of giving?" Is it edification, commerce or disaster aid? There are so many ways to create a difference. One way of giving can seem more productive or practical than other ways depending on the way it is given expression, viewed or put into practice.
I then came to identify there were eight sections to giving as a form to perceive this. So, let me outline the eight methods; which in effect are often 'phases' of giving as well.
Stage one: Urgency - rescuing and supporting others who are struck by natural disaster, epidemic diseases or other uncontrollable circumstances.
Stage two: Relief - providing relief from long-standing hunger, poverty, diseases, handicaps or discrimination which otherwise would continue or worsened because of the lack of information, education or resources.
Stage three: Remedying and defense - internally, bodily and psychologically. Many people carry injuries that may be invisible but could be severely confining their lives. Giving the remedy to release the buried trauma creates better facilities for them while giving proper protection gives them a sense of defense.
Stage four: Education - giving better education, information and skill training to create empowered and creative solutions to resource generation while supporting individuals to discover their unique talent to thrive.
Stage five: Creative investment - lending a hand, money or resources to those who have great potential to make a difference. This gets leveraged many times as the resources increase and passed on to many others who again make more out of the opportunities given.
Phase six: Maintainability - working collectively involving the people in the local surroundings, creating maintainable society - ecologically and communally.
Stage seven: Empowerment - sanctioning and influencing the people to set free their true capability and drive to make a difference. In this group of offering, the aim of offering changes from 'giving to those who are in need' to 'giving people an opening to give to others' and to the whole group.
Stage eight: Loving - just doing whatever we feel to do to love and care for others. No strategy or expected outcome exists in this stage of giving. 'Giving' does not even exist here in the traditional sense of the word, as there is no sense of possession or judgment or desire to change anything. This is where we do not even have to think about anything, we give as a part of our own joyful experience.
What we also perceive is that at each one of these eight stages of giving there are distinctive things that the donor gets back.
One: Sense of relationship
Two: Sense of comfort
Three: Relief from pain (our own)
Four: Gratification for our own understanding, talents and situations
Five: Long-term sense of contribution and satisfaction for our own life
Six: Improved atmosphere for our own life and for the lives of all those we value and cherish
Seven: Soul fulfilling inspiration and dedication to our own purpose
Eight: Care
Giving has many levels and experiences depending on the giver and the receiver. And the 'stages' do not describe which one is more important than the other. All are necessary.
I was lucky to have an experience early in 2008 while journeying with a group of devoted entrepreneurs across India to see how we could be more productive in our helping. I was particularly happy to have one outstanding encounter that led me to think about what 'actual giving' really meant.
We were in a little town one day. Four of us had just booked a taxi to take us to another town nearby. We negotiated with the driver carefully as our hotel staff had warned us in advance about the rip-off we might experience seeing we were not local.
We chose to stop in front of the local train station for a short interval en route to the town. While the others went to use restrooms, I struck up a conversation with the driver of the taxi, standing nearby. With his limited English vocabulary and a smiling face that showed his black front teeth to advantage, he told me that he lived in the outskirts of the town and that he had a young wife and two kids who attended the local school - I began to feel a relationship with him.
I patted him on the back for having an affectionate family and told him that I also had two kids of the same age as his. When the others came back the driver instantly asked us to come to his house for food. I thought it was just a formality he wanted to convey at first. However, after leaving us at the centre of the town, he was particular that he would wait for us till we were done with our traveling around the town. And he actually did. I was in fact quite taken aback to see him still standing by the side of the road next to his taxi even after an hour. We hopped back into the taxi and he whizzed off up the road to where his home was.
When we arrived we were actually quite shocked to see how he was living. It was almost like the same condition (if not worse) to the lifestyle of people living in slums we had visited previously. From the nice new taxi he was driving, who could have imagined
As he drove into the narrow unsealed street between small houses that were made with roughcast concrete blocks and mud painted walls, we almost regretted about saying yes to his invite. For a brief moment I felt pangs of guilt. "How could I go to this man's home who didn't seem to have anything and I didn't even bring any food or gifts for his family", I thought.
As we went inside his house, we saw a vessel and a small stove on the floor. His timid young wife raised her head in surprise and withdrew into the small store room (a cupboard size) adjacent to it. As I took in the scene, I saw the neighbours residing next door giving her a few cups across the broken down concrete fence. The young couple did not even have sufficient teacups in their house. There was a single room fitted with one single bed and a pretty old galvanised box near it.
The cab driver swiftly took out three hand-woven rugs from the galvanised box and placed it neatly on the small space of the mud floor keeping one on the bed.
Soon the cups of tea and some snacks arrived. All his children and children from the neighborhood came to see us and stood in the doorway. All six of us were totally squashed in the tiny room. I curiously asked him where all his children were sleeping. I thought they probably had another space somewhere. To my surprise, he cheerfully pointed the chest and said it was their bed with his beaming smile.
He gleefully told us that he was a dancing champion in town and pointed to some trophies on the shelf above the bed. Keen to show us his dancing skills he suddenly dashed outside. From nowhere music filled the tiny room. He didn't have any music system in the house, it was coming from outside. I was curious so I stood up to see him reversing his taxi right against the back wall of his house with the doors wide open with car radio on full volume!
With his dancing and the cups of tea his wife produced, time moved quickly and it was soon time to thank them for their wonderful hospitality and proceed on our way. As we got up to leave and give our thanks to him and his wife, he took the best of the rugs he had, rolled it and gave it to us. It was practically one of the handfuls of good things he had. It was difficult to comprehend the enormity of the gesture.
We all respectfully refused his gift and came out saying goodbye to everyone waving at us. We got perplexed about this whole thing. Should we have offered some cash to the family as they obviously had limited means? Should we have agreed to take his wonderful gift?
As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked crest-fallen that we didn't accept the gift. It wasn't only the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.
I understood that the sense of unease I felt was really ensuing from viewing him as unfortunate. I was perhaps thinking that I couldn't possibly accept something from a person who had very little.
But did he really have nothing much? Maybe he had much more - many more.
Maybe the perfect gift we could have given him then was to accept his gift in total surrender and gratefulness.
All actions of gifting and getting are essential for us to fill our world with plenty and contentment equally for both giver and getter. We can begin doing this instead of assessing and defending one over the other. The perfect act of gifting and getting needs no further clarification.
Manoj Sinha's words echo in my mind once again, "these are customers, not victims." I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night. - 20763
An article was published in The New York Times named, "Husk Power for India". Current, which is routinely available in the lives of most in industrialized nations, is an unimaginable luxury in out-of-the-way corners of emerging countries. What was once fodder for cattle is now used to produce current - rice husks.
Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the skills to make a lifelong idea come alive. He led the development of his electricity equipment that generates power from rice husks and other farming waste and now he sells it to villages across India.
Sinha is what could be called a reformative businessman because he feels business is the answer to major social problems. "Business leaders must realise that the world's poor need investments more than handouts," he says, adding, "these are customers, not victims."
The article motivated me to think about offering things in a different way that made me ask myself, "what is the most perfect form of giving?" Is it edification, commerce or disaster aid? There are so many ways to create a difference. One way of giving can seem more productive or practical than other ways depending on the way it is given expression, viewed or put into practice.
I then came to identify there were eight sections to giving as a form to perceive this. So, let me outline the eight methods; which in effect are often 'phases' of giving as well.
Stage one: Urgency - rescuing and supporting others who are struck by natural disaster, epidemic diseases or other uncontrollable circumstances.
Stage two: Relief - providing relief from long-standing hunger, poverty, diseases, handicaps or discrimination which otherwise would continue or worsened because of the lack of information, education or resources.
Stage three: Remedying and defense - internally, bodily and psychologically. Many people carry injuries that may be invisible but could be severely confining their lives. Giving the remedy to release the buried trauma creates better facilities for them while giving proper protection gives them a sense of defense.
Stage four: Education - giving better education, information and skill training to create empowered and creative solutions to resource generation while supporting individuals to discover their unique talent to thrive.
Stage five: Creative investment - lending a hand, money or resources to those who have great potential to make a difference. This gets leveraged many times as the resources increase and passed on to many others who again make more out of the opportunities given.
Phase six: Maintainability - working collectively involving the people in the local surroundings, creating maintainable society - ecologically and communally.
Stage seven: Empowerment - sanctioning and influencing the people to set free their true capability and drive to make a difference. In this group of offering, the aim of offering changes from 'giving to those who are in need' to 'giving people an opening to give to others' and to the whole group.
Stage eight: Loving - just doing whatever we feel to do to love and care for others. No strategy or expected outcome exists in this stage of giving. 'Giving' does not even exist here in the traditional sense of the word, as there is no sense of possession or judgment or desire to change anything. This is where we do not even have to think about anything, we give as a part of our own joyful experience.
What we also perceive is that at each one of these eight stages of giving there are distinctive things that the donor gets back.
One: Sense of relationship
Two: Sense of comfort
Three: Relief from pain (our own)
Four: Gratification for our own understanding, talents and situations
Five: Long-term sense of contribution and satisfaction for our own life
Six: Improved atmosphere for our own life and for the lives of all those we value and cherish
Seven: Soul fulfilling inspiration and dedication to our own purpose
Eight: Care
Giving has many levels and experiences depending on the giver and the receiver. And the 'stages' do not describe which one is more important than the other. All are necessary.
I was lucky to have an experience early in 2008 while journeying with a group of devoted entrepreneurs across India to see how we could be more productive in our helping. I was particularly happy to have one outstanding encounter that led me to think about what 'actual giving' really meant.
We were in a little town one day. Four of us had just booked a taxi to take us to another town nearby. We negotiated with the driver carefully as our hotel staff had warned us in advance about the rip-off we might experience seeing we were not local.
We chose to stop in front of the local train station for a short interval en route to the town. While the others went to use restrooms, I struck up a conversation with the driver of the taxi, standing nearby. With his limited English vocabulary and a smiling face that showed his black front teeth to advantage, he told me that he lived in the outskirts of the town and that he had a young wife and two kids who attended the local school - I began to feel a relationship with him.
I patted him on the back for having an affectionate family and told him that I also had two kids of the same age as his. When the others came back the driver instantly asked us to come to his house for food. I thought it was just a formality he wanted to convey at first. However, after leaving us at the centre of the town, he was particular that he would wait for us till we were done with our traveling around the town. And he actually did. I was in fact quite taken aback to see him still standing by the side of the road next to his taxi even after an hour. We hopped back into the taxi and he whizzed off up the road to where his home was.
When we arrived we were actually quite shocked to see how he was living. It was almost like the same condition (if not worse) to the lifestyle of people living in slums we had visited previously. From the nice new taxi he was driving, who could have imagined
As he drove into the narrow unsealed street between small houses that were made with roughcast concrete blocks and mud painted walls, we almost regretted about saying yes to his invite. For a brief moment I felt pangs of guilt. "How could I go to this man's home who didn't seem to have anything and I didn't even bring any food or gifts for his family", I thought.
As we went inside his house, we saw a vessel and a small stove on the floor. His timid young wife raised her head in surprise and withdrew into the small store room (a cupboard size) adjacent to it. As I took in the scene, I saw the neighbours residing next door giving her a few cups across the broken down concrete fence. The young couple did not even have sufficient teacups in their house. There was a single room fitted with one single bed and a pretty old galvanised box near it.
The cab driver swiftly took out three hand-woven rugs from the galvanised box and placed it neatly on the small space of the mud floor keeping one on the bed.
Soon the cups of tea and some snacks arrived. All his children and children from the neighborhood came to see us and stood in the doorway. All six of us were totally squashed in the tiny room. I curiously asked him where all his children were sleeping. I thought they probably had another space somewhere. To my surprise, he cheerfully pointed the chest and said it was their bed with his beaming smile.
He gleefully told us that he was a dancing champion in town and pointed to some trophies on the shelf above the bed. Keen to show us his dancing skills he suddenly dashed outside. From nowhere music filled the tiny room. He didn't have any music system in the house, it was coming from outside. I was curious so I stood up to see him reversing his taxi right against the back wall of his house with the doors wide open with car radio on full volume!
With his dancing and the cups of tea his wife produced, time moved quickly and it was soon time to thank them for their wonderful hospitality and proceed on our way. As we got up to leave and give our thanks to him and his wife, he took the best of the rugs he had, rolled it and gave it to us. It was practically one of the handfuls of good things he had. It was difficult to comprehend the enormity of the gesture.
We all respectfully refused his gift and came out saying goodbye to everyone waving at us. We got perplexed about this whole thing. Should we have offered some cash to the family as they obviously had limited means? Should we have agreed to take his wonderful gift?
As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked crest-fallen that we didn't accept the gift. It wasn't only the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.
I understood that the sense of unease I felt was really ensuing from viewing him as unfortunate. I was perhaps thinking that I couldn't possibly accept something from a person who had very little.
But did he really have nothing much? Maybe he had much more - many more.
Maybe the perfect gift we could have given him then was to accept his gift in total surrender and gratefulness.
All actions of gifting and getting are essential for us to fill our world with plenty and contentment equally for both giver and getter. We can begin doing this instead of assessing and defending one over the other. The perfect act of gifting and getting needs no further clarification.
Manoj Sinha's words echo in my mind once again, "these are customers, not victims." I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night. - 20763
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