Going Beyond the Numbers: Progress in Prashanthagiri!

February 28, 2015
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| Agriculture & Farming Cooperative, Center of Development, Children's Club, Education, Empowering Women, English Language School, Health & Wellness, Life in India, Natural Resource Management, Reflections, Tailoring Training Program

20picturesIn the development world, there are tons of metrics by which to assess growth – ways to quantify a program’s progress in promoting health and wellness in a community. And who doesn’t love to see these numbers? Numbers that can easily be translated into pie charts, or info graphics about our work, are neat and easy to understand at a glance.

But for those of us working with a young and growing non-profit like Profugo, we recognize that our progress – and more importantly, the progress of the community we work with – is not all quantifiable. Progress transcends numbers because people do, too. Working in the field of development with a community can be messy and chaotic because things are subject to change depending on people’s schedules, goals, concerns, suggestions, and even the weather! (Anyone who has lived through a monsoon season knows that nothing is certain but the rains.)

So when I think of Profugo’s progress this past year in promoting the health and wellness of our local community in Prashanthagiri in South India, there are certainly numbers to mention – too many, in fact, to include here. Profugo hosted 7 Health and Wellness events, the most exciting of which was our clinic day in April 2014, when we brought out doctors and specialists to examine over 400 of our community members free of cost. We have enrolled over 60 children in our monthly Children’s Club events, where they come to participate in team-building exercises and learn to develop important life skills like critical thinking and confidence. We continue to support female empowerment, having trained more than 10 women to become successful tailors with a new batch of 8 trainees starting in March 2015, while also engaging 7 women in our newly launched embroidery program. We raised $45,000 in 2014 and over 40 team members logged in 14,000 volunteer hours, signifying huge support from our Profugo neighbors for the work we do in the developing world.

However, as a former Field Fellow, I have the privilege of knowing first-hand that numbers do not tell the full story of our progress in promoting a better quality of life for our neighbors in Prashanthagiri. In fact, I am privileged to know the faces behind those numbers, the people to whom they refer. I know Sindhu, who says that the money she earns working with Profugo gives confidence because it provides her with the ability to contribute to her children’s’ wellbeing by paying for their school fees when her husband is out of work. I know Jessy, our local staff member who says that her children are inspired to study more to improve their English because of her progress with the language since she began working with American Field Fellows. I know Valsala, one of the hardest workers in the village, whose family’s health has benefitted from the reduction of smoke due to the installation of a smoke-free cooktop system through Profugo’s Biogas Digester program.

And best of all, I know well some of the kids that have benefitted from our programs this year. Navaneeth, a student in sixth grade, has had the opportunity to further develop some life skills while participating in Profugo programs, including confidence in his English language abilities. “When I first came, I used to say things very wrongly, but you are correcting us calmly and we are never teased.” He also fondly remembers a Children’s Club activity that promoted resourcefulness, during which the children were encouraged to make a geometric design called a pookalam out of trash they cleaned up from the road. “We realized how much we can make out of all there is in the world, even waste. We are learning many things.”

Having lived and learned in the community Profugo serves, it is clear that numbers are not our whole story. Numbers can never fully encapsulate our progress in providing our Prashanthagiri neighbors with the tools they need to better their quality of life. Talking with some of the children gave me the best take-away from the progress we have made over the past year, and those before it: the fact that the work we do in the community has inspired others to “pay it forward.” Drisya, 15, said that witnessing the work Profugo staffers and Field Fellows do in the community has inspired her to go into social work. “Here, we are having different classes each month,” she said of our Children’s Club meetings, during which we work on developing various life skills. “From those classes, we are getting many ideas. From those ideas, we are understanding who we must become.”

Now how do you put that kind of progress into a chart?