Jaago Re

Jaago Re, a social awareness campaign sponsored by Tata Tea, was initiated in 2008 to encourage voter registration. Since then the campaign has expanded to other issues including their current focus - corruption. Visit their website to register, look for volunteering opportunities, and take a pledge against bribing.

Also check out this funny yet sad satire on corruption in India -

MakeSense - linking people for social business

Makesense.org is two guys traveling around Asia, talking to social entrepreneurs, and having fun along the way (HT ThinkChangeIndia).

Their objective is simple - to share the stories and challenges of social businesses in order to promote and link these businesses to the larger community, similar to what we want to achieve at We Flap.

The web app is still in development, but you can pre-register here. In the meantime, check out their fun blog and videos.

Skills development for women farmers in India

Did you know that 70 percent of agricultural activities in India are carried out by women?

With mass migration of farming families to cities, drought, inconsistent monsoons, shrinking agricultural land banks, next generation food supply chains and processes, new farming techniques, etc., it should be obvious that engaging women farmers and equipping them with skills to cope with a changing agricultural landscape is an imperative.

In practice, that isn’t quite the case, according to an international research project conducted in by the London-based City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development. The report from the project finds that it is the men folk who receive better and most of the training. Women, on the other hand, continue to remain at the bottom of the training pyramid, confined to toiling in the fields. The report highlights the need for appropriate training for women to ensure that their productivity is not lowered.

The state of training women farmers in India is quite disconcerting. Research shows that giving women farmers the same inputs and education as men could increase yields by; despite this women continue to receive only a small proportion of the appropriate training compared to men.

Here is a very good documentary on the state of small scale farmers in India (29 mins)

Pirate fishing

Some trawlers dispose about 90% of their catch as bycatch which means that millions of fish, marine mammals, turtles and birds are caught every year and simply discarded back into the sea because they are not profitable.

I heard this disturbing fact at a presentation by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) on pirate fishing. Pirate fishing, predominant in developing country waters, has serious environmental and social consequences.

Here is an informative 2 min video by EJF -

Illegal 'pirate' fishing from Environmental Justice Foundation on Vimeo.

Fans of what kids could do

Over the last 6 months, We Flap has been working with kids to develop a new program we are calling "Enrichment clusters". Soon, we will start to document our work in more detail and expand this program across various schools.

We learnt quickly that kids can be surprisingly thoughtful when they break complex issues down into the simplest of terms. Frequently, they generate creative ideas by just thinking of things in ways in which most of us cannot - simple because our adult brains have been conditioned not to think in those terms.

In the spirit of our work in fostering "childish thought", we thought it would be apt to share with you an example of why we are such fans of kids -