Orissa, Jharkhand Cut Neonatal Mortality Rates

 Mothers in the tribal regions of Jharkand and Orissa are stopping their babies from dying by simply 'peer educating' and 'talking out' problems with the help of NGOs like Ekjut. TOI reports:

Prasanta Tripathy runs the NGO Ekjut, which facilitated the training. He says “there is a 45% reduction in neonatal mortality rate as well as a change in practices related to child-rearing. Besides, there is a 57% reduction in postnatal depression.”
Tripathy says they stress on “participation, learning and action — the ingredients in the making of an empowered mother and healthy baby.”
The NGO started with 20 women in three villages around Chakradharpur six years ago. By now, it has 20,000 trained women, spread across more than a thousand villages in nine districts of Jharkhand and Orissa.
Sumitra Gagrai, Ekjut group coordinator, says the core of the revolution was the community spirit unleashed, when trained female volunteers fanned out across remote villages “to encourage adolescent girls and married women to find practical solutions for good health during the pre and post pregnancy period.” 

Read the TOI reports here and here.
Just another example of how far even a handful of small basic steps can go in alleviating the seemingly intractable challenges facing us today.

WSJ on Rural BPO

"Do you really think women can work on computers?" Men in Bagar genuinely wanted to know the answer to that question when Source for Change – an initiative of the Mumbai-based Piramal Foundation -- set up an all-women BPO (business process outsourcing) center in this small village in India's Rajasthan state. The skepticism didn't end even after Source for Change selected 10 women from 25 applicants in August 2007. Wary men would accompany their wives or daughters to the training center and then wait around until they were ready to return home.
More than two years later, men still drop in unannounced at the remodeled house that serves as Source for Change's combined headquarters and training center. But these are not the same suspicious husbands and fathers. Instead, they are individuals hoping to find jobs for the women in their families. "They realized that we made available the two most valued symbols of social status here: English and computers," says Karthik Raman, head of business development for Source for Change. "Some of the women who work here earn more than the men in their families. They now have a voice at the table."

Read the full article here.