Dear Friends of ‘Friends of India’

My trip to India earlier this year proved to be a very stimulating one, as I was joined by members Alydia Seidell and Sarah Browne. Alydia was with me to visit and photograph projects. Some of her photos will feature in the 2007 FOI Calendar—remember to buy one, or lots. Sarah was there with a view to organizing group visits from
Switzerland later on in the year. How about a 10 day tour to familiarise yourself with the projects you are supporting and to discover Tamil Nadu? Watch this space! Our visit was – as always – packed to bursting with a variety of visits. Schools, with varying needs from toilets to new classrooms. A home for women with HIV/Aids who are learning to embroider table linen (which we will sell at our next bazaar). Unveiling the foundation stones of 2 multi-purpose educational centres – one in Arni and the other in Kovolam. Once completed these centres will provide education and training for thousands of rural women and children. Another exciting moment was meeting a few of our 30 FOI cows you gave as Christmas presents! All had calves and were adorable (see back page). And our collaboration with the Chaîne du Bonheur is bearing fruit. There is news of these and other projects filling this newsletter.

The most lasting memory I hold of this last trip is the incredible energy, self esteem and the joy expressed by the SUEB women (see the photo). They have progressed from being uneducated, often abused and degraded, to selfsufficient, enterprising, confident members of society. FOI has helped them to help themselves. That is all we want to do!

Thank you for your continued support. Remember, we need your 2006 membership fee to support FOI’s work.

Pam Walsh, Geneva, June 2006

How do we choose? How do we say ‘No’?

First a few numbers:

Tamil Nadu
Total population	62.4 million
No. of women	31.0 million
Literacy rate of women (men)	65% (82%)
No. of illiterate women	17.7 million
No. of schools in Tamil Nadu	>56’000
% of schools with no teacher	6% ( >3,000)
... with no or unusable water/toilets	25-35%
Children <15 not in school	7.5 million

These figures are from various sources, including the 2005 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) (www.pratham.org)

FOI has no fear of running out of projects. Every time we visit TN the challenge we face is not finding projects but how to turn them down. Above are the kind of numbers—enormous numbers— that reinforce FOI’s resolve to assist women and children in Tamil Nadu. The situation across India is similar, sometimes significantly worse. Thankfully the situation is improving, so maybe the Indian Government’s goal of universalization of quality primary education in India by 2010 has a chance of being achieved (compare this ambitious goal with the UN Millennium Development Goal for 2015 “to ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling”). FOI is contributing to achieving this goal. But sometimes it’s not easy to say “No”. Fortunately we have a certain number of ‘First Line Filters’, in particular our partners SUEB and TNF, which receive proposals and after a review will pass to us ideas that seem to fit the FOI portfolio. But then the FOI executive needs to decide! But how? With a pyramid! Those of you that have recently participated in a FOI event can’t havefailed to notice the FOI ‘Mission Pyramid’. It illustrates the four aspects against which we judge and focus our selections.

Infrastructure (basic needs): Water, toilets, walls
Environment (for learning): classrooms, teachers’salaries, equipment
Motivation (for attending school): Uniforms, nutritional snacks, pens & pencils
Empowerment (opportunities for women): Skills,training

Most FOI projects can be easily mapped to these aspects. Most. There now and then exceptional cases or exceptional circumstances that we respond to as ‘one off’ opportunities to assist (a ‘good’ example of that were our steps into the area of disaster relief last year when the tsunami hit some of our communities).

Extract from the newsletter - Read the full newsletter here.