SKI Charities Blog

September 27, 2013 by SKIC | 1 Comment

Why Focus on Women?

SKI Charities founder Shyam has been asked why it is that the charity focuses exclusively on women. When he visits town halls and communities to tell them about SKIC, plenty of men attend. Some of them jokingly (and others more aggressively) ask him, “Why are we not included? Why do you just focus on women? Is this reverse sexism or reverse discrimination?”

Shyam reasons that it is an effort to level the playing field. He tells these men, “We’ve had our opportunity and continue to receive so many chances. You see what our women do, what our mothers, sisters, and daughters do for us. They add to the community. They will add even more to your own life!”

Though SKIC would ultimately love to reach out to beneficiaries regardless of gender, some of the choice to work exclusively with females comes from having to carefully manage its resources. “We want to optimise our reach, in as many socially constructive areas as possible,” Shyam says.

“By no means am I saying that boys don’t deserve the same scholarships or men the same capital. But the communities we work in are very traditional, impoverished communities. Our observation has been that more men control the household finances and more boys than girls are given the opportunity to get an education and are encouraged to strive for something more. So when we think about our broader goal, it’s not about favoring females or choosing sides through microfinance or scholarships, but simply leveling the playing field.”

Shyam also points out that microfinance, in its most successful incarnation, was directed at females. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize Winner from Bangladesh, pioneered microfinance on a large scale and chose to focus on women. “He did this for a reason,” Shyam says.

“When you empower women, you truly support the entire community, not just an individual. When a woman is empowered and starts to earn wealth, what will she do? She will grow her business, which will then hire more people, which will in turn support more suppliers. When she makes money, she will put her kids back in school, which of course increases the overall education of a community. And she will start to tithe more consistently to her church, which will further strengthen the community. As she becomes more prominent to society, she becomes respected as a leader and a role model for younger people. It’s all textbook spillover effects. The point I’m trying to make is, if you want finance go further, there are studies and initiatives and our own experience demonstrating that the best way is through women.”

Though the men in Lebu and Mutare are an important part of SKIC – “their support for their wives and daughters is integral to our efforts,” Shyam notes – the goal of the charity is to use the resources available to reach as many people as possible. As women gain more strength in these communities, it becomes more and more clear, through simple observation, that they put their energy and their earnings back into their communities and their families. So while on the surface our mission is directed at individual women, communities at large are the true beneficiaries.

Categories : SKICharities, SKImfi, SKIpgo Tags : child development, early-stage scholarships, education, empower women, microfinance, philanthropy, SKI Charities, Zimbabwe

September 18, 2013 by SKIC | 1 Comment

Why Choose Microfinance?

Founder Shyam K. Iyer discusses the basics of SKIC’s SKImfi program.

“The term ‘micro,’ at least to me, connotes community-mindedness. The business efforts of the women we work with aren’t global. They focus on very small economies, on their individual communities, and, if nothing else, SKI Charities is a community-minded organization. We believe that focusing on these small areas in a micro sense supports these women’s own ideas of community and responsibility.” -Shyam K. Iyer

Why choose to help women through microfinance?

This process is about getting more women involved in a system where they can feel confident by building their wealth through self-employment. There are a few other ways of doing that than micro-finance. In my own experience, when I’ve just been given something, I’ve never treated it very dearly or importantly. But when I worked for something, just as these women work with their loans and pay them back, I felt like part of an equal opportunity. When you’re doing microfinance at such a local level, it’s not solely about these women creating their own wealth and creating their own businesses.
There are amazing spillover effects. They often start by paying their kids’ school fees with some of the money they make, which is great in a social sense, as it encourages schools to operate better. Further, the women in SKImfi may hire some of their friends or sisters to work for their business. That’s another spillover effect. And to support their businesses, they buy from other suppliers, who aren’t a direct part of our program but benefit from its existence. The work these women do and the products they provide stimulate the whole community, and SKIC’s goal is to grow and continue to stimulate more and more communities.

Will you give us a bare bones explanation of microfinance?

Like we discussed in our spring blog post, Microfinance 101, it’s basically a bank for people who have very little to no income, probably no collateral, definitely not a formal job, maybe not even an informal job.
Think about people who do have all of those things. They go to a bank; they present their resumes, their background, and they ask for a loan to do whatever they have a plan to do. Then they get the loan with the expectation that they’ll pay it back. Through microfinance, we deal with people who don’t have that track-record, resume or anything else to support their need of a loan.
We support these women with loans that are very small, based on the expectation that they never got the chance to put that story together. The key to this is that they have the same potential as those who are privileged enough to go to their local banks. So they get a very small microloan from SKIC, and they are expected to pay it back just like you or I would have to go to a bank to pay it back.

Categories : SKImfi Tags : child development, early-stage scholarships, education, empower women, microfinance, philanthropy, SKI Charities, Zimbabwe

September 9, 2013 by SKIC | No Comments

A Conversation with Shyam: Where We Are and Where We’re Going

For our fourth SKI Charities podcast, founder Shyam K. Iyer sits down to discuss why he chose to begin the charity in Mutare, Zimbabwe. He goes on to talk about how he chose the second charity site (Lebu, Chile) and what the similarities are between the two.

Listen in on the discussion, and hear Shyam’s thoughts on potential future locations for SKIC!

Categories : Company Organization, Podcast, SKICharities Tags : child development, early-stage scholarships, education, empower women, microfinance, philanthropy, Podcast, SKI Charities, Zimbabwe

September 3, 2013 by SKIC | No Comments

Our Project Managers: The Heart of SKIC

SKIC Project Managers

Based in New York City, SKI Charities founder Shyam K. Iyer relies heavily on his project managers and field officers in Mutare, Zimbabwe and Lebu, Chile to monitor and maintain the charity on a day-to-day basis. Though he travels to both locations frequently, Shyam emphasizes that it is the project managers who make the decisions that keep SKIC moving forward.

“I make it very clear that every decision is made by our local project manager. She is in charge, she’s the quarterback, the chief executive,” Shyam says.

It is critical to Shyam that the project managers are all locals – and are all women. “They are daughters of the community we operate in,” he says.

“I want our project managers to know their way around, to be confident in their environment, but most importantly, they are the face of our organization. The beneficiaries need to respect the project manager, they need to listen to her, they need to want to please her. They need to understand that she’s in charge. That’s why it’s so important that she’s a local person – and that she’s a she! Because she’s also a role model for these women. It inspires our beneficiaries and their families to work harder because they know that we respect them, that they are our equals, and that we believe it’s a community project. This is not a top-down structure, but very much a bottom-up organization.”

Our project managers are both female and local to the community – but the they also must be able to handle the finances, share and analyze best practices with Shyam, and communicate at the grassroots level. Beyond this technical skillset, SKIC also looks for confidence and leadership in its managers. “If they’re challenged by local people, perhaps someone asking why they weren’t chosen for a project (especially in a place like Zimbabwe, which can be politically sensitive), they need to have that confidence to resolve the situation,” Shyam notes.

Having a strong network in both Zimbabwe and Chile helps Shyam determine who would be an ideal candidate for the role of project manager, and he relies on his trusted local associates to recommend nominees to SKIC. In addition to competence and the ability to handle administrative duties, SKIC project managers are women who are part of the same demographic as SKIC participants. In this way, beneficiaries can relate to their managers, see them as a source of support and advice, and aspire to similar modes of leadership and empowerment.

For more on SKI Charities project managers, click here and stay tuned for individual project manager bios!

Categories : Company Organization, SKICharities Tags : Chile, Project Managers, SKI Charities, SKIC, Zimbabwe

August 6, 2013 by SKIC | No Comments

A Conversation with Shyam: The Election in Zimbabwe

In the latest “Conversation with Shyam,” we sat down with the SKI Charities founder to talk about the presidential elections that were recently held in Zimbabwe. Candidates Robert Mugabe (Prime Minister from 1980-87 and President from 1987-Present) and Morgan Tsvangirai (Prime Minister from 2009-Present) currently share power in Zimbabwe’s presidential republic. The election for presidency resulted in another win for Mugabe.

Ultimately, Zimbabwean politics and government play a big role in the lives of individuals, but Shyam contends that the power is in the hands of the people. That is why SKI Charities began – to give people at the ground level the capacity to feel strong and independent (through their education and entrepreneurship) regardless of who is governing the country.

No matter the election’s outcome, SKI Charities strives to make women feel self-sufficient through their developing businesses. “Historically, these women have felt dependent on their husbands or their fathers, and by extrapolation, their government” Shyam notes. “At SKImfi, by being entrepreneurs, they are creating their own wealth, they don’t need to go to the government for handouts.”

Listen in for Shyam’s take on the current election, and how SKI beneficiaries continue to gain capital and influence in their communities.

Categories : Podcast, SKImfi Tags : Elections, Podcast, Zimbabwe

August 1, 2013 by SKIC | No Comments

Why Zimbabwe?

When he first began SKIC, Shyam was asked countless times why he didn’t start it in India: “You’re of Indian origin, everybody is already there – why not go there too?” And that’s exactly why he didn’t. Shyam reasoned that, while there is plenty of demand in India, there’s also plenty of supply. He wanted to go somewhere where the supply was not meeting the demand, a place where he could truly help.

The place on his mind was Zimbabwe. In going to the London School of Economics, Shyam became good friends with a number of people from Zimbabwe, which was where he first became familiar with some of the country’s characteristics. “There’s a huge Zimbabwean contingent in London, mainly because of the political problems in their home country. But also because it’s a culture that values education and entrepreneurism a great deal. I learned all of this by studying in London with a number of people from Zimbabwe – and I was always impressed by them as students, and as people.”

Zimbabwe earned a special place in Shyam’s heart then, but it wasn’t until later that he thought to make it such a big part of the charity – and of his life. His previous job required him to do a lot of work in southern Africa and through that he got back in touch with his close friends whom he had met in London. They told him not the believe the headlines about Zimbabwe and encouraged him to go there. Shyam had always told them,

“I’m happy to do something positive, but where can we, with our limited resources, make the greatest impact? Whether financial resources or intellectual resources or energy, we want the most bang for buck. That’s the way to maximize your impact. So I went to Zimbabwe because I had a feeling we could make a positive and unique impact there. And that’s exactly what I found; these are people who are English speaking; they’ll get an education if it bankrupts them, very smart entrepreneurs, very globalized. They understood what it takes to make something from nothing.”

When Shyam made his initial visits, he realized how isolated Zimbabwe was – the entire world had turned their back on them because of an old ossified governing elite, who had no idea what was happening at the grassroots level. And the people were punished for the transgressions of that elite. “I knew that it would be the perfect place for us to go working, at least for us to do our development work,” says Shyam.

Shyam deliberated about how to engage Zimbabwe. He wanted to help and they needed help – but how? He realized that microfinance was the ideal approach because it was a concept that tapped into their entrepreneurial spirit, and their community-mindedness as well. Shyam notes,

“They are very focused on local business, local economy, creating value locally. But it also was sensitive towards their pride. Zimbabwe people are very proud. Since their independence in 1980 until about 2000, they led Africa in literacy, economic productivity, and were revered as the breadbasket of Africa. They’ve always been productive people. They’re very proud of their culture and of their history. So I knew that they did not just want to be handed out money. I knew they wanted to be treated as equals, as members of the global community, because there was every reason saying that they were going to break out of this funk very soon. Micro-finance was so ideal for their situation. ”

He continues, “In Zimbabwe, as far as I could tell, we were the only people providing microfinance on a not-for-profit basis in the entire country. At least from a point of view of being registered as a proper not-for-profit. There are plenty of people making loans for profit, and there are people doing it informally in a not so organized way. When we started in 2010, nobody else was doing this.”

And so Shyam found his place – one where there was demand, but not much supply. And one in which the people didn’t want to be handed money, but wanted to work for it. Three years later, and SKImfi participants continue to astound Shyam with their innovation, drive, and entrepreneurial skills

Categories : SKICharities, Uncategorized Tags : child development, early-stage scholarships, education, empower women, microfinance, philanthropy, SKI Charities, Zimbabwe

June 30, 2013 by SKIC | No Comments

A Conversation with Shyam: Back from Zimbabwe

SKIC micro-finance beneficiaries in Zimbabwe

After his most recent trip to Zimbabwe, SKI Charities founder Shyam was nothing short of inspired. Here, he recounts the stories of SKImfi participants who have invigorated their communities not just with new businesses but with hope. The spillover effect is definitely at play here, with just one woman inspiring everyone from her family, to her peers, to strangers. Click the link above to listen as Shyam talks about the highlights of his trip!

Categories : Podcast, SKICharities, SKImfi Tags : A Conversation with Shyam, Podcast

June 25, 2013 by SKIC | No Comments

On the Right Track: Early Stage Scholarships in Zimbabwe

Shyam readily – and fondly – recalls observing young girls in Zimbabwe skipping their way to school at 4:30 in the morning. It’s a memory he can recount in vivid detail – and one that certainly left an impression on him. “There’s nothing like the sunsets and sunrises in Africa. The soil is blood red, the trees are the darkest of greens, the stars are fading. It is unbelievably peaceful. On this particular morning, these five or six young girls, their hair done up and their uniforms beautifully starched, skipped by me, so eager to go to school. It was just a regular day, but they were so excited – even despite having miles to go.”

Inspired by this enthusiasm, Shyam started SKIpgo, a SKI Charities program focusing on early stage scholarships. He believes that early-stage learning is the most important part of someone’s education, because it’s where you can make the greatest impact.

SKIpgo participants range from three to five years of age and are taught good study habits, and even simple things like hygiene, self-respect, and respect for others. The schools that these girls are placed in “are not just about teaching them English or history or math. It’s about teaching them how to be strong, independent women. And if they grow up with that idea, if we engrain that in them from the very beginning, they grow to become the leaders of their community, to be civic-minded women, and to prioritize education. They’re like sponges at that early stage. They absorb everything.”

The SKIpgo scholarship is also a preventative measure. A lot of women in developing countries go down a different path, where education isn’t prioritized. Some women get pregnant very early, or don’t have the confidence to say ‘I’ll have a husband later. I can do that when I’m in my later teens or 20s. Let me get an education first, because that will strengthen my family and my future, and the future of the community.’ The scholarship incentivizes education, something that many Zimbabweans already place a lot of value on.

Scholarship recipients are chosen by the SKI Charities’ local team. Elizabeth, our project manager in Zimbabwe “talks to trusted people in the community to get references on girls ages 3-5 who are needy, from a financial point of view, but who come from families and environments where they will be given the opportunity to maximize their educational potential.” Our local team makes sure that participants are supported by their families and encouraged by their parents to study and work hard.

Usually, the pool of potential SKIpgo scholars is 2-3 dozen. Elizabeth whittles that down to a short list of ten, by interviewing them and ensuring that the candidates will have the potential to grow into their educations. Because SKI Charities can only control the financial part of it, it’s important that we make sure the girls are coming from a home that encourages early stage education, studying, and female empowerment. “The home environment is something we don’t have control over,” Shyam contends, “So we try to gauge that in the interview process.”

After selecting candidates (so far, four per year), we choose the schools they attend. “We vet every school in the community,” Shyam asserts. “Some schools are run as businesses and try to make as much money as they can. Others have a history, have strong teachers, strong facilities, and we want to direct our girls towards those schools. That way, there’s no reason for them not to succeed in their education.”

Every term, the girls are monitored on their performance. We talk to their teachers and their parents. Ideally, we would continue to support these girls every single year, but it’s just not feasible. The idea is to get them off on the right foot, and to ensure, to the best of our ability, that their families will continue to support their education. SKI Charities is there for financial support, but ultimately, it is the girls’ home life that will determine their success.

The hope is that these girls will begin to value their own education from an early age, and from there, continue to push themselves. It will require self-initiative to do that, as well as a positive familial infrastructure. But the first step, providing the opportunity for growth and success, is just the open door that these young girls need.

Categories : Company Organization, SKICharities, SKIpgo Tags : early-stage scholarships, SKI Charities, SKIpgo, Zimbabwe

June 18, 2013 by SKIC | 1 Comment

What’s in a Name?

SKIpgo

Little girls skipped along the side of a dust road as an African sunrise peeked above the horizon, never knowing that the lasting image they created inspired the name of a scholarship program.

It was 4:30 in the morning, and Shyam was driving with colleagues through the bush—rural areas—of Zimbabwe. They passed countless children who walked miles upon miles to reach their schoolhouses as dusk turned to dawn.

“That’s how much they love education in Zim,” Shyam says.

His team came across a particularly striking group of young girls, dressed in neatly pressed school uniforms with beautifully done hair. They smiled widely as they skipped across blood red soil among tall baobab trees.

“So many of us forget what a privilege school is, we take it for granted,” Shyam says. “But these girls still had miles to go and were so visibly happy… at 4:30 a.m.! They were so excited to get to school, just skipping and going. That’s where the SKIpgo name comes from.”

Witnessing this pure eagerness to learn again and again has connected Shyam to Zimbabwe—the name SKIpgo, which stands for Program for Girls Opportunity, reminds him of the value that these young scholarship recipients, and their families, place on their educational journey.

SKImfi

SKImfi, or the SKI Microfinance Institute, underlines the initiative’s role in catalysing opportunity for its beneficiaries to grab.

“Providing microfinance is great, but as the institute we can only get things started. We’re just skimming the surface,” Shyam says. “We began as a small microlending institution in a corner of the world, in a corner of Africa, in a corner of Zimbabwe. Now hundreds of families are involved, communities are stabilising, and this is the beginning. We are still at the surface.”

The value of what SKImfi alone adds to a community’s productivity doesn’t compare to the bottomless mine of potential that lays in the hands of all the women who receive microloans. As women become more empowered, the spillover effects of their business success will ripple deeply through their countries’ economies.

“We provide the necessary tools to give them a foundation,” Shyam says. “They then take the deep dive and create value for themselves and their communities to meet all of that potential.”

SKI Charities

In the beginning of 2010, SKI Charities was still an abstract idea. Shyam told his NGO friends that he wanted to take microfinance to, of all places, Zimbabwe. He was met with a common warning: “Zimbabwe is too risky; it’s not worth it. Go someplace with, as they say, lower hanging fruit.”

“I always struggled with that term,” Shyam says. “I think, ‘Well, some of us are a bit taller. Shouldn’t we reach for the high-hanging fruit? Can’t we add even more value that way?’”

He continued his early due diligence with peers in the policy and finance communities. He still met resistance. They did, however, express confidence in Shyam himself. They were more compelled to invest in his endeavors than in the country alone, which is why Shyam’s initials became so integrally tied to the charity.

“I decided, ‘Alright, if people don’t believe in potential of Zimbabwe, let them believe in me.’ I’ll put my name and reputation on the organization,” Shyam says. “Let us rise or fall together. We are strong and our beneficiaries have no one else but us; what are we waiting for?”

Categories : SKICharities, SKImfi, SKIpgo Tags : SKI Charities, SKImfi, SKIpgo

June 7, 2013 by SKIC | No Comments

¿Por qué Chile?

Of all the places in the world SKI Charities could extend to, you might be wondering, “Why Lebu, Chile?” In our last blog post, we talked with Shyam about his most recent travels to Lebu, where he discussed the vibrant presence of the indigenous Mapuche culture and his admiration of their hard work. How did he come to recognize this area as a perfect destination for SKI Charities?

Similar to Mutare, Zimbabwe, Lebu is a place where Shyam had a pretty strong network. A few years ago he was living in Buenos Aires doing some consulting work and from there ventured to backpack around Chile. He notes:

“Right away I felt like this was a country that was on the cusp, even more so than Zimbabwe (Chile is doing much better). What really struck a chord for me was the indigenous population in Chile. There’s a long history of complications around indigenous people here in the United States. And it’s always sort of been a part of the psyche of growing up as an American. Similarly in South America there have had some very difficult times that the indigenous people have gone through – and even in the modern era, these countries in South America don’t discuss or address the issue as we do in North America.”

Shyam contends that the indigenous people in Chile are even further behind, and with less opportunity to extricate themselves from the historical hardships they’ve encountered following the occupation and settlement from Imperial Spain. “And we can be unique in our focus on these indigenous people who are not really on the radar,” he says.

“They’re seen as different, as a different ethnicity, yet the public isn’t so focused on them. They’re sort of lumped in with the poor. And the poor are addressed at certain levels, but not enough for the amount of achievement that’s gone on in Chile. Chile is going through a huge, unprecedented economic boom. I think they’ve reached middle-income status as a nation. They are the closest to being called a ‘developed country’ as any country one would think should be called ‘developing.’ They’re doing great. Low population, huge natural resource boom, good infrastructure, good education. But then that makes the gap even bigger with those who have been left behind. So I knew we could tackle this indigenous issue.”

One of the benefits of working with these indigenous people in a country that is already on the right track is that the path is essentially paved.

“The schools are already great. If we could just get them access to the system that has already been built, they’ll be able to make that jump. In a place like Congo, if we put some people in school, there wouldn’t be proper schools for them to go to. Even in Zimbabwe, there are so few good schools that we can only put a few people into these good networks. The same goes for the trading community. In Chile, the network is there. We just need to help some of the people get plugged into it. And if we can get them plugged into it, the work is almost done. And that’s something very rare for a lot of developing countries. That’s a really important point that’s specific to Chile.”

Years after his first backpacking trip in Chile and after establishing SKI Charities in Zimbabwe, Shyam went with his gut impressions of Lebu and tapped into the growing economic and educational infrastructure there by giving members of the indigenous Mapuche culture access to it. The environment was ripe with opportunity, already set up for people to thrive. The only thing missing was access. SKI Charities has started to provide access to those who are disenfranchised, and the result is participants who are brimming with excitement and pride – and they have their businesses and their rejuvenated communities to show for it.

Categories : SKICharities Tags : Chile, Lebu, SKI Charities

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