In March while I was in Hyderabad, India working on documenting a project the foundation I work for is involved with, we made a number of excursions to see social entrepreneurial and social enterprise work throughout the city as well as in rural areas close by. I've already briefly profiled THRIVE, and will be profiling others when I can fit them in. Today we'll look at Naandi, a not-for-profit development institution working to eliminate poverty, help improve access to healthcare, education and workforce training, and to create links between state, corporate and private sector entities in order to faciliate these goals.

Our visit focused mainly on their healthcare initiatives, with senior program officer Tarana Mendiratta serving as our guide, first to a hospital for children in the public school system in Hyderabad, and second to a school clinic that serves as the outreach/intake for the childrens' hospital. I thought I had pictures from the hospital, but I seem to only have ones from the clinic. That's what the pictures here are from.




Naandi, founded in 1998 by Dr K Anji Reddy, means 'A New Beginning.' Here's a message from Reddy, one of the pioneers of the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Naandi is an interesting case since about 40-50% of its funding comes from government grants, with the rest being provided by outside sources. It's not exactly a 'social entrepreneur' enterprise either, but it does have aspects of this, and is trying to set up modern best practices for private-public healthcare hybrids in India. Much of the funding comes from tapping into the Indian diaspora, largely to Indians who have gone to the U.S. to work. Over the years they've been active, they've shifted away from funding programs to directly implementing programs, giving their funders more input on the ground.




Started in Hyderabad, Naandi has spread to other cities and states throughout India. Rural projects in healthcare, education, water quality and even organic farming. They have started something called a 'Reading-Writing' camp, with the cooperation of more than 300 schools in the Hyderabad region. Basically this takes students during their summer break and puts them through a 30 day program, three hours a day, to help get them up to where they should be in maths and language.

The programs we saw (pictured here) had to do with healthcare for school children. Through the Shalani Hospital (I think I have that spelled right), Naandi helps oversee 60,000 children in Hyderabad from 300 schools through 24 outpatient clincs at geographically targeted schools which are open every day. Six doctors rotate through these clinics. What they try to do is pick a school within a 3 kilometer radius that other schools can send children to if they are sick or need a checkup. About 150 to 200 children per month go through the hospital system for various aliments, some who are there only a day or two, and others for longer treatment. The hospital has a 20 bed capacity, with eight more beds in intensive care. For special cases and treatments, other hospitals provide assistance either through making space or lending expertise. Eventually the exit strategy for the program is to hand it off to the government. So I guess that is the social entrepreneurial part of it, but instead of creating a private sector system that can be built into a sustainable entity, they are helping create a public sector enterprise and showing how it can be done efficiently and with the best practices and handing it over to the government. It remains to be seen how this will work, and if it will still remain effective after being handed over, but so far so good. A pilot program with the same structure is going to be duplicated in Rajasthan through a government hospital there. The Hyderabad program would like to extend to 600 more schools in the area.




(The cute little guy on the bottom right is about to knock over that tray of medication ...)