Women Climate Leaders save Mother Earth

Mr. Biplabketan Paul is striving to empower ultrapoor women farmers across the globe to access food security and doubling of agri income through his innovative irrigation & disaster risk reduction technology BHUNGROO. From a (in 1994) field worker solving water issues for 3 poor rural families in an Indian village, he is now enabling more than 120000+ rural poor families across Indian states, Asia and Africa towards attainment of SDGs 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 13 and 15. His work is recipient of awards/accolades from UN, UNFCCC, US Dept of State, USAID, UKAID, GIZ, Government of India, Buckminster Fuller, Rockefeller Foundation (to name a few).  He has kept his innovation BHUNGROO within open source for resurrecting Mahatma Gandhi’s Antodaya principle (ie serving the last person in the queue in the best possible ways). He is heading www.naireetaservices.com, www.sgifgoon.org and advising various government, international and academic institutes across globe.  

We propose to capacitate ultrapoor, unschooled, vulnerable women smallholders (across the globe) to be Women Climate Leaders (WCLs). WCLs and their peer groups win over abject poverty, food insecurity by converting climate shocks (flood/drought) into opportunities for doubling of agro-income & social dignity thru our innovation BHUNGROO. Bhungroo filters, injects & retains excess storm water within conformable subsoil formations (defined thru Geo-analysis & data simulation within ASR, MAR & VD principles). Within 29 variables, 17 technical designs have been deployed for tailor-made solution to various agro-climatic zones of India, Bangladesh, Vietnam & Ghana. Bhungroo technology is in open-source. WCLs serve non-poor farmers within social-enterprise model & their peer group within Mahatma Gandhi’s Antodaya principle (ie serving the last person of the queue in the best possible way). Thus SDGs 1, 2, 5, 13 & 15 attainment with gender-driven model = saviour of mother earth by mothers 

We are trying to attain following challenge of poor smallholders- a. loss of standing crop during monsoon due to excess water b. loss of standing crop during summer/winter due to no irrigation water.

More than 6.72 Million ha of Indian land is affected by seasonal water logging & salinity, threatening 5 Million rural poors’ (who are owning less than 2 ha of land on an average) survival. They are nearly 50% of India’s smallholders & practice only rainfed cropping. Interestingly, more than 60% of Indian farmers also face recurring drought each year. Smallholders are worst hit & suicides are quite common. Globally, 260 Million farmers are adversely affected by Too Much or Too Little water- flood, erratic rain & droughts. Erratic rain and irrigation-scarcity contribute to food-insecurity, financial losses and indebtedness for smallholders. Our innovative two-fold solution ie BHUNGROO clubbed with women climate leadership program can increase India’s annual agri-income by $1.5 Billion and globally $208 Billion, empower poor women engaged in agriculture and rejuvenate Mahatma Gandhi’s Antodaya principle ((ie serving the last person of the queue in the best possible way) and Sarvodaya (ie 'universal uplift' or 'progress of all') in current context.

We are aspiring to create teams of women knowledge experts (at grassroot), who solve farmers’ irrigation and crop loss problems through innovative technology (BHUNGROO) and knowledge services (women climate leadership knowledge).

In the next five years, we will equip 1,000 women to become Women Climate Leaders (expert in agriculture and irrigation knowledge), who can extend appropriate, cost effective, timely and need based extension services to small farmers. Their support to poor farmers on crop survival, package of practices, irrigation and installation of 10,000 Bhungroo units will enable 50,000 farming families to triple their income within two years’ time. Our Product and Service will be consisted of

1.   Bhungroo: a proprietary World Bank-awarded rain water harvesting technology and product.

2.   Advice from NSPL and trained smallholder women farmers - Women Climate Leaders (WCLs) who provide fee-based agriculture extension services to the no rich farmers and for their peer group it is co-owning of the execution process in the field.

Till date we have successfully helped more 120000 rural poor thru 4500+ Bhungroo installations & 21 women have been trained as WCLs. The training of WCLs is funded through grants whereas Bhungroo installations are on social enterprise model. 

Our project serves ultrapoor, climate shock induced vulnerable smallholders. They

• generally own < 2 hectares
• solely depend upon rain-fed cultivation
• face farmland waterlogging for 15-90 days from fresh rainwater flow/runoff & acute irrigation crisis in dry season
• face perennial crop loss in monsoon due to excess water and in dry season due to unavailability of irrigation
• are Food insecure, debt-ridden,  migratory &  Socially vulnerable
• earn < $200/year & are not bank credit-worthy

In case of migration husbands, women farmers become more vulnerable with no Land Right & Asset. They become agro-casual labors, prone to social discrimination and many a times their dignity is at stake.

 Through our BHUNGROO technology and WCLs’ extension services, these families are

• food-Secured
• doubling of their agro-income
• emancipated from debt-trap within 3 years
• access 200% increase in agro-income within 2 years

 The women become joint owner of family’s land asset and also reclaim their social dignity

 How? Over a decade across India we enabled women farmers to regain Land-Right and Social-Dignity thru BHUNGROOs’ Water Rights. Replicating the same learning across other geographies with our partners, WCLs are getting created to enable women to access Food-Security, Land-Right, Higher-Income & Social Dignity.

Our project is endeavouring on following dimensions

• Elevating issues and their solutions- Across LICs, droughts/floods are considered inevitable climate shocks. But till date, it has not been thought of scientifically utilizing excess flood-water to defeat droughts. Our project is not only creating awareness against these challenges but also driving down the solution to the problem.
• Interestingly, our WCLs are also rolling out peer-to-peer knowledge support within Mahatma Gandhi’s Antodaya principle. This surely can qualify on the third dimension ie  elevating understanding of and between people (here ultrapoor women farmers and global community).

In 1999-2000, we were working on WATSAN with our women SelfHelpGroup members. They expressed urgent need of a solution to their recurring problems of monsoon crop failures due to waterlogging & winter crop failures due to irrigation water paucity. In next 10+ years, we endeavoured to conceive, develop, experiment & modify the solution “BHUNGROO” (a stormwater storage technology based upon ASR, MAR and VD principles), which solve their challenges of 2 extreme weather shocks. Subsequently it got expanded & scaled up within gender centric resilience models. Thus 17 designs (2007 to 2019) got ready to cater all agro ecological zones, various farmland types, terrain and geological formations along with all community textures and their afford-abilities. In realizing Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of Antodaya (i.e. serving the last person in the queue in the best possible way), Women Climate Leaders (in 2018) were conceived with an objective of open-source-knowledge services at farm gate within business-plan based model.  Till date 120000+ rural poor are served across India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Africa. Now knowledge service by Women Climate Leaders is the key for saving of mother earth and we are visualizing minimum-profit vis-à-vis maximum-Impact growth model thru partnerships across geographies.

Farmers’ food-security and agri-income doubling can be achieved by various means. There can also be multiple options for handling Climate shocks better (compared to our innovation). But, we strongly feel that using one climate disaster to solve another one is really unique. Inspite of this uniqueness, our passion for this program stems from the fact that we are able to conceive, ideate, create and define a dream of capacitating unschooled, ultrapoor women farmers to be savior of mother earth. Further to that dream, we are also able to build confidence among our women farmers to transform themselves as Women Climate Leaders. With that confidence building, we are also successful to attain the outmost need of these women ie Their Social Dignity. Maiden attainment of this Social Dignity for these most neglected and deprived women thru Water Right and Land Right within our Women Climate Leader and BHUNGROO program enunciates a new development paradigm. This paradigm dwells in rejuvenation of Mahatma Gandhi’s Antodaya principle. And Mahatma Gandhi’s “Antodaya” principle can be the precise answer to current global developmental challenges ie discrimination, trust decaying & barrier among humans.

The reasons

• Organization strength- We are a woman-led social-enterprise with 100+ women field volunteers. For each new geography we work in partnership with like-minded agencies (ethically high standard, pro-poor and gender-inclusive)
• Team strength- a multidisciplinary team (total 32) alongwith 6 core team members
• Experience- our core team is having 120+ years domain experience in this program across Indian states, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Africa.
• Resource - instead of asking fees from our partners, we actually assist them for resource generation = easier & stronger partnerships
• Sustainability- from day one, we create Business-plan based service delivery model of our WCLs = self-sustaining
• Credentials- we got successfully evaluated/ supported/ promoted/ awarded by UN, World Bank, UNFCCC, GCF, USAID, UKAID, GIZ, SVC Asia, ADB, IWMI, Buckminster Fuller Instt, India Govt etc
• Knowledge – best technical/knowledge support from Academic/Research instt viz Univs,  IIT, IIM, ISRO, DST (Indian Govt), Stony Brook Univ, INSEAD, Stanford & Harvard Business School
• Work volume- successfully completed numerous projects worth $400K to $500K; also mobilized contributions of $175K to $250K.
• Transparency- Bhungroo technology is kept in open source, WCL program is partnership-term defined
• Reach out- till date more than 120000 rural poor are served with more than 4500+ Bhungroo units with government, private and corporate partnerships
• Policy – Government of India has included BHUNGROO in its federal policy for 3 million rural poor families.  Instead of maximizing high-volume-Profit, our hybrid model strategically ensures high-volume-Impact within acceptable profit = Mahatma Gandhi’s “Antodaya” of principle resurrection.

The biggest challenge was ensuring our revenue vis-à-vis adhering to Gandhian principles of Antodaya (serving the poorest poor). These two diametrically opposite challenges were attained thru

• Creating unique strategy of joint-ownership of each BHUNGROO unit by 5-10 rural families= lowest capex/family, higher labor contribution, larger impact = faster adoption from the poor = higher revenue for us.
• Along with joint ownership, we also observed that locally available materials can be used to further reduce technology erection cost = more inclusive program. So we created new designs to accommodate local materials/skills = reduced operation cost = our profit increased marginally but farmers’ costing reduced drastically.
• To reduce the cost of external skilled hands (Drilling, geo tech, other machine hours etc), we cud have compromised on quality. But we did not. We convinced/capacitated local village institutions to negotiate with external experts thru offer of voluminous work within discounted price. Village succeeded with a promise that they will take care of experts’ fooding/lodging. This reduced the cost, quickened the work = great success. 

20 years back, when I was trying BHUNGROO technology in field, I was failing both in technology completion & its field application. That time, I observed that each failure was making male farmers dejected/frustrated. They rejected my ideas for societal change thru innovation. They deserted me, whereas ultrapoor women farmers had diametrically opposite temperaments. Unlike male, they become more inclusive, encouraged me to accept/understand the failures between lab-level solutions against field applications= technology & application both got improved gradually. Field applications’ void space (when male members walked out) was filled by women farmers.  I also observed their strength in co-creating field-roll-out-plan within gender-inclusive model. Learning that strength, I handhold women members for further co-creation = success became much quicker as each failure was stepping stone for next success. Thus a replicable model got ready.  

Interestingly, I had to change our male-centric technology designing to totally different and new gender-centric technology process. We successfully created gender-sensitive knowledge transfer tools for each program phase. These all strengthened WCLs’ training module.

This won us UN’s Gender Just Climate Technology Award (COP24) and now is part of CTCN’s one of the best climate change technology options.

Not Applicable 

International agencies (viz UNFCCC, USAID, UKAID, World Bank, India Govt, CTCN, The GCF, Cartier, Buckminster Fuller Institute etc) find BHUNGROO and WCL programs’ uniqueness as

Technical: Alternative irrigation technology offers piecemeal solutions to economic and environmental problems, faced by poor farmers. Deeptubewell/Borewells’ tapping of groundwater have significant financial/ environmental costs. Canals with high Capex, recurring administrative and repairing costs- are prone to water theft, leakages and disparity in water distribution viz tail-end syndrome. BHUNGROO solves all these challenges and also saves standing crops from excess monsoon water. None of them can do that.

Approach:  The technology is further modified towards divisible module & cost effectiveness= pro-poor = BOP women are enabled to Co-create the technology in open-source. From Technology-Phobic now these underprivileged women are uplifted as Technology-Improviser= high technology inclusiveness for BOP women.

WCLs’ creation: successful in building confidence among unschooled, poor women smallholders to dismantle patriarchal discriminations/inhibitions to emerge as WCL and extend their technical services to local clients & peer group with dignity & authority.  

Pedagogy: due to women farmers’ illiteracy, the technology principles (5 engineering/scientific streams’) were explained/trained thru their familiarities in cooking/ local cultural/traditional/religious   practices and visual literacy. This innovation is the closest to our/their heart.

Execution: women-defined, women-driven, gender-inclusive, Business-plan-based Technology and Knowledge service

Financial Modelling:  for us it is Maximum-Impact within acceptable Profit ie cross-subsidy model; whereas WCL serves her clients on clients’ “Ability to Pay”. For suicide-prone farmers both BHUNGROO & WCL services are complimentary.

Antodaya:  non-negotiable principle for all of our services. 

Goal: Attainment of SDG 1, 2, 5, 6, 10 and 13

Purpose: No rural women smallholder across the globe remains food insecure, climate shock vulnerable and deprived of social dignity

Outputs: In next 10 years 100 Million rural poor women (India and LICs) are enabled by women climate leaders to defeat drought and/or irrigation paucity thru monsoon/storm water of such that they can have both monsoon and winter cropping, their families become food secure, access doubling of agro-income and most importantly regain social dignity

Activities:

• Selection of Like-minded agencies (as per SOPs) for WCL selection and handholding
• Interaction with Engg colleges and Univs for Bhungroo engineer training program, training & internship program finalization and completion
• Partnerships with likeminded agencies, for WCLs handholding facilitation.
• Training of the partners for identifying the WCLs
• Shortlisted WCLs are evaluated, selected and trained (theoretical and hands on)
• Trained WCLs are evaluated and certified
• For Each 500 WCLs 1 BHUNGROO engineer is allotted 
• WCLs identify BHUGNROO needs at peer level and pass that to BHUNGROO engineer
• Bhungroo engineer assess technical feasibility, costing and hand over that to WCL for getting farmers’ approval.
• Post Farmers’ approval, finance modeling is drafted (ie full cost, cross subsidy or grant from donor/govt)
• Subsequently, WCL earns her incentive, BHUNGROO engineer earns his time cost +incentive
• Farmers get their Bhungroo  
• Each WCL serves at least 20 rural women headed poor and vulnerable families in each year.   

Indicators: no of partner, no of Bhungroo engineers, no of WCLs, no of Units erected, landholdings saved from water logging, winter irrigated, water saved, crop sold, income generated, land fertility increased, Salt-At-Soil reduced, gender right thru land rights, social dignity regaining      

Verification Means: numbers in majority cases, acres in landholding, liters in water, money value of crop & farmers income, legal documentation for land right, 360 degree feedback on social dignity

Assumptions: no change of context, no externalities

Input: knowledge, finance, human hours, machine time etc

Super Goal: Gender Driven co-creation of process and technology= grassroot women leadership 

120000.

In next one year we can add another 5000 souls;

In next five years we need to serve minimum one million rural poor by ourselves and our partners can reach out to another 2 million. Thus in next 5 years we have to reach nearly 3 million rural poor combined.  

In 2021, thru current pace we can serve 5000 souls thru 200 BHUNGROO serving ~ 2000 acres of land i.e. $1 million worth of crop produced from the same land where there was no income earlier. If we need to serve 100 million rural poor within 2030 then we need to

• Create at least 1 million WCLs, each of whom can serve 20 poor families/year = 100 poor families in 5 years= 40 Million acres of land are saved from drought & waterlogging guaranteeing $22 Billion worth of crop produce
• These 1 Million WCLs can be enabled thru–
  • Interacting/sensitizing women ShelfHelpGroups (each with 10-15 members) across India, Asia & Africa nations (2.2 million SHGs in India alone = nearly 25 Million potential WCLs; similarly both Asian & African nations can have 200+ Million potential WCLs) for identification of potential WCLs and then capacitate them with our technical knowledge & business-plan based service model.
  • Each WCLs is backed up by young technical team (at local level within 500 km radius) for on time quality work
  • Creating a performance–based financial incentive corpus for each WCL
• Partnerships with Non-profits, Cooperatives, MFIS, FPOs, Village Institutions, CBOs, who might need our BHUNGROO and WCL services in their works
• Creating farmer friendly financial model (conventional/Islamic finance model) to access BHUNGROO/WCL services.  
• India government have included BHUNGROO in federal policy, which can be replicated in Africa thru Green Climate Fund. Creation of a Global WCL academy 

We thought our primary barriers will be dearth of demand. But there was and is high demand. When Incubation centres suggested us to roll out commission-driven FMCG-franchisee-Model to reap maximum profit from this high demand, we walked otherway- as this model contradicts Antodaya. We picked up Maximum-Impact within Acceptable-Profit. So now, our biggest barrier is how to serve the large no of BOP women farmers at their farm gate, within an affordable cost and most importantly within the given time frame and that also not making loss at our books of account. 

This large barrier is consisted of following smaller challenges -

1. High Resource needs- not only the Financial Resource (capital) but also Human/skill set and Machine resource are challenging.   
2. Social Kapital- our programs’ success primarily depend upon social capital i.e. human to human trust and dependence cutting across caste, color, religions, economic level and aspiration level. 
3. Knowledge Capital- every BHUNGROO site is unique, where we face plethora of geological, geo-hydrological, agricultural, mechanical, civil etc challenges. We need to deliver tailor-made the best design within best usability. 
4. Negative Social forces - village powerful-groups hardly accept Our WCL and BHUNGROO work as we are emancipating the poor from clutches of the powerful groups 
5. Second line Unavailability at grasroot- enormous no of WCLs need sizeable number of technically sound Youth to back up these WCLs in field. But there is a huge gap of availability of technically sound and empathy oriented youth for field works 

• Knowledge Capital-We are accessing State-of-the-Art data sets from various academics, Government, Research and Field agencies.
• As we are in gradual progress, we are able to tide over Financial Resource needs (till date) thru our cross-subsidy model, grants, CSR etc
• For appropriate “Human/skill set” and “Machine Resource”, we are collaborating with local service providers and improving their skills as per our needs. In 12 Indian states, till date we have augmented skills of 100+ drilling machine teams, 110+ labor teams and 15 geo-hydrology experts. Similar model is in other nations.
• “Social Capital” and “Negative Social Forces” can only be attained thru stronger WCLs. For reaching out to 100 million rural poor in 5 years’ time we might need 1 million WCLs. With existing SHGs (across India & all nations) we can achieve this number iff we have right set of partners and training modules clubbed with right incentive packages for WCLs alongwith their works’ performance guarantee.
• This performance guarantee can be achieved if its backed up by field BHUNGROO engineers. This is the biggest challenge. To give technical support to 1 million WCL, around 2000-4000 Young BHUNGROO engineers will be needed. In current India - qualified engineers avoid serving rural poor community as they feel it is less dignified. We are approaching Engineering colleges /Univs, creating curriculum and also started training/internship program. If we can be more innovative in this segment then it will ensure quantum jump of our program. 

We have partnership with

• Shifting Patterns Consulting, Washington DC for WCL training and scaling up  
• Akar Info Media (Ahmedabad) for knowledge documentation and publication in vernacular language
• Stony Brook Univ (New York) for impact assessment, knowledge documentation and publication on WCL
• Nusocia Research (Pune), a social fund- for financial modeling for field execution of WCL and Bhungroo for FPOs
• CottAP (Mumbai) - a network of cotton farmers – who are trying to save farmers from committing suicides. They have partnered with us for updating us potential risk farmers ie whom to serve  
• BongProjukti (Calcutta) - a eastern India environmental quality assurance firm. They are helping us with technical knowledge support in EHS parameters

NSPL has partnerships with Harvard University, IIT & local NGOs for knowledge exchange within satellite, geophysical, agricultural, gender & climate data.

We are having Hybrid Model. Our For-Profir social enterprise (www.naireetaservices.com) serves clients with full BHUNGROO services at site on progressive pricing model. Our Non-profit agency SGIF delivers non-revenue programs i.e. training, research, knowledge building, and zero cost BHUNGROO for ultrapoor farmers & CSR.  Thru Naireeta, we serve three farmers types- a. Rich farmers, with larger landholdings, who can afford the full cost of a Bhungroo (ranges between $9000-$20,000). We make sizeable profit here; b. In case of Poor farmers (with $1,000-$5000 yearly income), NSPL delivers BHUNGROO thru group ownership of 5 farmers. We charge $5000/BHUNGROO & remaining $4000 is cross-subsidized thru grants, c.   Women Smallholders (within $189 yearly income), co-own a Bhungroo among 5-10 families.  “Sweat equity” is used to cover the cost of erection & maintenance of Bhungroo. Our time, materials and labor costs are cross-subsidized by us.

WCL earns per BHUNGROO, per visit as per their services' types. WCL gets paid in cash or crop percentage based upon acreage.

Without Bhungroo or WCL services, farmers are at risk of having Zero crop/year. With Bhungroo and WCL services, farmers reap two crops/year, 2X Agro-income, soil productivity increment, reduction in salt-at-soil and reclaiming lands from desertification. In addition to economic and environmental benefits, women smallholders have reported increases in land ownership and social status. With a 30-year life-span, each Bhungroo frees 5-10 acres from waterlogging in each monsoon and irrigates 10-22 acres each winter. Each unit generates $5700+/year and family-income rises from $189 to $710 within 5 years.

Cash Flow: from 2016-17, we are cash positive between $25000-$40000/month. Our Non-profit agency is also debt free and is able to maintain surplus year on year basis (as per India government norms).

We project that we will have the same cash flow based on following business practices:

• We receive grants in lump sum on an annual basis.
• We bill up front for 50% of contracts before we commence work.
• We have kept our operating costs low by outsourcing, minimum administrative and salary bill
• We have forged retainer agreements with various clients, which guarantees regular monthly revenue

Profit margin

a. Bhungroo sales (thru Turnkey service and commissioning) to rich farmers/ corporate/Instt – here we make nearly 60% profit

b. Bhungroo Technical guidance to medium income farmers/govt (where drilling, piping and filtration chamber is done by client within monitoring of our team)- here also we make nearly 30% profit

c. Turnkey services for ultrapoor women farmers- here Bhungroo is in group ownership. Here we either cross subsidize from our profit or mobilize donor/govt supports

Investment:We have received series of impact investment offers. Our board has decided to opt for investment in 2021 when valuation will be quite high.

Govt support: We are now part of Federal policy of water management = opening of a market worth of $10 Million with nearly 2% profit margin 

Our Funders Include:

Deshpande Foundation –grant in 2013-2016- $30000

Rockefeller foundation –grant in 2012-2014-$100000

UKAID/FICCI –grant in 2014-2019-$400000

Uttar Pradesh Government –grant in 2015-2016-$14000

Bihar government/ Bihar innovation forum  –grant in 2013-2013-$4000

GIZ - Deutsche GesellschaftfürInternationale –grant in 2017-2018-$30000

USAID’s Securing Water For Food –grant in 2016-2020-$500000

India Rwanda Innovation Growth program under Millennium Alliance (government of India and Government of Rwanda along with FICCI and UKAID) – grant 2020-2023-$70000

Besides that we have all revenue income

We do not have any debt

We have not divested any of our equity

We are cash positive from 2016-17 financial year  

We will be needing sizeable amount for scaling up. We will need detail guidance for finalizing of the actual amount and its time frame 

Due to COVID19 we had a disastrous time from2020 January till today. And as per government norms, we have to close down our office as well as field activities from March till June end. July to October being peak monsoon season we cannot work on field erection process. So we will be able to work only for 3 months in the whole year. Within this period the expenses will be as follows

• Program expenditure – 40 percent
• Salary- 50 percent
• Administration – 10 percent

However our standard yearly expenses are like

• Salary- 20 percent
• Field Programs’ materials and other items expenditure-  40 percent
• Machine hours and field technical team time- 12 percent
• Travel- 20 percent
• Administration- 8 percent

If need be we can share our audited balance sheets 

My reason of applying for Elevate prize are

• We surely need a sizeable financial resource to take care of WCLs programs’ expenses
• A high amount of financial resource will also be needed to cross subsidize our BOP clients as they are not able to pay the full cost (in spite of their urgent needs)
• Elevate team is undoubtedly the best global Institute for quenching our thirst of Knowledge Capital
• Prize can put us as part of multidisciplinary global alumni/ experts = Country-specific guaranteed handholding for scaling
• WCLs course curriculum can be improved upon thru Elevate and its associates’ expertise.
• If possible to create WCL institute in Africa and SEAsia with Prize’s technical/academic/outreach stream
• Opening up of higher studies opportunities for young engineers and encourage them to serve rural poor within Antodaya principle thru Co-Branding of Elevate-BHUNGROO-WCL
• Creating a new global Fellowship (for youths from LICs) attributing to Mahatma Gandhi’s Antodaya principle, which can be the cure for many of today’s global challenges. With support of The prize, our Antodaya movement can actually chart out inclusive development for deprived and vulnerable souls across our globe, which in turn will lead to Mahatma Gandi’s Sarvodaya principle (ie progress for all).  Last but not the least, bringing smiles of pride/happiness to our WCLs when elevate team visits our field (as our WCLs have very rare events in their life when they can really feel proud and happy and that brings smiles on their face)!

• Funding and revenue model: this is critically important for WCLs’ financially sustainability. If financially sustainable, then WCL guarantees doubling of income to all stakeholders (ie our company, our non-profit, SHGs, farmers, Bhungroo engineers, service providers and our government).  
  
• Board members or advisors: our current board members are well respected both in academic and/or entrepreneurship. But visualizing of "Antodaya fellowship" and "WCL Institute" implies we will be needing key global idols for that.  
• Marketing, media, and exposure: Till date our expenditure in this head is zero. Still we are flooded with direct business. As on today we are having 3520 applications (in waiting) from BOP members. We badly need guidance/support on marketing and media exposure (BOP success stories) such that more and more people own the process and create a business plan based partnership program with BOP.

Not yet decided. Will need further guidance