Hand in Hand
Hand in Hand India is a charitable trust which is focused on poverty reduction through the creation of new jobs.
“Hand in Hand India aims to have created and enhanced 1.3 million jobs by 2014”
Hand in Hand's work in India and Africa shows, when given support and training, women living in poverty can develop into successful entrepreneurs running small family companies. Women are usually the guardians of their children’s future and demonstrate a high level of responsibility when given the opportunity to invest a micro credit in their businesses. Research shows that on average, women who live in poverty use 92 cents of each extra dollar of income to improve their children’s health and education. Hand in Hand provides microfinance loans via a group-lending model. Repayment of the disbursed micro credits is 99.4%
Hand in Hand have reached impressive results after 7 years of work in India. 850,000 women have been mobilized in Self Help Groups creating more than 1.16 million jobs. This means that hundreds of thousands of children have been brought back from labour to school. On top of that almost 3,000 citizen centres/IT facilities have been established, health checks for 290,000 people have been carried out under the Health and Hygiene Programme and 307,000 households are covered by waste management under the Environmental Protection Programme.
We at Partex will finance Hand in Hands work in the small Indian village Panapuram. Panapuram has around 3,600 inhabitants and is located near Bangalore, where Partex India is based. In total the project will last for two years and we will report its progress every three months. The reporting of the project will be dealt by our three “Partex ambassadors”: Anne Katrine Åhlén Grundel (Partex Sweden), Johnathan Pilling (Partex UK) and Tomasz Dembkowski from Partex Poland. Sophie Lööf, part owner of Partex, will also be involved with the project.
Final Report
19/01/2015
The final report from Hand in Hand concerning our two year project in Panapuram, India.
Return to Panapuram Village
04/09/2014
Johnathan Pilling
I recently revisited the village of Panapuram in Tamil Nadu, South India, with other delegates from the Partex Group. The purpose of our visit was to see firsthand how the donation made by Partex, through the charity Hand in Hand, had improved the lives of the villagers.
Hand in Hand helps villages in remote parts of the world through their Village Uplift Programme (VUP), which has 5 main focus areas:
- Self help groups and micro finance
- Education and the elimination of child labour
- Health
- Environment
- IT & governance
During our visit we saw various small businesess which had been supported through the establishment of a self help group and a micro finance loan. These included a small village shop, core (rope) manufacturing from coconut husks, yoghurt and cheese making, SARI and rug weaving.
Educational Projects had been established where children were encouraged to stay on at school - one young man has been sponsored to study medicine at university.
The project has provided for regular health visitors who are trying to eliminate anaemia from the villagers, provide education on healthy nutrition, provide eye clinics and cataract treatment, and distribute medicines.
Water filtration systems have been installed, eliminating water born diseases. The village has a toilet block offering proper sanitation. Biogas created from the waste is collected and used to fuel small cookers.
Citizen centres have been established, each outlying community now has internet access. The register of births and deaths is now done electronically instead of a 2hr walk to the nearest city!
The visit was a very humbling experience for all the ambassadors and will live long in our memories.
