Report by BHW India Partnership Facilitator

Bright Hope World’s Indian Partnership Facilitator met with Pradeep and Merilo again in March 2015 to see the progress that has been made in commencing the micro-loan initiative. We were greatly impressed.

Recent Events

Naya Bihani Charitable Trust

Naya Bihani Charitable Trust was formed in October 2014. The trustees are Pradeep and Merilo and two people from Darjeeling Christian Assembly – Naizal and Nchumbeni. We were provided with all of the trust set-up documentation, and it looked in good order. Pradeep took me through the accounts for Naya Bihani. Only funds related to BHW donations are managed through the Trust. Pradeep takes pains to ensure that this work is separate (financially) from all the other works he is involved in.

It was pleasing to see Microsoft Money used to evidence all the financial side of the Trust, and that the remaining balance reconciled to the online Bank Statement (almost to the rupee). Although we do not want to micro-manage our partners, it was really comforting to see the degree of effort Pradeep goes through to account for every rupee and to explain it in detail to me. 

The funds provided by BHW were received in two tranches. The first tranche (US$3,000) was utilised to start the Trust and then fund five self-help groups, plus loans to an additional three people in Darjeeling Christian Assembly. The second tranche of funding Pradeep is already planning to use to develop a sustainable training institution that is detailed further in this report.  

Self-Help Groups

We visited each of the five self-help groups (some came to one location to save us travel). Each village group is run by a committee that includes the Pastor as the key accountable person to Pradeep. However, Pradeep pointed out that when he set these groups up he set them up with the full committees involved. In other words, he went and met with each of the committees and explained the vision, guidelines and design of the self-help groups. This, he says, helps to ensure that the Pastor doesn’t just have the money to run it on his own but encourages accountability and transparency. Pradeep’s wisdom shone through in many examples such as this.

Once a month the pastors meet with Pradeep for fellowship and accountability. Each group maintains a cash book that details loans provided and repayments received. It was pleasing to see that many of the members have already begun to repay in monthly instalments. 

Within the broad guidelines for the self-help groups, Pradeep encourages each church to establish how it will function in their village. This helps to ensure that the actual loans are used for the right people and purposes. Interest is not charged on the loans, as each of the village groups saw that this would be looked upon negatively because of the bad reputation that money lending has in the area. Instead Pradeep encourages members to provide thanksgiving amounts above and beyond their total repayment amount. 

Each of the five groups was provided with 25,000 rupees (US$400) each. Like many of these early start-up partnerships, some groups seemed to be working better than others. We visited a combined group in Plungdung and Balasun where there were 20 initial members and they had provided small loans to each member of 2,500 rupees (US$40). Repayments had already begun and as a result they had added two more members. Another group had provided loans of 5,000 rupees (US$80) so that members could purchase cows. With the larger investment up-front the repayment progress is slower.

We also noticed that some groups included believers and non-believers, while other groups said that in their village they had to be very careful with giving loans, as the locals saw it as “trying to convert them.” With the current government and changes across India, this has to be managed delicately. However, all groups noted that their communities are noticing and it is having a positive effect. 

The current villages where the groups are operating are: 
1) Mungpoo Bazaar
2) Mungpoo Division IV
3) Plungdung Busty
4) Balasun Tea Estate
5) Mim Tea Estate
6) Darjeeling town

For the amounts that Pradeep has loaned to individuals in Darjeeling, he keeps another spreadsheet that has loan amounts by name and the amounts they are repaying. 

Personal Stories

Justina Naizal

Mrs Justina Naizal is wife of Evangelist Naizal Ramtel. The church sent her to tailoring school and bought her a sewing machine but she could not afford the raw materials and so used to work in a shop earning a very small amount of money in a day. Pradeep has provided a small 5,000 Rs (US$80) loan through the Darjeeling Self-Help Group, and encouraged her to do work by herself by buying the raw materials and selling direct to the market. She now earns double what she was earning three months ago. An example provided was a small bag that sells in shops for 40 Rs (US$0.65) and Justina can make about 7 Rs (US$0.11) profit per bag. One bag can be made in 15 minutes. So if she is at home she can make about 10 while she is at home.

The small apartment they live in costs 1,200 Rs (US$19.20) per month so this goes a long way to helping. However, if she learns to knit like Sudha, she could make about 100 Rs (US$1.60) profit in four hours, which is a significant benefit for the family. This is a future plan of Pradeep’s.

Manika Chettri

Manika Chettri is a mother of two children. After her first husband passed away she married another man, unfortunately he was a terrible alcoholic. He used to work in the tea garden and earned 120 Rs (US$1.90) a day.  For the last two years now he has been sick (suffering with piles) and stays back home most of the day. He has not gone to work for a long time. So the burden came over to Manika and she had to start doing something to feed her family as well as support her husband’s treatment. She was going to different houses to help and sometimes when there was work in the tea garden she went there and earned Rs. 90 (US$1.40) a day which was not at all sufficient to support her family and children.  

When Pradeep came to know about her and her situation they helped her with Rs. 5,000 (US$80) to start a small shop in the market where she keeps her products on the floor to sell. She can sell local products from her village as well as seasonal vegetables.  So now she is a business woman with her own small income generating business. She comes from her village every morning to Darjeeling town and bring the goods from her village. She opens her shop in the morning and closes it down at three in the afternoon. By that time she will have earned around 300% more than what she used to earn from the tea garden. She is very happy and is able to support her family as well as take care of her husband’s treatment.

Sudha Subba

Sudha Subba became a Christian from a traditional Hindu family. She has gone through very severe persecution because she became a Christian. Her husband has told her that if she is a Christian he will not support her financially. She therefore started selling vegetables and other items at her home and in the market. Pradeep came to know about her and her problems and they discovered that she can make a lot of products in wool and other handiwork items. She used to go and help in the shops where she used to work and earn when she had time to work there. Pradeep encouraged her to start mass production at home which can give her more time and more regular income.  

She was given 10,000 rupees (US$160) which was used to buy wool and raw materials and she is now earning good money. She is now supporting her children as well as supporting her home to meet the daily needs. She has become a stronger believer now as the Lord has opened the door for her to trust Him more. 

For a dress, Sudha spends 100 rupees (US$1.60) on the wool and sells it for 250 rupees (US$4) to the shop who will then sell it for about 300-350 rupees. It will take her one day to make this for 150 rupees (US$2.40) profit. She also sells directly to people as they find out about her. Sudha has also bought a second hand machine to do special knitting with some of the profit so that she can make more detailed machine woollen garments.

Partnership's Influence within the Community

It was so pleasing to meet with various self-help groups and to see non-believers sitting there while we prayed and talked about what was happening in each group. While not all groups have non-believers as part of the group, each group is having an influence in the community.

One of the elders who is part of one of the leadership groups said this: “…even though you (Bright Hope World) are from a very far place, we are one family. And because we are one family we can share and know each other better. But not only within our church, this work that BHW has done has become a big testimony for the village people here…this vision that BHW has to support us, not everyone has this vision to support the poor…even if we wished to help people in this village, even our own church people, we could not help them…”

Ideas for the Future

Training Centre

Pradeep is not wanting any more funding to go into the current Self-Help Groups but wants to start a training centre for knitting to be run out of Darjeeling. He would also like a couple of the local village churches (the ones that are run very well) to consider starting training centres in their churches. Since our initial trip when they were not keen to use church buildings for anything other than worship services, Pradeep said they have picked up on our idea and are very keen to see them as local community centres. 

Sudha (whose story is above) wants to involve a group of women in this knitting initiative and she is interested in involving many others who are doing the same work as well as women who are jobless. Pradeep would like to start this initiative as a business oriented work so that many families can be helped.  

Pradeep has already identified a teacher to teach in Darjeeling (who taught Sudha), and is speaking with an NGO to provide trainers to a couple of the villages.

Bible Training Institute

Pradeep's key focus at the moment is seeking to commence a live-in one year bible training institute in Darjeeling. If approved, his sending mission will help with this. The reason he wants to start this is that he says their vision is to church plant in all the surrounding areas, and the church planters need to be trained. But if they go to other centres (such as Delhi Bible Institute etc) he said that none of them want to come back to Darjeeling. 

Pradeep’s vision is to plant (or be a part of supporting the church plant) in 50 villages. They already have 11 affiliated churches. He is planning that a church planter that goes through his training should be supported for three years at 4,000 Rs per month. This is already happening for some of the churches they have, through other churches in India. But he tells the church planter that after three years they must be self-sufficient. This is where he would like to see the BHW initiative connect, where self-help groups are set-up in these other villages over time so that after three years the pastors are self-sufficient. 

The idea is that most of the church planters would go back to their own villages and start churches there and/or in local villages as then they will not have to find additional accommodation.

Prayer and Praise Points

1) Praise for a fantastic start in the ministry and great leadership by Pradeep
2) Prayer for the next stage of the vision to start a small training centre, that Pradeep and the others involved would have wisdom regarding who is involved and how they market the products.