working in the villages of Orrisa!

The last few days have been very puroductive for the 5 of us interning with SKS. We spent most of Tuesday observing the field officers interact with the ultra poor women in each village. Each week the field officer meets with the women in the villages that are in the ultra poor program, during this meeting they discuss what happened during the week and the women also deposit their weekly savings to the field officer. It was very interesting to watch the women give their savings to the field officer. Usually the women each give around 10 ruppes each. (the current exchange rate right now is 47 ruppes to the dollar). After the morning meetings at the villages we all came back and discussed how we could survey the women to see what impact the program is having on their individual life's. We were able to develop a 2 page survey that we piloted on Wednesday morning. From the pilot we got some good information to write up case studies on the woman that we are surveying. I have learned a great deal about the woman and how they have Benedict from the program with SKS. Each woman that is in the program has been given a type of asset and it was interesting to learn if the asset has been profitable yet. From the results of the pilot we were able to better improve our survey and now have a survey that we are going to use for the next week and half. We are hoping to survey around 50 women total and then compile our data for SKS. We are taking photos of each women we are surveying so that we can show board members of the Ultra Poor Program the impact the program is having. I took many photos of the women, their families, and their huts so that we can accurately portray their individual stories to the board.