Butterflies

The basic philosophy is that if these children can learn the value of work and education then, when they grow up, they will pass on these values to their children, and the next generation shouldn’t suffer as many children on the street as there are now.

 

There are currently about 400,000 children on the streets in New Delhi.  This isn’t just those who are sleeping rough – of which there are, at 100,000, comparatively few – but also those who earn a living for their families by working up to six hours a day as rag pickers, shoe-shiners, street stall assistants and so forth.  Some of them have run away from home in the North Indian rural hinterlands, drawn to Delhi as a place to make money and earn a living, but most have migrated with their families and live in the sprawling slums on the city’s outskirts.  Hardly any of them are from Delhi itself.

 

Butterflies’s philosophy makes sense in that it recognises that the motivation of many of these children is bound by the necessities of their economic situation.  Their families need them to be earning money, and so the charity works with this fact in mind.  It started 20 years ago as a group of volunteers, called ‘educators,’ who went into the streets and simply made contact with the children, talking to them and trying to draw them toward a way of thinking that acknowledges the benefits of proper education, healthcare and work.  It did not, and does not, preach one particular way of thinking, it merely shows them the benefits by providing the kids with the opportunity to see for themselves what they are.

 

Central to this philosophy is the NGO’s main project, Child Development Khazana (CDK). This is a small microfinance and savings scheme, run by the kids themselves and overseen by adults from the charity.  It allows the children, who are all earning money, to start saving and even to take out small loans if they have a particularly good entrepreneurial idea.  For example, two kids, who had been taught how to make small Diwali candles at a Butterflies workshop, took out a loan to make a batch in advance of the festival.  They ended up making about Rs. 1000 (£15) profit each, which is a sizeable amount if you’re living on the street in New Delhi.

 

One can see how this approach can change the mentality of the children who get involved.  Rather than living a hand-to-mouth existence (literally), many children now have assets of their own, and the opportunity to grow those assets through their own ingenuity.  At the same time, Butterflies provides free basic education.  It’s a very interesting way of approaching a problem.  By giving them responsibility, Butterflies shows them how hard work can help them, and the kids are much more amenable to the idea of recieving an education once they see that it’s a means to an end.

 

Given this novel approach,  it is no surprise that Butterflies has received a lot of attention in the Western media.  Have a look, for example, at Rageh Omaar’s piece for Al Jazeera on YouTube here. It makes for interesting viewing.

 

I’m here as an Accounting for International Development  (AFiD) volunteer, acting in my capacity as a qualified accountant to help the small finance team at Butterflies HQ.  They have a pretty simple set-up, but there is much room for improvement.  Thomas, the head finance administrator, has requested that I help him re-write their financial practices manual by performing a mini controls audit, and I shall also be looking at their budgeting process, and seeing if I can help devise a more robust monthly management reporting process.  Fortunately, I have been preceded by another AFiD volunteer, Wasi, who has done an excellent job establishing the relationship and gathering all the background information I require, and I have been able to hit the ground running.

 

Financial transparency is of utmost importance to NGOs, such as Butterflies, that rely entirely on donations from large, mostly Western, charities.  Each of these charities will provide funds only on the condition that they can be  sure that the money is being spent as intended.  It’s not unreasonable. There is a drawback for Butterflies, however, since each charity imposes its own reporting requirements. For example, an Italian donor called CIAI requires monthly financial reports for the project that they are sponsoring, and it is very time-consuming to do this so regularly. The other donors, by comparison, mostly only require 6-monthly reports.

 

The largest of these is German Charity called Misereor.  The main UK charities are ChildHope and Railway Children, and there are scores of individual and corporate donors, including – bizarrely – Blink Brow Bar, the ‘pioneer of walk in brow bars using the ancient art of threading.’ So you can look gorgeous and feel good about it, after all.

Each of the large charity donors will either provide general funds, for central overheads, or provide it only for a specific project (such as CDK). 

 

The charity must therefore run separate books for each project, and at the end of each year aggregate all the results to show an overall top-down view.  On top of that, there are internal and external auditors to deal with.  When you take all this together with the reporting monthly and semi-annual reporting requirements it quickly becomes very demanding, and Thomas and his team certainly appear grateful for the free, no-strings-attached help that an AFiD volunteer provides.