Research Volunteer
Status: 
Time needed:
Half a day
Step:
5
To be able to start writing business plans we have to start a survey or research into options for small businesses. To do this we need a volunteer who can write a format or guidelines to set up a survey.
Tomas supplied us with some questions, for example:
- Is there a market for the goods or services?
- Is there money in the community to spend on the goods or services?
- How many people with money are there in your local market?
- Will they spend money on these goods or services or is there a great degree of self sufficiency in the market already?
- Will the new businesses provide better goods and service than already exist?
- Will some services free up time for the buyer to pursue their own interests?
- etc.
We hope to complete this task soon, so we can move on with writing business proposals to secure micro finance and other funding.
Hi maybe i can help but what is the survey for exactly?
hi - I can help as well. Please let me know what the survey is about?
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Vineeth Gururaj
Thank you Alice and Vineeth for your responses.
In our previous task: Micro Finance Institutions - start up small businesses
we have described what kind of businesses we would like to start up in the community. In the comments to this task, both from Tomas and me, you can find more information on the research, survey and contents.
Hi i think I can help with this task thats if I get more Info about the project its self
--
Herbo
In our village we are working for a primary school in Tamilnadu in India. The region our school is located is one of the poorest in India and many children have to work to help their parents supply their income. The aim of our local representative the Society for the Development of the Depressed is to get as many young children in school as possible.
In order to do this we need to make sure their parents earn enough money so they dont need their children to work. With starting up small businesses we could achieve this. Please read through the village website for more background information, or go to the website www.sdd.org.in
Hallo Dorien,
thanks for the information link to the website. It is impressive what the people of SDD.org did in the last 20 years. Most of it is training and educating people so they become literate and more selfaware.
But for a microfinance project there is a need for more information on the different activities people can develop to earn money.
Why are they asking for school uniforms. Is their a possibility that some people start a production shops/atelier to make this uninforms. Than you only have to look for funds to buy the materials. and people can earn there money by doing the machine and handwork of the production of uniforms in the community.
What kind of dayly activity do people have. Is it subsistence agriculture or are they landless and have to wait for the harvest season to make some money.
We do not get any information of the surrounding and the environment people live in so it is difficult to make a survey out of the Blue.
I hope you can give some background information on the situation of the people the villages and the basic resources or economy.
I hope this help to start up the surveysetup.
Succes.
Kinds,
Jager
Dear Jacqueline,
Thank you for your reply!
In our 'background' section on this Nabuur site, you can find the following information:
"There are about 120 families living in this town panchayat with the radius of 3 km surrounding. The ‘Dalits’ who are the low caste people according to traditional social structure from the vast majority in this area. They belong to both Hindu and Christian religion.
The literacy rate is only 20% among the people. A few of them own less than 2 acre of dry land for cultivation. Agriculture on these lands often proves a useless drudgery because of repeated failure of monsoon rains. Most of them are without land and own nothing but mud houses with roofs of dry grass and low entrance. The size of the houses normally measure 10’ X 15’ for a family. To earn their daily bread, they work in the fields of landed high caste people, as agricultural laborers. Often the situation arises for women and children too, necessitating their support to the survival of the family as breadwinners."
I have forwarded your questions to our local rep and he should be back with som more background info soon!
Dorien
For your information:
The nearest market is located at Chetpet, about 3 kilometers distance from Kizhakkumedu.
The community in Kizhakkumedu owns a small amount of money as savings of a self-help group. It is nearly about Rs. 10,000/-.( US $ 200 ). This self-help group consists of only 15 women, they spend the money on goods and services.
The families with schoolgoing children in the village have only a very small income, they even struggle for their daily bread. They cannot give priority to the education of the children. Uniforms are essential to the children who are going to school, as a uniform gives them status (in India the school uniform is very important) and motivation.
It would be possible to start a tailoring unit to provide them with uniforms. In this case we have to provide the training to stich the uniforms. However, this will cost even more money and for a small number of uniforms sets like 45 - 50 sets this is not a viable investment.
The villagers normally depend on harvest season agricultural work. Often there is no seasonal rain and at present there is a severe draught. They need more sustainable sources of income, which is why there is a need for a strong income generation programme in the village community.
Thanks Dorien and your villagemembers,
This information can help.
The recent drought is a big problem we cannot change in a moment.
But let we look at the possibilities.
The market is not that far away it will be 1 - 1,5 hours to walk and may be on market days there is transport?
Before we can make a plan we shall investigate what the products are that are doing good business on that market and other markets in the surroundings.
Is there demand on diary, vegetables, soap, honey or other things.
Is there a market for clothing that can be made by the taylorshop that also will make the uniforms in the schoolstart season.
Are people growing beens and vegetables or is the shortage of water that severe that they cannot grow anything at the moment?
Are there herbs they can collect or grow, are there possibilities to do dying clothing material or else?
What about goats for milk? It seems a big problem to feed them. They need food water and so on. As people do not have enough to feed their children what about animals? But sometimes this investment is a stimuli to start the production or collection of al that things that is needed to keep the small milkmachine(the goat) going and the milkproducts makes just enough money to help to feed the family and cloth them.
The researchjob shall have to start with looking at the markets that are in the nearby places and at the demands of the people that have the land and can afford to buy things. What are the products that are sold on the markets. And what are the products they are longing for that they need or like to have.
Just make a list of the products available and an other list with the products that are short, but in demand.
On the otherside we have to look for the people of the community.
What else can the people of the community and espcially this 15 women of the selfhelp group offer other then their own muscles to work on the field?
When they depend on the harvest season to make some money what else are they doing in the rest of the time.
Just collect all the activities they are doing in the low time.
When you have this list you can look for the twoo marketlists and this capabilities of the community
after combining bothe you can think of all the thing they already do but can sophasticate and the new things they can employ.
Is it possible to make small things f.e. mats, pots, special beads out of wastedpaper?
Products out of plastic that will be collect and recycled into other things.
So start the research:
You first have to make a list of the products that are available and asked for on the surrounding markets.
You make a list of the products that are in demand but difficult to get or short.
Then you have to make the other list. The list of the activities, products or else things the women and other people of the community are doing during the off harvest season.
This three lists together are the information you need to start thinking about a solution for the problems of the dependency on the harvest season.
I hope that this information will help you all to go on.
See your progress in the future,
Kinds,
Jager
Thank you for your input, we hope to find a volunteer to do this research soon!
Hello;
My name is Cathy and I am new to the village but I hope I can be of some help. I have found a link to a Market Assessment Toolkit designed for the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
http://www.womenscommission.org/pdf/ug_ysl_toolkit.pdf
It's purpose is to help providers of Vocational Training programs conduct market research and decide which business ventures would be most likely to succeed. It is a very large document but takes you through the entire process step by step. I have taken the most relevant portion (the actual surveys) and put them into a Word Document but the full document is definitely worth reading and also contains many charts to help you take the information from the surveys and summarize it. If you have any trouble with the link or need any further help with this, please let me know.
Regards;
Cathy.
Hi Cathy, thanks for the document, will definitely have a read through!