Mfoods is an initiative taken by the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh to ensure timely supply of fortified nutritious food to 223 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) projects benefiting 30.62 lakhs of children and women beneficiaries throughout the state of Andhra Pradesh in an efficient and effective manner. With an aim to serving poor undernourished among underprivileged group of women and children the vision of this project was to facilitate and implement ICDS projects and other Government Schemes to expand and diversify for the sustainability as a viable corporate Industry. Anganwadi workers/ Child Development Project Officers(CDPO) indent food items through mobile phones. Centralized System keeps track of indents along with date and time, in response the supply schedules being updated by Apfoods online. Corresponding alerts goes to the field and transporters. The CDPOs/ Anganwadi workers can acknowledge the food items received through mobiles. Delays, wrong indents, non-indents, non-supplies, wrong supplies, delayed supplies can be tracked by the stakeholders. Thus entire supply chain is getting efficient and streamlined. This is resulting in availability of foods to serve the malnourished children, pregnant women lactating mothers so as to achieve MDGs.

The Jury appreciated that the project mfoods ensures effective implementation of all essential attributes of a food-related developmental programme like timely food supplies, timely production, zero inventory, zero wastages, proper accounting, budgeting and payment, supplies based on actual consumptions, least path transferring by transporters and timely servicing of nutritional supplementary food at Anganwadi Centres to the malnourished children, malnourished pregnant mothers, lactating mothers, etc It was also observed that the project provides a cost effective solution to the entire supply chain viz. from the production centre to the end consumption location / Anganwadi Centre of ICDS in the country, involving combination of mobile technology, internet technology besides GPRS, GIS multi-media and GPS technologies. The Jury felt that involving Anganwadi Centres as the cornerstone of the programme is very apt as AWCs are having a very wide child reach, estimating around 58 million children in the country.

Original Title : Andhra Pradesh Smart Card Project

Media Format : Smart Card & Biometric
Website : http://rd.ap.gov.in
Producer : Commissioner of Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh
Language : English
Location : Andhra Pradesh, INDIA
Contact : avvprasad@yahoo.com

This project delivers banking services to the unbanked millions of poor people in the urban, semi-urban, rural and remote areas at their doorstep. Initially Social Security Pensions and MGNREGA Wages it envisages payment of Social Security Pensions to the pensioners and MGNREGA wages to the wage seekers in the entire State of Andhra Pradesh. The beneficiaries are opened a bank account and issued a smart card by the Banks through a Business Correspondent. There is a Customer Service Provider, to make payments at village point through biometric authentication of finger print. There are 13 million wage-seekers and 7 million pensioners in the Andhra Pradesh. While pensions are paid once in a month, MGNREGA wages are paid once a week.

The Jury appreciated that since launching of this project in the year 2007, through this initiative 7 million Pensioners under Social Security Programme, and 13 million Wage-seekers under the MGNREGA all over the State of Andhra Pradesh including remote villages, have been financially included. It was also observed that the project has now covered 18000 of the 21896 Gram Panchayats in the State. The Jury further noted that this project has been a valuable training ground and self-assessment of capabilities of Banks, Technology Service Providers and Business Correspondents in India and has thus paved the way for an extension of Financial Inclusion services all over the country. It was appreciated that the existing challenge of making timely payment of wages across the length and breadth of the State to NREGA wage seekers, could be largely met through this initiative.

Original Title : RangDe.Org
Media Format : Internet & Web
Website : http://www.rangde.org
Producer : RangDe
Language : English
Location : Karnataka, INDIA
Contact : ram@rangde.org

RangDe.Org is a Internet platform that raises social capital from individuals and deploys it as loan capital to low income households. The motivation for starting Rang De was the belief that the peer to peer lending model could be leveraged to lower the cost of microcredit and and consequently to reach out to under-served communities. RangDe.Org went live on January 26th 2008. Rang de would do this through a network of committed field partners and social investors and offer microcredit that will have a positive impact on business, education, health and environment of the communities they work with. ‘Rang de’ initiative enables individuals to lend small sums of money to borrowers and help create a new form of capital, that is the social capital. Rang de has a front end that enables individuals, to become social investors to lend capital to low income households and a backend that enables field partner NGOs, to upload data about the borrowers including loan applications and manage their Rang De loan portfolio and lastly an interface for Rang De administration, which is similar to a core banking system that helps in reconciling the inflow and out flow of capital.

The Jury appreciated that within a short span of time the initiative could operate in 11 States, namely, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, West Bengal, Manipur, Bihar, Jharkhand and Gujarat with a total of 25 Field Partners and this confirmed the acceptance of the model adopted. It was also observed that till date Rang de organization could reach out to 10,247 borrowers, 2,921 social investors, with the social investments being raised under this project are of the order of Rupees 5.39 crore out of which credit repaid of the order of Rupees 3.5 crore. The Jury further observed that, having worked in the area of affordable microcredit for business, micro-ventures and education, the project has created an eco-system of social investors, field partners and borrowers, which would ultimately promote financial literacy and business mentoring programs, leading to empowering the communities the project works with.