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Ashoka Fellows Include Street Beautification Project
In Madras, a bank manager with a reputation for innovation originated an idea of how to turn two negatives into a positive.
He observed: (1) a growing number of rag-picking street children scrounging for survival; and, (2) the ugly and unhealthy conditions of many roadsides.
He put (1) and (2) together and came up with: (3) a plan in which most of the families along a particular road pay a nominal 60 cents-a-month fee to hire a rag-picker, renamed a "street beautifier," to keep the road clean and beautify it.
Street beautifiers are equipped with uniforms, shoes and a reasonable $32- a-month salary. The bank manager's bank provides loans to the street beautifiers to purchase cycle carts. And a community organization founded by the banker sponsors basic literacy classes for those who need them.
The banker, M.B. Nirmal, winner in 1989 of the Indira Gandhi award for India's best bank manager, is one of the 19 South Asian awardees in the Tenth Fellowship Elections of the Ashoka Fellows. His organization, Exnora, hopes to expand beyond his 55 street groups in Madras to organize a system of street- group organizations throughout India. 360 FELLOWS
The Arlington, Va.-based Ashoka Innovators for the Public has elected over...