Poverty is simply having nothing at all.  No land, no home, no food, no clothes apart from the clothes on one’s back.

Close your eyes. Remove every material possession you have.  Remove the TV, the computer, phone, refrigerator, shoes, lip gloss, books, soap, and everything else in between. When you have nothing else to remove consciously from your physical world, imagine that you do not have any money, no job, and no idea when your next meal would be. Imagine you have no idea when your family’s next meal would be.  Imagine walking around scouring for bits and pieces of food; scouring around for some form of work that may give your child something to eat.

Your first feeling might have been one of being free, since you have nothing to worry about – because you have nothing. Next comes the overwhelming feeling of fear: concern for one’s family, one’s children, the future.

Picture credit: http://www.acralive.org

Of course, you would not have been to school. You would not know how to read or write.  You would have no special skills. Digging, lifting things and any physical work would be your only capability.  You might have a small hut, or none at all. You would worry about your wife and daughter being molested and raped. You would feel the helplessness of having no security.

Poverty as a concept, and being poor are very different things.

Why do we have poverty in a world where there is plenty? There is more than enough food  and space on the planet for everyone to live comfortably. Yet, a very large proportion of mankind live in abject or partial poverty, where hundreds of deaths occur every day due to malnutrition and hunger.

Why don’t we all care about so many poor people on our planet? Perhaps, the problem is too big in our minds. It is not something we feel each of us can resolve, it is not something that any one of us can do anything about. It is too huge a problem, and we feel that only the UN and governments can deal with it, and should.  We, the ones who can make a difference to this massive problem rationalize that we have very little relationship with those who have that problem.

If you are poor, illiterate and completely ignorant, how would you be able to conceive of a way to transform poverty for yourself and your brethren? Those who are poor are in a quagmire that is fairly eternal.

What is the problem in its simple terms? 

To sum up the problem again in my own words, for a poor illiterate or semi-literate villager:

1. No Work - He or she has no work skills other than those that enable him to survive – physical work, digging, farming etc. which would provide him perhaps $ 1-2 per day. But even then, physical work is limited in the rural village that he/she hails from.
2. No Awareness – She has no knowledge of other work that could be done remotely – like data entry, diamond cutting, making local things which have value.
3. No Skills – Even if she or he knew of such high-value ($ 10 per day = high value) work, he or she does not possess those skills to get that work.

What is a possible solution?

That we simplify the enabling of people to be work-ready, using very smart training techniques, especially those persons who belong to the most vulnerable, most poor parts of our world. Then, we find creative, scalable ways (typically by way of being profitable ways) to get work as close to the people as possible, so that the local village economies develop and flourish.

Transformative events have happened in our time that would enable change of this situation:

• With the advent of standardisation, size of companies increasing globally, using standardized business processes have become the norm. These business processes are really similar pieces of work, and when broken down well, are simply things to do with rules on how to do that task
• The Internet reaching the remotest of villages in India through newer technologies, and the Internet being the “means” to pass on electronic work.
• More people work from home, more than ever before.  More and more work is becoming electronic and disconnected.
• The pervasive force of the Internet.  Most of education is based on knowledge.  Knowledge is passe today.  Knowing how to find information is key.  Earlier, knowledge was power.  Today, that power is minimal.
• Realizing that to enable people to do work, that they did not need 15 years of formal education. All they need are the skills to do that work  - to read, write and speak in business English, have business skills, use computers.
• Some breakthrough methodologies that we created to enable a miraculous learning of all of the above for a totally illiterate person in 6 months.
• The Tipping Point, a book that showed us that if we impacted a small percentage – 1-2% – of the population, that could be a tipping point to transform the entire target population of 400 million very poor villagers in India.

Thus, Phase 1 of the Head Held High program envisages transforming 2 Million villagers (10 million persons in families) across India to be able to perform BPO work from their villages after 6 months of breakthrough training.

In Phase 2, the other 390 million persons will find hope and a new possibility for themselves, by witnessing close to them the miraculous empowerment of the totally illiterate becoming BPO / IT workers in just 6 months. They will then pursue new kinds of work, entrepreneurial aspirations, powered by similar breakthrough training in the villages.

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Sunil is a serial entrepreneur and is the visionary who dreamed and took a stand for eliminating poverty in India – which lead to the idea of Head Held High. Sunil’s passion is to catalyze transformation and he has made a difference in hundreds of people’s lives through the transformational workshops that he created and has been running for more than a decade, called “Perspectives”. He is also an evangelist in the Business Process Management Industry and brings over two decades of experience in the Industry to Head Held High.

 Video: Ramesh on his first day of training, September 2007

In fact, it was only the beginning of problems Ramesh and his friends were about to face. They had never been to school and had never held a pencil in their life. It took Ramesh and his friends about two weeks just to learn English alphabets.

But they were resilient.

After three months, they had started conversing with one another in basic English. They were able to use computers to send emails and even search for information using Google.

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Fast forward August 17, 2011

Well, if somebody had told me that Ramesh would be speaking to the likes of Mr. Mukesh Ambani impressively in English , I would have not believed it then.

Ramesh and I with Mr. Ambani

Not only did Ramesh speak confidently to Mr. Ambani, he expressed himself so eloquently on stage during the Real Heroes awards ceremony in front of an audience consisting of the most well-known people in India!

There were more than 7 cameras in the room at the event at The Trident, Mumbai. I think I experienced more stage fright (I had to call my wife for a pep-talk before the awards presentation) than Ramesh who looked both calm and jovial. He was enjoying every moment, being in a ‘Five Star hotel’ for the first time in his life.

For all of us at Head Held High, it was a like a movie unfolding. Our work with rural development had been a long and arduous one. Watching your dreams materialize day by day is an experiencing more spellbinding than any movie.

Ramesh taking centre stage at
the Real Heroes Awards Function

Our dream is to enable millions of villagers who are zero or lowly educated like Ramesh, to live a life with dignity by giving them equal access to education and opportunity.

I take this opportunity to thank our partners, ambassadors, interns, families, students and everyone else who has been with us on this journey for the last four years. Receiving this award was on behalf of all the real heroes in our team who have poured their passion and dedication into this project.

We invite you to partner with us on this journey – by creating employment in the villages, by funding one of our projects/trainees or by interning/volunteering with us.

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Rajesh Bhat was a software engineer before Co-Founding Head Held High. In August 2011, he received the Real Heroes award by CNN-IBN under the youth category on behalf of Head Held High. Rajesh hails from a remote village in Sirsi, Karnataka and believes that he was lucky to have gotten the breaks in his life. During his free time, he enjoys reading books.