Our Grass Roots Approach to Baal Dan Projects

Breaking the cycle of child poverty with a grassroots approach.

ABOUT BAAL DAN

Mission: Founded in 2005, Baal Dan Charities was formed to support the basic needs and social welfare of impoverished and vulnerable children.
baal dan [baal dahn] Hindi • donation to children
Federal EIN: 20-4658983

Baal Dan Charities provides grants to support street children and provide food, education, medical needs for children in need, particularly orphans, children living with HIV, orphans with special needs and children who have been victims of sex trafficking and abuse. Through years of testing, refining and adapting strategies and processes, Baal Dan projects have created an agile model that has enabled the charity to have impact directly and efficiently. This organization has been able to get aid to some of the world’s most vulnerable children, who would have been missed by larger NGOs and government organizations.

Baal Dan grants make an impact at the grassroots level – where children often slip below safety nets – with proven success working in complex environments that are corrupt and food insecure.

When you send a $5,000 check to a large NGO like World Vision or the Red Cross, how much of that do you really think makes it the 25 children living in the small village that is nowhere near a school? We have experience in getting to those children – directly, efficiently – through their own communities to get them what they need with a personal approach and process – not dictated from afar.

We don’t shy away from difficult places where there is corruption, so we can operate where others can’t. We have experience in some of the world’s toughest and most corrupt environments. We know what it takes to deploy aid safely and at the right level so that children can benefit but we don’t line the pockets of unscrupulous people who prey on vulnerable children and the goodwill of foreign donors.

OUR IMPACT

Baal Dan has provided grants to support over 14,000 children in 14 developing countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) since its inception in 2006.

Baal Dan has been run entirely by volunteers (mostly working professionals) and funded by volunteers such nearly 100% of dollars raised go directly to fund grants and programs for children in need.

Currently, the charity provides grants to feed over 1,000 children a day living in poverty and numerous other programs that support food and educational support for underprivileged kids.

Baal Dan provided grants to ASDEPO in Ethiopia to carry out a food ration program to help mothers of children suffering from acute malnutrition. This program ensures children don't relapse after being treated at health clinics to maintain their body weight and health.

Our model is efficient and direct
This micro-grant model reduces waste in the system and the loss rate that is almost always borne by larger organizations when working in highly complex, corrupt and insecure environments. By making smaller, more efficient investments, the risk of funding loss due to corruption and waste is reduced and the direct impact on the beneficiary is immediate (e.g., the provision of daily meals, education support) in a tangible way.

We base grant decisions on needs
Because needs are identified upfront through country managers/field staff, vetted, researched and audited there is an immediate impact that will be felt by the beneficiary because they have helped to provide the context and case for the support they need the most.

We keep overhead low
Operating and overhead costs are drastically reduced in this leaner organization because the focus is not on fundraising, marketing, recapitalization campaigns or creating an endowment. Our funds are put into action, circulating into the community at a grassroots level to make a difference for the poorest of the poor now - with the organization fully focused on grantee impact and not building marketing campaigns.

FACTS ABOUT CHILDREN IN POVERTY

This child was living in a construction site or "Pipe Village" in Hyderabad, India. Baal Dan provided food and supplies to help him and the children of this village.

An estimated 356 million children live in extreme poverty, struggling to survive on less than $1.90 a day.
An estimated 1 billion children are multi-dimensionally poor, lacking basic nutrition or clean water.
Children are more likely to live in poverty than adults. They’re also more vulnerable to its effects.
Impoverished children are more susceptible to malnutrition, develop fewer skills for the workforce and earn lower wages as adults.
More than 100 million additional children were plunged into poverty due to Covid-19.

Source: Child poverty | UNICEF

CHILD HUNGER

A child dies every 10 seconds from malnutrition, with 3 million children dying from hunger every year.
45% of child deaths under age 5 are lost to hunger and hunger-related causes.
45 million children suffer from severe malnutrition, affecting girls disproportionately by 60%.
Covid-19 has pushed an estimated 370 million children into hunger with school closures in 199 countries.

Source: 10 Facts About Child Hunger in the World (wfpusa.org)

This child was treated for acute malnutrition and his mother was provided with a 3-month supply of food rations to maintain his health after treatment by Baal Dan's partnership with ASDEPO in Ethiopia.

EDUCATION INEQUALITY

These children were impacted by an earthquake in Nepal. Baal Dan funded 33 temporary schools and latrines and WASH programs to Dzi Foundation.

59 million children of elementary school age are being denied an education.
Conflict and natural disasters have disrupted the education of 75 million children.
A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to survive past the age of 5.
Nearly 15 million girls of primary school age will never have the opportunity to learn to read and write compared to 10 million boys.

Source: 9 Stats That Show Why Access To Education Is So Important (globalcitizen.org)

OUR PHILOSOPHY & VALUES

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is at the root of our values and philosophy: Without ensuring a strong foundation in life and ensuring that basic human needs are met such as shelter, safety, food, water, medical care and education, it is hard to progress and escape the cycle of poverty.

If children don’t have adequate protection, shelter, care, food and education, they cannot survive or thrive. “Catching” a child early in life and ensuring they are provided with these basic human rights ensures more positive outcomes for the rest of their life.

PROBLEM: THE BROKEN FUNDING MODEL OF LARGE NGOs

educational support for underprivileged kids

There are a wealth of resources, organizations and worldwide systems focused on reducing poverty, food insecurity and child well-being. Nevertheless, too many mothers and children who are the purported focus of these programs and resources never feel the impact of these resources and effort in their day-to-day lives.

WHY?
Most Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are working within complex and interdependent systems of the UN, US AID and Host Country government policies and priorities. These organizations do an excellent job of raising awareness, money, and organizing large influxes of resources into a given region. They deliver at scale and help ameliorate some of humanity’s most urgent crises.

However, funding is often diluted or lost by these many entities by the time it gets to the individual beneficiaries in the community – the single mother, householder or small day care centers, drop-in centers/youth programs and orphanages. Even in areas inundated with UN, governmental and NGO support, many children continue to live below a subsistence level, surviving on one meal a day or less, with minimal-to-no health care, inconsistent access to power, water, and safe passage to school.

This is especially true in areas that are not immediate “crisis zones,” but experience long-term systemic economic, social and political challenges. As a result, many children living in extreme poverty and vulnerability never “feel” the impact of the large scale aid programs directly as those programs focus at the “area” or systems level (e.g. water supply, food grain/seed distributions or larger schemes to tackle education access). These large-scale aid programs are necessary but insufficient to change lives and break the negative generational cycles of poverty, sickness and undereducation. 

OUTDATED MODELS HAVE PERPETUATED POVERTY

Broken funding models perpetuate the cycle of poverty - failing at the household or community level where often single mothers and their children must fend for themselves.

Despite decades of funding large scale programs in developing countries, many children often still suffer from poverty and a lack of access to adequate nutrition and education.
Large NGOs often operate with massive overhead costs, administration burdens, bureaucracy and outdated models that lead to graft, corruption and even nepotism.
Many international development programs may have succeeded at the macro-level providing larger scale WASH or health services, but often fail at the micro-level where children in those communities fall under the radar or smaller projects don’t meet the criteria for funding.
While large NGO’s might have a large “managed footprint” of direct services, there are many smaller organizations operating in those same development areas that are unmanaged or ineligible for funding because they already underfunded, understaffed, and cannot meet the stringent criteria and endless KPIs dictated by larger organizations.

OUR SOLUTION

Trish (a Haitian orphan) gets her first wheelchair.

Over the course of its existence, Baal Dan has both seen the gap described above and, more importantly, identified organizations who are filling that gap and providing ongoing fundamental support to children in need. Addressing this gap requires operating on the ground in each community and working at the grassroots level.

Fundamentally different from many large-scale aid programs, this approach focuses on finding local organizations currently succeeding on the ground, and helping them sustain and grow their impact. It assumes that local knowledge and cultural fluency are mission critical, and that personal direct engagement is the only path to lasting change.

To-date, Baal Dan has developed proven models and frameworks to direct funding, support and programs for vulnerable children at the grassroots level.

We adhere to the UN Sustainable Development Goals with a commitment to doing no harm, increasing local capacity, sustainability and empowerment of all involved.

MICRO-GRANT OPERATING MODEL

Investment in micro-grants ensures adequate time for the programming approach to be refined and adapted by local country partners while creating stability and security for the children in their care.

*For most children in these organizations, these small grassroots providers are their primary source of shelter, care, food and education.

VALUE & IMPACT

THE MICRO-GRANT MODEL WORKS.

Our model is fully scalable.
We started with one child and no employees. We have been able to prove the model by helping over 14,000 children, still with no employees or real infrastructure. Our focus is on helping children in need and we will accelerate to have the greatest impact we can have because we are not trying to build the next big NGO. In fact, we want to do good and disappear after sufficiently empowering local communities to take care of themselves.

Micro-grants ensure more transparency and early warning systems if loss due to corruption is a constant threat.
We are auditing the impact of grants at regular checkpoints and will pull funding if needed. Allocating a small amount to each grantee on a regular basis is much easier to track and audit. The larger the amount, the larger the risk. The micro-grant model mitigates this risk through smaller amounts and more oversight.

If you are a member of a Grant Making Private or Family Foundation or Philanthropist
interested in supporting Baal Dan and scaling our impact please contact us at [email protected]

References

The Broken Funding Model of Large NGOs

Why fund grassroots organizations?