And so it begins...

After a two weeks of writing a demand assessment survey from scratch and meeting with engineers, architects and financiers around Lucknow, we have finally reached the pinnacle of the first phase of our project: the field!

Here at Nirmaan Bharati "the field" has a kind of mystical quality to it. All the work that is done in this office is for the benefit of "the field." People ask you if you've been to "the field" as if it is a far off land that changes you, changes everything. Mention of "the field" ignites a fire in people's eyes and excites a lilt in people's voices. Where did you go in the field? What did you see? What did you do? What did you think?

This is all true. The field, meaning the slum neighborhoods where our clients live, is harsh and eye-opening. My first two days in India were spent in the field, walking silently behind the center manager I was shadowing, understanding nothing and, in a way, only then understanding everything. I had arrived in India to work at a microfinance firm, and that was all I knew. I had no idea what I would be doing or why. But in a rush, a two-day whirlwind on the back of a motorcycle, I was introduced to everything that Nirmaan Bharati is, everything that Nirmaan Bharati does and why. The field.

For the past two days I have hopped on that motorcycle again. We've been going out to a few different neighborhoods to get an idea of the state of people's sanitation facilities and to ask them some informal questions. Generally, we enter the house ask to see their toilet and take a few pictures. I think this is strange as a visitor so I cannot imagine how strange they must think I am. After we have a look, we ask them about their water connection, sewage and drainage connections and any problems they face with their current facilities. We then ask how much they would be willing to spend to get it all upgraded, if they would be willing to do it themselves and what, in the best case, their new toilet/washroom would look like. We get a range of answers to all of these questions, but generally people have seemed very willing to take out a loan to improve their facilities. This is great news for us because that is what we're trying to do: create a loan product we can give to these families to help them rebuild something as basic and necessary as a toilet.

This was all informal and the formal survey should begin on Monday. Gabrielle and I will be going out separately with translators and aim to interview 20 people a day combined. Our target for the survey is 200 - so we're hoping to be done in two weeks. Along the way we plan on uploading the data to a database we're creating so at the end of the two weeks we can jump right into the final loan creation process. By mid-March we hope to have our first batch of clients.

Here's hoping.