We feel that what we have been able to accomplish enables impoverished and unemployed Dalit and poor families improve their living conditions only to the subsistence levels and keep them tied to the villages. In the absence of education and skill acquisition necessary to compete in the modern industrial and service economy of the country, attaining prosperity through social and economic mobility remains only a pipe dream. That makes it necessary for us to rethink our strategy and revise our vision. We believe that the new strategy should help these unfortunate souls to permanently escape from poverty and social and economic deprivation. The rationale and logic behind our vision, which hinges on improving health, education, and skill enhancement of the Dalits, are outlined below.

Though government funded schools function in most of the villages, Dalit children enrolled in them are often discriminated. The school infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired: inadequate class rooms, teaching materials, frequently absenting teachers makes it well nigh impossible for the children from these schools to compete with those from private and commercialized schools in the cities and towns. Even when the schools are well provided for, homes of Dalit children do not provide a conducive environment for pursuing studies: no physical facilities, often uneducated parents, absence of role models, subsistence living conditions that often drive children to drop out of school to work as child laborers and absenteeism due to ill health and inadequate nutrition. In view of the deprivation and degradation over centuries and overt and covert forms of discrimination in school among teachers as well as fellow students, Dalit children generally lack self-confidence and live in a perpetually hostile social and economic environment that lowers, some times irretrievably, their self-esteem.

Though Government-run schools and health facilities are available, the quality of education (as explained before) and health care remains abysmally poor. As the middle and upper classes have the wherewithal to make use of the private education and health facilities now increasingly available, there is no powerful advocacy groups to represent the voice of the Dalits requiring improvement of the quality of services in Government run health and education institutions. As a result, Dalits and other poor are left to the mercy of the poorly run public services. Government policy makers obviously are of the view that over time the benefits of development eventually would trickle down to the Dalits and the poorer classes of the society. However, in view of the rapid pace of development of mass media in its electronic and print versions, poor and Dalits are witnesses to the emerging consumerism and modern consumption patterns but they themselves do not have the resources to take part in it in order to enhance their quality of life. Such a scenario is likely to create frustration, anger, anguish and disappointment among the Dalits because of relative deprivation, though not due to absolute deprivation when basic needs may willy-nilly be met. Our vision is to prevent emergence of such a scenario by first providing them quality education and skill enhancement opportunities so that they can be incorporated into the modern economy. Incidentally we hope that such a strategy would also facilitate our mission work.

SOLS is making sure that Women's empowerment helps children in India.

Development practitioners increasingly see women's empowerment as central to reducing poverty. Micro-finance programmes are being enthusiastically adopted worldwide to promote such empowerment. In the Indian state of Tamilnasu over five million women have formed self-help groups, but little is known about what impact this has on child welfare.

A paper from the Young Lives project, in the UK, and the United Nations Children's Fund considers the impact of women's self-help groups formed as part of micro-finance programmes in Tamilnadu, India. In particular, the authors look at how these self-help groups shape women's empowerment, and what impact this has on the well being of children.

Self-help groups serve as a focus for micro-finance programmes providing poor women with credit, which can be used to improve the well being of their households. Development practitioners also believe women can use self-help groups to boost their social networks and community participation. Key findings from one urban and three rural "mandals" (territorial and administrative units) in Tamilnadu include:

• There have been improvements in women's decision-making power within households. This has often resulted in more investment in children's nutrition, health and education, use of government services and efforts to monitor service delivery.
• Available loans are insufficient and infrequent and have rarely been used for productive investment.
• Women are also limited by time constraints, lack of group unity and the narrow focus of initiatives to build up skills and resources.
• There have been some positive effects of women's empowerment on improved child well being.
• Other improvements to child well being are a result of explicitly stated programme aims.
• The authors conclude that efforts to empower women through self-help groups have had a positive but limited effect on child well being and little effect on existing power structures within communities and households. Positive changes are also unevenly distributed between groups and mandals, and individual women and children.