IDS’s Hub ‘n Spoke Model operates at both the macro- and micro-level. At the macro-level, IDS supports over a dozen active projects throughout India. Although each project is unique (location, target population, intervention), many of the projects have communalities. IDS serves as an important hub platform as a catalyst to share information, best practices, metrics and methodology with our spoke project partners in India.

 At a micro-level we have a number of interventions we help manage including providing education to tribal children and rag-picker communities. As example of one such intervention is as follows:

IDS identified the lack of education to be a primary concern within tribal and lower-caste target populations and, therefore, the focus of IDS intervention. However, children from vulnerable communities find it difficult to learn in traditional school settings. The population’s inability to assimilate in a traditional classroom is a key factor that contributes to failing grades and over a 70% dropout rate. In addition, the remote location of some hamlet communities, heavy rains, and accompanying flooding inhibit children’s accessibility to government schools. Without intervention, entire hamlets remain illiterate. Recognizing a variety factors that play a key role in perpetuating illiteracy within the hamlets of tribal and lower-caste communities, IDS involved teachers and elders, panchayat, from the community to develop a rural educational system to help address it.

We establish educational centers in vulnerable hamlet communities that use a participation approach program called Activity-Based Learning (ABL). The ABL approach attracts tribal and lower-caste children because of its hands-on nature and thereby renders an improved educational system that is less traditional yet appropriately designed for the target community population. To achieve success, IDS supplements the governmental educational infrastructure by allocating resources in areas such as hiring teachers, providing supplemental educational materials and training sessions, monitoring outcomes, and performing student assessments.

Once our educational project is established, IDS begins to deliver a wider range of services, which includes basic literacy (grades 1–5); employment training; agricultural know how for micro land holders; nutrition and health care information; and disaster mitigation planning. In so doing, we will empower 1,000 community members.

The Hub ‘n Spoke system establishes an education center within an existing community facility, such as an orphanage or hospital, to serve as the hub to disperse knowledge to and between tribal hamlet communities to encourage inter-hamlet learning. The secondary branches, the spokes, are additional services provided to either a targeted hamlet or other communities nearby. Eventually, theHub ‘n Spoke system will allow for inter-hamlet information sharing, such as education, health care, nutrition, and agriculture, as well as multiple interconnected services to the entire community.

We are proud of the safe environment the Hub‘n Spoke system creates for children within their own communities while simultaneously providing an infrastructure that enables future development.