Have you wondered to what extent you are living a life that is blessed? This Index will help you determine the extent to which you are blessed and if the level of this is continuing to grow in your life, because being blessed is an outcome. An outcome of the extent to which we have submitted to the Lord and in so doing, sown in the 8 areas of being blessed.

As a part of the preparation to do this correctly please go to http://happyseries.org/ and listen to part-II of the video series, ’How to be Happy’ by Andy Stanley. The scripture reference for this tool is found in Mathew 5: 2-10
 

​This is an application that was developed by Dr Ravi Jayakaran & Rohit Jayakaran for married couples to make self-assessments of how they are performing in building and strengthening the foundations of their marriage. It is a part of a Christian Marriage seminar that also looks at better understanding the areas in which Christian Marriages are under attack and how to prepare for this attack by strengthening the foundations of our marriages. Both spouses must do this exercise separately initially, followed by doing it together and then comparing the final individual scores and the points of variation from the assessment done together.

​The worldview of a community is the perspective through which it views and perceives its world. Worldviews significantly impact how the community understands their poverty and the way out of it. This is particularly true in the developing world where by default the community’s worldview is one that is fatalistic, devoid of hope and laden with the presumption that the ‘supernatural powers on high’ never operate in their favor and that they are always out to ‘get them’. As a result, their assumption is that the ‘powers that control their destiny’ do so in a way that exploits them oppressively, and that any attempt on the community’s part to counter their situation will result in a backlash from their ‘gods, spirits and ancestors’. Life is thus seen as a burden to be endured, with a futile purpose. This worldview offers little hope, and needs to be changed if an organization wants to transform that community.

​On the other hand, the biblical worldview holds that God, who is omnipotent and eternal, is also a loving God and has played an active role in all of His creation with which He seeks to actively engage. God not only interacts actively with His creation but has also made a provision for its redemption. Because He is a personal God, He cares intensely for all of His creation and is deeply concerned about its welfare, especially mankind. God’s Love is eternal and in playing an active role in the lives of humans, He is drawing them to Himself to give them fullness of life. God therefore seeks to work actively through His subjects who already know Him to ‘demonstrate and proclaim the good news’ about Him and what He seeks to do. The biblical worldview is that God wants mankind to restore a personal relationship with him, with each other and the rest of creation. Only when this happens can mankind experience the ‘Shalom’ that God has provided. This is what good and balanced Integral or Holistic mission does. For Christian program implementers, Holistic development involves understanding what the community’s worldview is and then addressing it with a correct biblical worldview so that through a balanced development strategy the community experiences shalom.

​Over the years, I have worked on and developed a special participatory tool called the ‘Holistic Worldview Analysis’ or HWVA tool (See example of an actual HWVA from a poor community). This tool allows NGOs to carry out an analysis of the community’s worldview, understand its survival strategy and respond to those needs with active community participation. The uniqueness of this tool is that enables the development intervention to address both the ‘empirical’ as well as the ‘spiritual’ components of the development needs in a way that is balanced and Holistic.

​Empowerment can be defined as the process of being released to develop and grow to full potential. This is something that is talked about a great deal when talking about transformational development. But, how do measure this and establish a point score of how empowered we are, and subsequently even track the progress of this? Personal empowerment levels can be tracked by carrying out the PEI- Personal Empowerment Index.

​The PE Index tool was developed by Dr Ravi Jayakaran in the form of a simple participatory tool that measures the level to which an individual controls the 4 components that contribute to empowerment.

These 4 components are:
1. Level of control on one's health
2. Level of control on one's personal income
3. Level of control on personal expenditure
4. Level of control on one's micro political environment.

​This online self test can help you carry out a test to determine how empowered you are.

​The vision of every community pre-exists in it as its ‘survival strategy’. If we want to be effective, then we must design our intervention to be driven by the community’s vision. This will result in the program being sustainable, and the community will be empowered as a result. The program begins with participatory assessments allowing the community to articulate their expertise on their history, resources, challenges, and opportunities. These assessments culminate in the use of a participatory tool designed by Dr Ravi Jayakaran called the Holistic Worldview Analysis® (or HWVA, pictured at the left) which is like a snapshot of the ‘survival strategy’ of the community, and gives insight into the specific interventions required for the development plan. The exercise uses another participatory tool developed by Dr Ravi Jayakaran called the Ten Seed Technique®. Each of the dots in the diagram represents a seed.  Blue seeds are sources of livelihood, gray are uncertainties, and black are problems. The innermost circle represents what the community controls, the middle circle what outsiders (like NGOs, government, etc.) control, and the outermost circle is what is beyond the community’s control (The community usually assigns this ‘gap’ to the supernatural).

​Empowerment : The most important expected outcome of a transformed community is community empowerment evident in the interactions of community members (exhibiting equality, courtesy, and shared responsibility), quality of life experienced, and ability to control the survival strategy development plan. Ultimately developing a community collectively and working for a better future. The SSEI is a tool designed to track the progress over the course of the intervention. In the HWVA in this diagram, the red numbers represent vulnerabilities and the green capacities. By dividing the number of Capacities by the number of Capacities plus Vulnerabilities, a score, or SSE Index is produced. In this particular community, this score was 0.09 in 2011. Each year this exercise is repeated, and the new SSE Index score is plotted on a graph to track the progress of the community.

​​The Happiness index tool was developed by Dr Jayakaran and Dr VanValin to measure happiness. It is carried out using the Ten Seed Technique and assessing the 5 important aspects of Happiness, namely:

1.Positive emotion: Happiness and life satisfaction define this well-being component. Descriptions of positive emotions include words such as feeling good, happy, joyous, blessed, satisfied, excited, content, calm and peaceful, etc. These emotions are often contextually dependent.  One day things are going well and a person feels “happy”, but then a loss is experienced and the person feels “sad.” Some people need significant interventions such as medication and psychotherapy in order to have the biological capacity to experience positive emotions.
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2.Engagement:  Engagement is the experience of being totally focused on one thing.  It is about “flow.” The more engaged we are, the less we attend to things around us, and the easier it is to lose ourselves in what we are doing. We are single minded, the opposite of multitasking where our attention is quickly moving from one thing to another.  Multitasking is quite stressful, while engagement is calming.

​3.Relationships:  Being with people you love is the greatest buffer against the negative effects of chronic or critical stress.  Also, helping other people is the fastest way to feel better in almost any situation. Simply being around people is insufficient.  One can feel very lonely in a crowded room.  This element requires reciprocal relationships. The more truly intimate relationships one has, the more secure one is in general, and happier overall.

 

​4.Meaning and purpose:  Meaning is defined by Dr. Seligman as “belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self.”  (Flourish, 2011, p. 17). Victor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, described how people in Nazi concentration camps would either lose their sense of identity and humanity in such horrific conditions, or sustain themselves by helping others.

5.Accomplishment:  Accomplishment refers to completing or making progress in something of value. This component is high for people who feel that they are achieving goals, making progress and expect future accomplishments.  Accomplishments may be recognized by others or be very private. People often struggle with achievement as they age, or lose capacity to do something they value.

​The final index is the total of the seeds in the inner intersect divided by 50 (which is the maximum total possible). This index can be tracked on a graph at periodic intervals.

​​Engaging the local church is an integral part of an ‘Empowered community’. After an initial assessment is conducted of the entire community, one starts working with the local church to help them determine their own spiritual health and ultimately the role they play in the community. Through being in relationship with the church, the strategy is to seek to build up and encourage the church to take hold of its inheritance as Christ’s bride. 

​Much like during the community needs assessment, the church conducts an initial spiritual assessment using the same participatory tool called the Ten Seed Technique. Each small circle represents one of the nine fruit of the spirit listed in Galatians 5:22. The black dots within each of the small circles represent the ten seeds used in the actual exercise. The seeds placed within the larger, colored circle represent to what extent each fruit of the spirit is perceived to be manifested in the lives of church members. The remaining seeds are placed outside of the larger circle and represent the difference between how much that particular fruit of the spirit is thought to be manifest, and to what extent it could be. In other words, the latter represents the gap between perceived reality and full potential. 

​The top bar graph on the right shows the perceived manifestation of each fruit of the spirit in the lives of church members in 2011 and then again in 2013. The bar graph on the bottom right depicts the change within the Value Change Index (VCI). The VCI uses the information presented in the first bar graph to determine an average  of to what extent that the fruit of the spirit is represented in the lives of church members. The equation is as follows: number of seeds overlapping in the large circle divided by total number of seeds. The VCI provides a quantitative way to track the spiritual growth of the churches and also the community per se. 

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2014-15, Dr. Ravi Jayakaran

​It was great to see my name mentioned in the Atlanta Business Chronicle's Who's Who - Top 100 Leaders who are guiding the future of Atlanta's Health-Care Industry. Feels good to be listed along with people like Dr. Sanjay Gupta who is one of my favourite health professionals.

In today’s world there is no shortage of technology for purifying water to make it safe for drinking. However, at the marginalized user end interface level, technology fails to have impact because of the low energy utilization in the area that makes it inappropriate for the area. Relief & Development agencies therefore have to continuously be in search of new, low cost appropriate technologies that can easily be transferred and adopted at the village in poor areas. This technology has to be cheap, require minimum technological capacities for maintenance, be easily adoptable by the poor and marginalized and be able to show dramatic results. One must therefore explored various options according to local contexts till it is possible to zero in on something specific like the ‘point-one-micron’ hollow fiber filter (sawyer) which meets all these criteria, and introduce them in the village development programs. One should also have a broad framework strategy similar to the food security assessment strategy, that is called the “A3U strategy” or the AAAU strategy. The AAAU, stands for the following:

• Availability of water (natural water points and sources/wells –open and bore/ etc.)
• Access to safe water (through filtration: BSF/Point-one-micron hollow fiber filters/etcetera) to ensure it is potable)
• Asset creation through surplus water (where safe water can be used to generate income like a business)
• Utilization of water (& safe water practices and behavior around it, including CLTS (Community Lead Total Sanitation)and ZOD(Zero Open Defecation)

​When starting in a new development area, one must start with exploring to see if water is available in the area that is free from contamination. Most communities already live around a water source such as a river, or pond or lake. These sources are often contaminated (with bacteria, protozoa, soil transmitted helminthes etcetera) and result in gastro intestinal problems. However, as long as there is no poisonous material causing contamination, this water can easily be filtered using the point one micron hollow filter (Sawyer®- see details at end of this blog). In some cases, especially resettled communities, there is no easy availability of water and villagers have to travel long distances to procure water, a task that often gets delegated to the women and teenage girls in the household. In such cases, it is good to look at either establishing a bore well in the area or rehabilitating one that is already there. Then one should explore other soil and water conservation techniques such as micro-water shed development and the construction of sand dams. Once Water becomes available, safe access to it and ensuring that it is safe becomes the next greatest concern. Where water is not extremely turbid or muddy, the BSF-Bio Sand Filter works very well, but in areas where there is muddy water with high contamination, the Point One Micron Water filter (Hollow fiber technology similar to the one used for Kidney Dialysis) is used. Several NGOs have had  very good response in using these filters in Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Honduras; to name a few. In one detailed study conducted in several parts of Ecuador, researchers found a 60-70% reduction in the disease burden, with a saving of close to 30-40 USD per month in medical expenses per household. Efforts are being made to explore options of how water filter users can also get into the business of selling  safe water so that those who have surplus water can use it to generate income and make ‘safe water’ an asset creating venture. A lot of contamination of water takes place around storage and utilization and this calls for training for behavior change. The CLTS (Community Lead Total Sanitation) program is complimentary to such activities to make it a successful WASH strategy to avoid Environmental Enteropathy.

​Important links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ4QFHIxpJA&sns=em (Kenya: introductions of hollow fiber water filters event)
http://vimeo.com/23852007 (Sanitized households)
http://vimeo.com/33557236 (Sawyer filters)
http://youtu.be/nHUcN1INUCo (TV interview regarding water Oklahoma)
http://vimeo.com/43945508 (Potential Macro water supply project)
http://youtu.be/RabGSlPermY (water hero- Change agents making a difference)

 The W3P7 Strategy for Holistic Development shows how to integrate the empirical and spiritual dimensions of development for demonstrating and proclaiming the good news. 
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This presentation by Dr. Ravi Jayakaran was made at the Lausanne World Congress in Cape Town in 2010.