1. Introduction
Magic Bus nurtures and cultivates protective factors in children at risk through an experiential platform (so that the experience speaks for itself) and a social and emotional learning curriculum, that creates high impact with novelty, (a change of environment, being in an outdoors setting) with new role models (having mentors as guides from their day to day lives –highly trained Magic Bus mentors who are responsible members of the community and who are from diverse fields and backgrounds) with positive recreation and fun (that will get the children engaged and attracted to the learning and have a mood altering effect) and with opportunities to discover and build talent (sports, art, craft and theatre activities).
Magic Bus is a non-profit organization based in Mumbai that provides marginalized children the opportunity to participate in residential camping trips, a full fledged sports program and one day excursions. Activities include outdoor exploration trips, various team sports, trust building exercises and drama sessions, all of which are the chosen platform of learning for the various modules. Through Magic Bus’s programs, children strengthen their interpersonal skills, improve their self esteem, and are taught ways to constructively deal with the many challenges they face.
Working in collaboration with 15 well-established NGO partners in Mumbai, Magic Bus programmes serve not only as a supplement to the education these NGO partners provide, but also as an incentive to sustain children’s participation within NGO centres. It also relieves pressure off NGO partners who do not have adequate resources to provide recreational activities. Overall, Magic Bus promotes and protects the right of children to healthy recreation and sport.
Magic Bus is seeking funds to cover their expenses needed to successfully execute their various modules which use residential trips, day trips, and their sports programme Given below is a three year business plan.
2. Mission and Objectives
A. Mission
To offer opportunities to children living under difficult circumstances (socially, psychologically and economically) to strengthen them with positive attitude, stimulating experiences, fresh perspectives and information, and emotional competence. This will greatly help them make a better life choice in their career, relationships, habits, and in dealing with psychological, sociological and economic stresses. Magic Bus does provide these children with the tools to be able to recognize their self worth and integrate successfully back as a valuable member of society.
Recognizing that Magic Bus is unique both in its methodology and education focus our vision is to create a sustainable and scalable model that is replicable in other cities and possibly countries.
B. Objectives
1. Increase the impact of the Magic Bus programs through the child development modules and enable scalability
1.1. More effective use of the existing Magic Bus Infrastructure
The modules will be used on residential trips, day trips and sports programmes that are being conducted with the existing Magic Bus Infrastructure. These modules will integrate the various Magic Bus programmes. The residential will be the initial principal learning platforms with follow -up sessions in a specific issue during the sports sessions. All the activities will focus on each child’s self-development. Programs will be designed to maximize the time available for learning. Magic Bus will have trained education counselors designing the curriculum, which principally addresses the following key issues
• Emotional education
• Value education
• Health education
The project will focus on 1,500 less privileged children to participate in our new modules and a further 3,500 on our recreation and sports activities, selected from our existing NGO network and will provide a blueprint for replication.
For the purpose of this project Magic Bus has committed funds form Kadhoori Charitable Foundation to build its own residential centre.
1.2. Creating a scalable programme reaching out to more children
Magic Bus will create a working model that can be migrated to other cities in India and even abroad. This will involve a documented quality tested curriculum, a broad funding base and a solid human resource base. By November 2003 Magic Bus in Mumbai will have reached its maximum target audience of approximately 3,500 children per annum. After completion of this project over the period of one year we will use the recommendations to move to other cities in a more effective and efficient manner.
1.3. Use Magic Bus for higher child involvement in existing NGO’s
The Magic Bus works with children’s organizations in Mumbai involved with street and slum children. A key aim of the project is to use the various Magic Bus activities as incentives to the children in each organization to become more interactive with the opportunities presented to them. Each of the participating organizations presents their selection criteria for their children. This involves monitoring individual children’s performance in areas such as greater attendance in school, an increase in overnight stays in hostels, incentives to join hostels and improved literacy. Magic Bus staff will monitor the achievements of each incentive scheme.
1.4. Provide neutral forum for children’s organisations to interact
Children and staff from two organizations will participate in each activity. There will be an allocated time and agenda for staff to utilize this platform most effectively to discuss ideas and comparison of curriculums, learning methods and fund-raising ideas. Also, the group activities taught to the children can be used effectively by the NGO’s, in their centers in the city for continued impact.
2. Increase involvement and awareness of corporations
Along with the interaction between children of different NGOs, the sponsoring corporation will be also exposed to the staff and children of the two participating NGOs in every activity. Apart from sponsorship of the cost of the activities, the organization will be required to send 4 members of their staff as volunteers for each residential programme and 2 members on other activities. Magic Bus aims that through this unique corporate volunteering programme, it is able to map its database of corporate volunteers to respective NGOs in each city for sustained volunteering and long lasting relationships between different sections of society.
3. Organization History
Matthew Spacie founded Magic Bus in January 1999 with the goal of giving children a break away from their slum and pavement life by learning more about themselves and their environment. He approached Akanksha, a children’s NGO in Mumbai educating 1,400 children, to take their children on these monthly outdoor journeys. Over a two-year period Matthew organized 24 trips taking over 400 children to the hills of Matheran, beaches of Ali Baug, and local water parks. During this time, Magic Bus was functioning under the Akanksha umbrella and served as their recreational arm.
In July 2000 Matthew had realized the huge potential of the Magic Bus program and partnered with Impact Partners, a venture philanthropy fund, to turn it into a sustainable organization. Soon after it was decided that Magic Bus should not only branch out and become a separate organization, but also increase the number of NGOs participating within the program, involve the corporate sector for sponsorship and attendance of trips, and streamline the sports initiative.
During these last two years, Magic Bus has been successful in transforming itself from an individual’s idea into a sustainable organization. With Rinku Varde joining as Office Manager and Alka Shesha as Programmme Director, the program has flourished reaching out to over 3,000 children.
The sports program has also changed drastically over the last few years. It started with coaching of inner city youth between the ages of 16-22 years, three times a week, for rugby. Through regular practices, they were taught discipline, stamina, and the importance of respecting team members, in a healthy competitive environment. For many children burdened by the demands of poverty, it also provided an outlet to express themselves and release their pent up energy. Unprecedented success of the teams’ performance both on the field winning in national and international tournaments and off the field with Magic Bus placing 23 youth in full time jobs, three joining the Magic Bus core team paved the way to expand the program to partner NGOs.
4. Beneficiaries
The project will impact following groups:
A. The Children
Magic Bus provides sport and recreation opportunities for less privileged children. Magic Bus’ target group is the marginalized children aged 8 yrs to 18 yrs, children at risk who are caught in the cycle of poverty and socio-cultural deprivation. Magic Bus works in collaboration with 15 well established NGO partners in Mumbai, using their programmes as the strategic entry points for providing play and recreation services for children. Many of these NGOs provide basic education for children. Magic Bus will also relieve pressures on partner organizations that may not have the adequate resources to meet children’s overwhelming demands for and enthusiastic responses to play and recreational activities. Therefore, Magic Bus aims to promote and protect the right of all children to healthy recreation and basic education.
Magic Bus has contacted various NGOs, funding agencies, and umbrella organizations to enroll children into the program. The Magic Bus team had one-on-one meetings with over 15 NGOs at their respective centers and surveyed its activities, beneficiary base, recreational budget, and interest in enrolling their children into the program.
B. The Corporate World
We have created a funding model that provides tremendous value addition to our corporate partners. The project will create a high impact, integrative approach with our corporate partners working specifically with employees and Public Affairs divisions for communicating values and good corporate responsibility.
Magic Bus firmly believes that to be effective, any partnership needs to be treated in a businesslike way – like any other form of investment. We look beyond ad hoc philanthropic donations to more strategic and mainstream involvement to create a win-win scenario for both our organisation and each of our corporate sponsors. This is achieved by good processes that include, looking at existing organisation values, communication strategy, resource allocation and motivating key employees.
I. Integrating Company Values
Outstanding success over the long term has been achieved by companies that have had more than just bottom line objectives – clear values and purpose. By integrating our mutual objectives we can help ensure that these values are widely shared and recognised in its key stakeholders – employees, suppliers, investors, customers and the community thereby contributing to reputation and success.
Magic Bus involves employees in order to secure their understanding of what success looks like and their part in achieving it. In turn they will move on to inspire the entire organisation (including major suppliers and other key partners).
We recommend that our corporate partners use Magic Bus as one channel to communicate values to:
• Meet the information needs of interested audiences including employees investors and the local community
• Demonstrate seriousness of intent with regard to social responsibility
• Enhance business reputation
• Reward staff for involvement in, and support for, their social and environmental responsibility programmes.
II. Integrating the corporate partner Staff
We believe that both companies and communities will benefit most in the long run when corporate community programmes and human resource objectives are integrated more closely and focus more sharply on meeting the strategic goals of the business. Employees are more likely to feel happy and be more loyal and therefore be more productive in a company, which is well regarded by the community.
The Magic Bus community programme is an excellent tool for training and developing staff – and is often a more cost effective route than many alternatives. We will be gauging feedback from corporations who have participated in Magic Bus programmes to monitor gains in teamwork, communication skills, decision-making and leadership.
Each Magic Bus residential trip requires a minimum of four team leaders from the corporate partner. Each is responsible for approximately fifteen children for three days. The Team Leaders will be expected to motivate the children through a range of activities including raft-building, rock climbing, team building exercises, art and theatre.
5. Products
A. Mentorship Programme
Magic Bus’ mentorship program uses the outdoors as its classrooms. It will provide experiential learning using the outdoors. We will facilitate an integrated learning environment through structured modules comprising outdoor activities, and games. Our activities will be age specific and broadly defined under the following groups:
8 – 9 Years
Explorers
Activities will relate to self-expression and team building.
Team: 2 Programme Mentors, 3 Youth Mentors, Volunteers
Magic Bus entitlements per year: 6 day trips and weekly games,art and theatre.s
10 to 14 Years
Challengers
Activities will focus on self-exploration of emotions and self-definition of values.
Team : 2 Programme Mentors, 3 Youth Mentors, Volunteers
Magic Bus entitlements per year: 2 three-day overnight camps and 6 day-trips and weekly sports.
15 to 18 yrs
Voyagers
Activities will focus on building and asserting life and skills. Employment Programme
Team : 2 Programme Mentors, 3 Youth Mentors, Volunteers
Magic Bus entitlements per year: An eight-day overnight residential camp and a 2-day follow up, weekly sports
B. Sports Excellence Programme
The Magic Bus sports programme has been a creative approach for reaching inner city children living in the slums and on the streets. As an initial step, rugby has been trialled to test the viability of the programme, with unprecedented response and success. Magic Bus has successfully been coaching rugby to children between the ages of 16-22 years, six times a week, for the past two years. The game of rugby has been an important channel to promote children’s physical, emotional, social and cognitive development. Through regular practices, they are taught discipline, stamina, and the importance of respecting team members, in a healthy competitive environment. For many children burdened by the demands of poverty, it also provides an outlet to express themselves and release their pent up energy. In addition, the programme has been recognized by the International Rugby Board and the players have competed in national and state-wide tournaments. Beyond the actual training of rugby, Magic Bus has also achieved considerable success off the field as well with over 50% of the boys being employed as a result of Magic Bus programmes
Sports Excellence programme will Focus on building various sports teams (hockey, football, basket ball comprising Magic Bus children who show above average caliber in the sport of their interest. Teams will be professionally trained and will represent Magic Bus in the tournaments held at national and international level
6. Programme Partners
The Magic Bus team had one-on-one meetings with over 15 NGOs at their respective centers and surveyed its activities, beneficiary base, recreational budget, and interest in enrolling their children into the program. We have selected the following 15 NGO’s.
ORGANISATION NAME MAIN FEATURES NO. OF KIDS
AKANKSHA FOUNDATION Education for slum children 1400
MOBILE CRECHES Education/Creches for children 1400
of labour at construction sites
SHELTER DON BOSCO Open House Shelter for street boys 250
CORP Creches/Day Care centres and 150
Non Formal education for slum
children and shelter for street children
YUVA Shelters and basic amenities 1200
for street children
PREM SAGAR Shelters for street and slum children 1000
DOORSTEP SCHOOLS Education for slum children 2000
APNALAYA Basic education and recreation 250
centres in slum communties
PRATHAM Education to slum children 11000
SHRADDHA CENTRE Day care home for street children 110
BAL ANAND TRUST Community centre/school 120
Includes balwadi, library, arts
and culture education.
HAMARA CLUB Resources for street boys/ girls 480
SUNBEAM ducation/Creches for children 400
of labour at construction sites
VIMLA VIKAS KENDRA Education & Training for pavement children 300
SAATHI Group homes, non formal education for youth 150
7. Activities and their expected outcome
All Magic Bus activities are designed to provide challenges, build self-esteem, develop leadership and social skills, stimulate sharing and trust, encourage openness and cooperation, and create a sense of community. The focus is on
• Emotional education
• Value education
• Health education
Each of our programmes is linked by means of teaching specific value education in a “non-classroom” environment.
Magic Bus makes a sincere effort to create awareness through an overall self-development program. On each trip to centre, we address the five aspects of a child’s personality:
A. Physical - Posture awareness, hygiene, greater fitness, nutrition
Activities that achieve this
i. Yoga, fitness exercise, sport activities, obstacles
ii. The three magic bus rules - No spitting, No foul language and No littering
iii. Discussion on food habits
B. Mental - A creative and problem solving approach to their life, and to improve their concentration
Activities to achieve this:
iv. Creativity games - Giving children a common object and asking them to think of new uses for it, making a craft object or fancy dress with available material from nature and waste material. Through these games the learning experiences that take place are following
1. Each one is self sufficient,
2. There are many facets to a situation or a person, so it broadens one’s horizons
3. Each one has the ability to change whatever comes in one’s way to one’s advantage.
v. Obstacle race – A discussion on what obstacles prevent us in life from reaching our goals, generating responses such as one’s own fears, laziness, addictions or simply oneself.
C. Emotional - Developing positive attitude, managing one’s emotions – fears, sorrows, anger and anxiety. Developing a sense of self esteem and self worth, freedom with a sense of responsibility and self discipline
Activities to achieve this:
i. Positive Environment - Supportive and encouraging atmosphere where volunteers and staff are oriented on the positive attitude towards children. The structure of the groups formed is without hierarchy, where both the adults and the children in the group function simply as group members.
ii. Sense of Responsibility - A child is often made the leader to enable the children to understand this role as a responsibility and not as a status symbol. A value that is promoted is that ‘mistakes can happen and this is okay so long as one admits responsibility to it and makes amends’. The volunteers and staff are role models who maintain this attitude in their behaviors in the camps.
iii. Self awareness - Activities making children think about themselves, their habits, character and goals. Talent show, rock-climbing, rappelling, swimming, sports activities as new skills are learnt and thus this enhances self-esteem, and the management of fear.Theatre workshop helps loosens inhibitions and understands feelings and roles. Periodic sharing after every activity helps an awareness and understanding of one’s feelings and oneself.
D. Social - Civic sense, meaningful relationships, trust, ability to say ‘no’, handling peer pressure, team spirit.
Activities to achieve this:
i. Team sports - Throw ball, handball, football, formation and structure of groups, three magic bus rules, periodic sharing after activities of feelings, and opinions, interaction of children from two different NGOs (this enables sharing and understanding between children from different backgrounds) Tasks assigned to groups to achieve such as making of a raft by each group, simulation games to enhance team spirit.
ii. Point system – This system encourages every child to keep themselves and their own spaces neat and clean and that is given recognition at the end of every session or activity. An open atmosphere is created where children are made to feel free to come and talk about any habits, or feelings even if negative.
iii. Introspection - Introspection of causes and consequences of behaviors is encouraged to enable children to take their own decisions to make right choices, and say ‘no’ to peer pressure.
E. Spiritual - Values, respect for nature, a sense of purpose
Activities to achieve this:
i. Nature walks – Nature walks, often in complete silence, listening to the sounds of nature.
ii. Role Models - Discussions and periodic sharing, role models of volunteers and staff
iii. Three Magic Bus rules – No spitting, No foul language and No littering
iv. Games - Fair play in games and recreation.
v. Talent and competence - Development in a variety of skills
vi. Meditation - Dhyan and yoga.
Where Magic Bus fits in
All Magic Bus activities are designed to provide challenges, build self-esteem, develop leadership and social skills, stimulate sharing and trust, encourage openness and cooperation, and create a sense of community.
8. Social Return on Investment
A. Launch of New Evaluation 2003
Magic Bus is researching and consulting with other nationally recognized organizations/ social and emotional learning programs (some conducted by the psychology departments of international universities) regarding their methods of benchmarking the impact on the children they serve. We are considering the manner by which to study our impact in terms of appropriateness of checklists or rating scales for observed behaviors or semantic differential scales or simple projective tests and rating of responses to situations similar to what a child would encounter.
Pre-test, post-test rating or rating of children having Magic Bus experiences versus comparisons with control groups would be considered, which would determine changes in daily routine in terms of type of recreation chosen, participation in sports activities and what difference this makes to them, outdoor experiences the child has had and exposure to people from varied walks of life.
Magic Bus will plan and select a sample of children for testing of impact through planned psychometric testing that can then be generalized to specific segments we serve. The sample will be representative of the different backgrounds from which they come to Magic Bus and number of interventions they have had with Magic Bus. i.e. slum children, street Children, remand children, sex worker’s children etc. We envisage this more intensive testing to be carried out in one in every 50 children, in bi-annual cycles.
B. Follow-up on Magic Bus Programmes
Recognizing the importance of building relationships with each of the individual children, Magic Bus has moved away from delivering a mass-based curriculum to a more intensive programme with regular interaction and follow-up with each child.
The module education is designed specifically to the child’s needs and requirements and a substantial resource is used per child to ensure adequate attention. Each group of children entering a module programme has been audited by a group of highly skilled individuals and the appropriate curriculum is mapped-out over the course of up to two years per module. Over the course of this period Magic Bus allocates a number of residential programmes, a weekly “sports” programme and regular day trips. Each groups’ respective mentor will be present on all activities at all times so that there is consistency in the learning and assessment process. During the weekly sports sessions, as discussed the mentors will be using approximately one hour to engage the children in discussion and role-playing which is used for learning the specific skill or issue before it is reinforced through the sports and games played during the following hour. In this way the follow-up is a continually process.
Entry level for Magic Bus starts at eight years old and progresses until the age of sixteen and each of the modules are designed to be relevant to the child and adolescents needs. Magic Bus is increasingly looking at organizations that can provide younger children who will remain part of our programmes until they find employment or graduate to higher education.
1. Describe the anticipated long-term effect of the project on the community served.
Magic Bus envisages strengthening the following outcomes in partnership with the partner NGO, who also envisage the similar outcomes from their own interventions.
Management of anger
Aggressiveness
Self-esteem
Self-Efficacy attitudes
Attendance with center activities
Positive behaviours in the classroom – attending, following instructions, co-operativenss and helpfulness, not using foul language.
Creativity and problem-solving skills; Negotiating conflict situations
Anxiety and mood
Motivation
Pro-social behaviours versus anti-social behaviours
Use of time in talent building activities per week.
Changes in recreation habits.
Attitudes of optimism and hope
Gender attitudes of equal worth and value for girls and boys
Attitudes to alcohol, cigarettes and drugs
Soft skills, discipline and realistic aspirations required for retention of jobs
Ability to withstand peer pressure, skill of saying ‘no’
Awareness of health related issues relevant to their lives
Benefits perceived by the children in terms of new learning and satisfaction with the experiences.
Indirect impact on School performance (academics) through added motivation and discipline
Participation in extra-curricular activities at school and at the centers.
Impact on any of these areas would be attributed to both the interventions of Magic Bus and the Partner NGOs
C. The Employment Programme
With its substantial corporate linkages through the sponsorship programmes Magic Bus is starting to create a competence in teaching the skills required to gain and retain employment as well as a data-base of companies that are prepared to employ children from the Magic Bus system. We currently have one member of staff allocated to running this programme. These jobs are all in the blue-collar sector and the emphasis is on the individual having good core values, a positive attitude and a willingness to work hard, all attributes the Magic Bus programme advocates. We will audit each job in terms of conditions and pay. We will also devise a follow-up mechanism for such children gaining employment through this programme. A number of leading corporations including Orange, Masteq and Cox & Kings have agreed to employ some of the children. Magic Bus is aiming at approximately 100 jobs per annum by 2004.
D. Estimated number of project beneficiaries
The following estimates are for the 2003.
Number of children on modules 1,500
Number of children participating in regular, sports, camps and day trips 3,500
Number of jobs generated for Magic Bus’ Rugby Boys 20
Number of volunteers participating 250
9. Financials
Current source of funds
We have created four separate revenue streams for Magic Bus. Our funding strategy is initially broad based but increasingly looking at internal mechanisms of funding to provide a sustainable model over time. During the early stages of the organization a large proportion of the initial funding has been given by Impact partners to fund both start-up and administration costs
1. Private Donations.
Highlights
• Section 25 Company approval has meant Tax Exemption for all donations
• Networking through Volunteer base has seen a incremental increase in funds received
• In 2002, Channels in UK and USA are being established to raise money through contacts of the Directors, each nationalities these countries.
Since its inauguration, Magic Bus has always had a strong emphasis on networking personal contacts to raise funds. Approximately 33% of funds raised in 2002 have been from private donations.
In September 2002, Magic Bus launched a fund raising programme in both London. Individuals based in London and who have worked with Magic Bus in India established the funding channels and created a funding programme. It is expected that approximately 30% of our private donations will come from such centres by 2004
2. Corporate Sponsorships
Highlights
• In our first year of operation 20% of costs have been covered by corporate sponsorships.
• By 2004, the project is estimated to generate 75% of all our activities costs and 40% of our administration is sponsored by corporations
It is significant that during a period of tremendous corporate downturn Magic Bus has had significant success with funds received from corporations. Historically in India organizations that work with leisure, fun and sport are low priority investments and Magic Bus has been able to create a paradigm shift in attitudes of how these elements can be used as a crucial part of child development. This is reflected in that nearly one third of the corporate employees who have experienced a trip will return as a volunteer.
3. Impact Partners
Highlights
Impact Partners has committed a two-year seed fund to Magic Bus to specifically cover all administration costs.
Magic Bus has exceeded its return on investment established, using less than its budgeted funds.
Impact Partners are a public service venture capital firm who offer professional services and funds to visionary individuals and organizations. They build portfolio organizations that are sector leaders, incubate start –ups and provide the infrastructure to implement innovative ideas that advocate positive and systematic social change. They have committed to fund $ 65,000 for our administration costs and some programme costs over a two-year period. We are currently negotiating their involvement in 2003 which will be in the region of $ 30,000 or 50% of the administration cost and is conditional of a matching fund from other sources.
