FAQ/01

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the work philosophy and revenue model of ‘Prayas’

Question No. 1. What is the organization structure ‘Prayas’.

Answer: Prayas Vyaktitva Vikas Seva (P) Ltd. (hereafter referred as ‘Prayas’), is a Private Limited Company incorporated under Indian Company Act. 1956.  It has a Board of Director (BOD) headed by Managing Director. Most of its associates are part time activity partners and they are not employee of this company. This facilitates reduction in the cost of various services being extended by ‘Prayas’.

Question no. 2. What are major activities of ‘Prayas’?

Answer: ‘Prayas’ is engaged in following activities related to personality development.

1. Conducting free Personality Awareness Webinars (PAWs) to create awareness in the participants about importance of understanding and developing one’s personality in success in life.
2. Personality Testing, Profiling and Counseling Services (PPCS) to individuals through digital modes.
3. Conducting Prayas Foundation Courses (PFCs) for various groups of participants through its VVMs through digital modes to bring fundamental changes in their thinking and behavior to enable them to create a future of their liking by developing an internally driven, proactive and self-enabling personality.
4. Mentoring Programs for customers including entrepreneurs and businessmen for improving their personal effectiveness in managing their current works and ventures/business.
5. Publications and marketing of books and other literature related to personality/skill development costing mostly of e-books.
6. Facilitate Action Research (AR) in the areas of personality profiling, counseling and development, behavioral changes and happiness.

Question No. 3: Is ‘Prayas’ a commercial or social service organization?

Answer: ‘Prayas’ is a company which works on the principle of ‘No Profit No Loss’ by combining the principle of cross-subsidization considering the acute economic disparities prevalent in India. It plans its activities by targeting pre-tax profit of only 10% just to ensure that the company does not incur loss due to errors committed in its business decisions. This is considered essential to ensure sustainability of its activities and protection of its managerial and administrative autonomy.  Therefore although ’Prayas’ is technically a commercial company in nature but it is a social service organization in spirit. It ensures that prices being charged for a-particular service being availed by a particular customer is affordable by him/her considering his/her ability to pay and nobody is denied of its service irrespective of his or her ability to pay. It reserves some seats in its Prayas Foundation Courses for candidates of economically weaker sections of society who pay its fee according to their capacity to pay i.e. subsidized fee.

Question No. 4. Why it is essential for an individual to understand special characteristics of his/her personality?

Answer: Each individual is unique and quite different in his/her thinking, nature, capabilities, level of intelligence, interests and aptitude due to genetic and environmental factors and for success in his/her life, he/she should undertake activities which are in tune with his/her personality features and that too only after ascertaining and removing existing personality deficiencies. If an individual goes for studies and jobs or occupations which are contrary to his/her aptitude and nature, he/she will not be happy and peaceful and may be victim of depression and life style ailments. Therefore it is essential to understand various dimensions of one’s current personality in a scientific manner and then opt for appropriate personality development initiative.

Question No. 5: What is process of determining one’s personality?

Answer: There are number of time tested psychological instruments which are applied on an individual and his/her personality profile is prepared after analyzing the responses to various questions included in such instruments.  The honesty in giving response to various question is absolutely essential to facilitate accuracy in the personality profile constructed based on the responses recorded during the test.

Question No. 6: What is minimum age of child or student to get his/her personality profiled?

Answer: The minimum age is 13 year or student who is studying in 8^th standard or above.

Question No 7: Why personality profiling is not done or Prayas Foundation course is not conducted for students of children who are studying in classes below 8^th standard?

Answer: We must understand and note that the personality of an individual starts emerging quite early in his/her life and continues to change or develop in meaningful ways throughout his/her lifespan. According to Paget’s’ theory of cognitive development, there are four stages of personality development which correspond with the age of child. They are sensorimoter (up to 2 years), pre-operational (2-7 years), concrete operational (7-11 Years) and formal operational (11 years to 15 years). Therefore up to 11 years of age the personality of an individual is in fluid stage and takes definite shape only after 11 years and this process goes up to 15 years. However as the result of high school (10^th Standard) is very important for motivation for further studies and a child of 15 years is likely to pass 10^th standards, it has been decided to permit admission of a student of 13 years to the Prayas Foundation Course so that he or she get about two years time after completion of the course to prepare well for the examination of 10^th class with a proactive personality. A child of 13 years age may be studying in 8th^th or has passed 8th^th standard as admission for formal education of 1^st standard for a child is recommended only at the age of 5 years. Therefore neither the personality profiling is done nor is ‘Prayas Foundation Course’ conducted for students or children who are studying in classes below 8^th standard.

Question no. 8: What is current charge of personality testing, profiling and counseling services?

Answer: The current charge for this service is only Rs. 750 (Seven Thousands Fifty only). It is done through a mobile App and such candidate should have smart phone with internet facility and should possess email ID.

Question no. 9: What is normal duration of personality tests?

Answer:  Total duration of comprehensive test procedure is about 2 hours but it is spread over two days for about one hour each day depending upon time available with the subject individual. This is done to avoid fatigue and boredom as well as honesty in recording the answer.  It is done undertaken digitally.

Question No 10: What is scope of counseling conducted after preparation of the profile?

Answer: Our counselor briefs the individual concerned as well as his/her parents through video chat about strengths and weaknesses of his/her personality and give them some suggestions about the changes which they should bring in their behavior towards each other.  The duration of counseling session could vary between 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Counseling is done first separately for concerned individual and his/her parents and then jointly. It is an informal and two way process.

Question No. 11: What is the concept of time donation and how it works?

Answer:  There are individuals who are engaged in some work either as an employee or self employed or just looking after their family and have some stable source of income but they may also have some spare time with them after meeting their day to day requirement of self, family and the job or occupation or profession. Similarly there are individuals who have now retired from their job or have stopped working full time and have stable source of regular income from pension or interest or dividend from investment made from past income and have spare time.  At present, such individuals may be just passing this spare time somehow. Some of such individuals, having spare time, are kind hearted and are interested in social welfare activities. ‘Prayas’ invites all such kind hearted individuals having spare time to donate this spare time for managing various activities related to personality profiling and development being conducted by  ‘Prayas’ and obtain moderate income through the mechanism of income sharing. Thus they would be able to utilize their spare time fruitfully for this socially very useful activity and earn social prestige along with earning some additional income for this. Thus it may be seen that donation of spare time is not totally free but in exchange for a moderate income. This concept of time donation enables ‘Prayas’ in minimizing the cost of its services to various groups of customers and charge them according to their capacity to pay. Thus ‘Prayas’ provide such kind hearted individuals interested in social work a platform to use their spare time fruitfully and also earn moderate income and social respect in this process as a self-enterprise. This work is done by them as a self-enterprise. This (spare time with individual or institutions) is a unique resource which, if used properly, can make a lot of difference to life of people and this world.

Question No 12: How much minimum or maximum time one can donate to ‘Prayas’?

Answer: Any individual, who has minimum 90 minutes spare time on each day except Sunday, can donate it to “Prayas”. However there is no limit of maximum time one can donate. His/her income is likely to increase or decrease based on the time being devoted by him/her and actual result of this effort in terms of gross income to ‘Prayas’.

Question No: 13: Once registered, can an activity partner work lifelong or renewal of registration will be required?

Answer: Once registered an individual can work as activity partner for his life provided he is not debarred from working as Activity Partner on account of any misconduct like frauds etc. In case he/she is able to prove that the allegation of fraud or misconduct is not true then he/she can be permitted to work again as Activity Partner after re-registration but free of cost. The decision of ‘Prayas’ will be final in this regard.

Question No 14: Why  ‘Prayas’ provide part-time work opportunities in form of activity partnership on income sharing basis in place of full time work on monthly salary basis?

Answer:  The current charges/prices of personality testing, profiling and counseling services being extended by organizations, mostly located in metro or second tier cities of India, are very high. Since personality deficiencies are developing very fast in all individuals both in urban and rural areas and the economic condition of most of families is not good, this service is required to be customized and made available at affordable rates. Such reduction in service charge is not feasible if full time employees are utilized on full salary basis for this service.

The only option available for desired reduction in charges of various cervices is to identify individuals who are having income which is sufficient to meet the minimum requirement of their families but they have some spare time, which they are willing to donate to ‘Prayas’ in exchange of nominal income through income sharing. Since our activities are very noble in nature, activity partners are able to gain social prestige.

A normal social welfare organization is dependent upon financial donations and its scale of operations depends upon the annual donation which it is able to arrange. All expenses including salary and other administrative and office expenses are met from such donations. ‘Prayas’ has changed this concept of ‘financial donation’ to ‘time donation’ for an income which is very nominal. This leads to lower cost of the service being rendered by ‘Prayas’. Therefore ‘Prayas’ provide part-time work opportunities in form of activity partnership on income sharing basis in place of full time work on monthly salary basis.

Question No 15: The service charge of Rs. 750 (Rs. Seven Hundred Fifty only) for Personality Testing, Profiling and Counseling Service and Rs. 5000 (Five thousands) for six monthly ‘Prayas Foundation Course’ is still very high for poor families and individuals. Can it not be reduced further?

Answer:  Any non-donation based organization has to be financially viable if it has to sustain its activities on long-term basis in the interest of the society. The current prices fixed by ‘Prayas’ are bare minimum to sustain its organization and has been determined on ‘No Profit No Loss’ basis. Therefore there is no scope for any further reduction in these prices. Of course out of maximum 15 (fifteen) participants permitted in one batch of Prayas foundation course 5 (Five) seats are reserved for candidates of economically weaker sections and appropriate reduction is done in the fee taking into account their ability to pay. Similar facility is available for personality testing and profiling.

Question No 16: What is income sharing formula applicable to Activity Partners?

Answer: A VVM who conducts Prayas Foundation Course is allowed a share of 70% of the course fee and 20% of the personality testing, profiling and counseling fee being generated from customers motivated by him/her. Experts are paid 90% of the fee received by Prayas. It may be seen from above that bulk of the service charges recovered by ‘Prayas’ gets shared amongst Activity Partners and a very small portion is retained by ‘Prayas’ for meeting its operational, management and other expenses.

Question No 17: Are particular geographical jurisdictions relevant for activity partners?

Answer: As our services are extended digitally, geographic jurisdiction is not relevant.

Question No. 18: Which program of ‘Prayas is most important?

Answer: ‘Prayas Foundation Course’ is most important and generic personality development program which includes personality profiling and planned development initiative and is therefore is an integrated personality identification and development program which brings paradigm shift in the thinking and behavior of participants. Bringing change in the thinking and behavior of an individual is the most challenging task and as such PFC, which facilitates it, is the flagship program of ‘Prayas’.

Question No 19: What is purpose of Prayas Foundation Course?

Answer: This program aims at developing an internally driven, proactive and self-motivating personality in participants to enable them to face all challenges of their life successfully with happiness and peace. This program does not restricts entry of applicants on the basis of their economic condition as its charges are fixed on twin principles of ‘No profit No Loss’ and Cross-subsidization’.