FOCI’s work is in the state of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India.  Andhra Pradesh, India’s fifth-largest state, has 76 million people in an area of 27,000 square kilometers.  The people of Andhra Pradesh speak predominantly Telugu and Hindi, with Urdu and English also spoken.  Andhra Pradesh has a literacy rate of about 60%, meaning that over 30,000,000 people are unable to read or write.

Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, has changed dramatically during the past decade, due largely to the computer/information  technology industry and its vastly-expanding presence in this city.

Not everyone in the city has benefited from this industrial revolution, however.  For those who live in the slums and have little or no education, life has remained either unchanged or has worsened as more and more people move into the city from agricultural areas seeking day jobs as unskilled laborers.  But Andhra Pradesh remains a largely agricultural state, and 70% of the state’s population are farmers and farm laborers who live in villages scattered throughout the countryside.  The IT revolution in Hyderabad is a far cry from the conditions in villages such as Khammam, where there is little or no medical care, widespread malnutrition and often a lack of safe drinking water.

FOCI’s activities outside of Hyderabad are located in the Khammam district, two hundred kilometers to the east of Hyderabad.  Khammam is a rural district of about 2.5 million people, with mostly agricultural workers, manual laborers and small shopkeepers  who exist on incomes averaging $200 per year – well below the poverty rate.