Project Week

Overview

This page lists projects that MUWCI students attend during their CI (Community Interaction) Project Week, which usually takes place in October of their first year. Many students choose to return to work with these organizations during later project weeks, although many use those times to take a break from the hectic pace of life on campus.

Projects 2006

Tribal Health Initiative/Thulir, Sittilingi, Tamil Nadu
thulir.org

The Tribal Health Initiative is an NGO that has worked for more than 10 years to create awareness of basic health needs and provide health care to the tribal people of the Sittilingi valley. One of their more recent initiatives started by two former architects about 4 years ago is Thulir. Named after a Tamil word meaning "a tender shoot," it is an education program for the adivasi (tribal) children and young adults in the Sittilingi area to supplement their education, raise confidence in their abilities to learn, and ultimately empower them to improve their lives. The Thulir members work with more than 30 students who come voluntarily during evenings and weekends to get help in areas such as languages, mathematics, computers, arts and environmental education.

Students who participate in this project week can expect to experience fully the life at an NGO in rural south India and understand first-hand the joys and frustrations the members face. We will be camping out near the house of the family who runs the NGO and participating in the work they do there. This would include interacting with local students through games and short lessons, learning about the environment of the area, exchanging ideas with the members of Thulir, and possibly spending time with health care workers.

Students who are interested in this project week should remember that it is in an isolated rural area. This means that students would need to practice cultural sensitivity in their interactions with each other and the local people, and that there will be little opportunity to participate in tourist-type activities.

Child Survival of India, New Delhi
www.childsurvivalindia.org

Child Survival of India is a voluntary organisation based in the national capital New Delhi and dedicated to the spread of awareness of key health and social issues among the capital's migrant workers and their families, thus empowering them to overcome the problems they face. CSI's activities seek to promote among its target communities knowledge of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, the need for children's education, women's emancipation, proper nutrition and medical care. During project week a group of ten students and a teacher will visit CSI's centre in a village twenty kilometres north of Delhi and eight kilometres from the industrial township of Narela . They will be shown all the activities CSI is currently engaged in .Following this initial exposure every student will be allowed to select one activity in which he or she could get involved over two or three days. Project participants will live in the village with village families and should be willing to face the inconveniences of living in rural India . It is hoped that this project will give participants a first hand knowledge of the dynamics of a voluntary organisation and the experience of meeting and living with people of India's rural population. A visit to the well known historical and other tourist destinations of India's capital city will be included in the itinerary.

Sirsi, Karnataka
www.kalpavriksh.org

This Project Week will involve active participation with an NGO in their efforts to get communities involved with biodiversity conservation. The effort facilitated by Kalpavriksh near the town of Sirsi in northern Karnataka is an innovative experiment in getting ordinary people involved with protecting biodiversity. This community programme is in the forests of the Western Ghats in Karnataka. We will be staying in village homes, participating in seed collections and other activities, getting to know the local community and how they live (including the rich local cuisine!), interacting with environmentalists and ecologists, and hiking into the heart of the forest. MUWCI students have been to Kalpraviksh before, and always enjoyed the experience tremendously.

SOS Children's Village, Aluva, Kerala
www.soscvindia.org

SOS Children's Villages are a large international NGO that seeks to create family and opportunities for children in need; in India, SOS CV has 39 sites. This project week will travel to the SOS CV near Cochin, Kerala, to work with some of the nearly 200 children in the village. As this is such a large home, the best way to work with the SOS students is probably best left open to the MUWCI students on this trip, but we can introduce the SOS children to some of the various international cultural aspects present at MUWCI, help the children with their school duties, and generally contribute where necessary to the daily routine. Students who go on this trip will no doubt learn a great deal about the functioning of a small branch of a large national and international NGO, and some of the strengths and weakness of this model.

The Banyan, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
www.thebanyan.org

The Banyan is an organisation that cares for and rehabilitates homeless women with mental illness found in the streets of Chennai. At its home, Adaikalam, The Banyan provides the women a safe shelter, care, medical attention, and a supportive environment to enable them to recover and to take responsibility for their lives again. The Banyan also supports the women's return to their families and communities and when this is not possible, supports the women in setting up new lives for themselves. Over the past 12 years, The Banyan has reached out to more than 1500 women and reunited around 850 women with their families all throughout India.

Adaikalam is not just a shelter for sleeping in, but its busy timetable boosting with engaging activities makes it a dynamic place to live and work in. Occupational therapy (OT) sessions are regularly organised for the residents with the intention of developing their concentration and cognitive capacities and involving the residents in frequent group interaction. Occupational therapy activities include the following:

• Games
• Yoga
• Painting
• Handicrafts

Volunteer opportunities at The Banyan include the following:

• Adaikalam (Transit Home)
• Interpreting for residents in different regional languages
• Fundraising
• Assistance at events
• Administration
• Vocational training

Or simply donating some time - come and spend time with our residents or organise some informal entertainment for them.

Agragamee, Orissa
www.agragamee.org

Agragamee is involved in so many things: Natural Resource Management, Community Mobilisation and Women's Empowerment, Policy Advocacy, Education, etc. They work in some of the poorest areas of India with tribal and poor communities to work towards self-sustainable development, in ways that the tribal and poor communities want to develop.

Students on this Project Week can learn a lot within a week time, provided they are willing to learn. Depending on the numbers, students will engage in many topical discussions with the employees of Agragamee, along with a contribution of labour for a community work like digging a tank or canal or making compost pits, etc. If smaller number of people come, students could divide into smaller groups and be placed them in different locations to have closer interaction with the tribal communities. As there is such a wide range of activities that Agragamee does, the potential for student participation is immense; after a few days of orientation, students can either work on a project together or split up to focus on an issue or area that most interests them.

CHiRAG, Uttaranchal
www.chirag.org

Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (CHiRAG) is a non-profit grassroots development organisation working with rural communities in the Central Himalayan region of India. The main office of Chirag is located in the village of Sitla (overlooking a spectacular view of the Himalayan range), in the district of Nainital, in the Kumaon Division of the state of Uttaranachal. CHIRAG is also involved with issues of social empowerment and community mobilization, income generation and training and communication which it considers critical to its integrated development strategy. Areas of intervention include preparatory schools or balwaris, primary school support programmes with a thrust on environmental education, village libraries, science laboratories, centres for adolescent girl empowerment, preventive and curative health programmes, and a local self-governance (Panchayati Raj) programme. It has also set up the Kumaun Grameen Udyog (KGU) which runs a weaving centre as well as an oil extraction unit.

During, our 6-day trip during the Project week in November 2005, we were introduced to the work of CHIRAG. We were taken to the health centres, introduced to the adolescent girls programme, we worked in the horticulture farm (where we were familiarized with various medicinal herbs and other plants and the experimental work being done). We also visited the weaving and oil extraction unit. We also attended a village meeting where issues of forest preservation were discussed. The trip sensitized us to the problems associated with Hill development, the social issues involved and how the Natural Resource Development of a region could not be addressed unless community mobilization and participation was encouraged and the people, specially women, were empowered both financially and politically.

Please check the following websites:

• www.canadaindiavillageaid.com/
  chirag_newlife.htm
• www.bostonglobalaction.net/UK/
  chipko.html

Gujarati Kids' Home

Our plan is to take a group of MUWCI students to the heart of the Gujarat riots, near Ahmedhabad, to work with women and children who were affected by the riots in Gujarat. We have worked with these women and children for several years now and have good ideas for future projects. We hope to organise "Summer Camp" type activities for them and would also like to brighten their environment. We have made contact with the head of their school who is happy to work with us. There is a lot of planning to be done, however, and we welcome the ideas of new first years. If you have a lot of energy and patience, like working with children and would like to spend your first project week doing something useful then this could be the trip for you.

Saho Chetna Kendra, Himachal Pradesh
www.navrachna.org

The aims of this project week are to work with one "awareness raising center" supported by the RTDC branch of the Indian NGO Navarachna, which is focused on rural mountain development. We will learn about the complexities of development in the rural Himalaya, the life of the local people, and time permitting go for an overnight to a villae higher in the mountains. The core area of activities addressed by the Saho Chetna Kendra is natural resource based livelihoods for the hill population and the associated natural resource management issues, so the actual project will focus on these issues in some way. Last year's trip spent considerable time learning from the wise leader of the Chetna Kendra, Rattanji, and looking into the projects he and the Chetna Kendra had just begun - afforestation, floriculture, sustainable farming practices, among others. Building on the experiences of last year's group, this year's group should be able to participate actively in some of the Chetna Kendra' projects in awareness raising.

Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA), Bangalore, Karnataka

Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA) is a child-centered, rights-based, community development organization founded in the year 1981. APSA is located in Bangalore. APSA works at two levels - at the grassroots level where the focus is on empowerment of the poor and at the macro levels of the state and the country through advocacy and policy planning. This two-pronged approach is reflected in the planning and implementation of all of APSA's projects.

Last year's project week in APSA was planned collaboratively by MUWCI volunteers and APSA staff. After a day's orientation to APSA's projects, our volunteers spent the rest of the week with the Child Labour project, who at the time had a campaign in progress. Therefore our volunteers took part actively in conducting surveys, even rescuing two child labourers. They accompanied the Child Labour project team to government institutions, visited slums, attended women's group meetings- all of which helped them arrive at a holistic picture of child labour in the context of urban poverty. They also learned to deal realistically with issues of rehabilitation, processes of law, child rights versus family rights, etc.

A Project Week can be designed by MUWCI volunteers and the faculty leader/s in collaboration with APSA staff, specifically the coordinator of the volunteer programme. Some broad patterns will apply, I think, whatever the particular form this year's project week takes. I give below a few ideas that could be worked on. Instead of attaching themselves to one project, the volunteers could split themselves into two or three groups and choose projects of their interest. Alternatively, the volunteers could be given a detailed orientation to all of APSA's projects, which takes a full week normally, but in small groups, each group accompanying a different field staff everyday.

In a sense, nothing prepares one for a visit to urban slums or a factory employing child labourers or the Government Juvenile Home in Bangalore. However, it might be useful for volunteers to have at least a couple of meetings pre-Project Week, to orient themselves to the specific development philosophy of this particular NGO. In spite of meetings, last year's students were in for quite a few surprises. Most of our learning came in the form of a readjustment of our mental picture of development work (especially for those of us who had equated it with "charity"). We also saw that children's homes and schools for the homeless did not need to be dreary - why do we always think "this is good enough for them?" The broad grins and sheer exuberance of the children in APSA taught us a thing or two about "giving". Typically, a volunteer's day could include orientation to one or two of APSA's projects, followed by informal interaction with the children and staff at Nammane (APSA's central project site), formal / informal presentations by MUWCI students (on their countries, on living in India, etc). A short cultural programme of music, or dance or a skit is always appreciated and it is also a way of communicating with the children on a more equal (and more cheerful!) level. (Last year we were completely put to shame by the amazingly talented children of APSA!)

See Also: cua.mit.edu/personal/chikkatur/
asha/APSA/APSA.htm

Akanksha, Mumbai, Maharashtra
www.akanksha.org

Akanksha has been working for the last 15 years in Mumbai and Pune to supplement education for the poorest slum children. They have a number of projects and work with many students over varying ages, so the potential for student participation is immense; perhaps the best point of access will be the Learning to Lead. The LTL, as it is called, is a center which celebrates academic excellence. The brightest Akanksha children are in this center and they work very hard to give them all the inputs required to push them to do even better. This is really a very exciting group to work with and since the children would be the same age as MUWCI students, it would be a great experience for them. This is not the only possibility though, and students who work with Akanksha will have the chance to develop their participation along with the organization when the get to school. A desire to work with children and in the realities of urban poverty will be essential to participants.