It’s been over a month now that I have been in Gajner and I think I’m finally at a good place with the community and am ready to start implementing some of the projects I have in mind. Besides my role as the cluster coordinator for Gajner, taking care of all administration as well as working with my fellow interns to keep everyone on track, I have also been cleaning up and re-structuring the curriculum for the after-school program in the DD community as well as the girls club schedule in the AC community. I am now beginning my waste management project and am starting off with families I have grown quite close to. First off is Rekha’s family, who I have built a wonderful, trusting relationship with and who have actually adopted me as their own. I visit daily to teach English to Rekha and her 14-year old brother Rajesh, as well as socialize with Rekha, her mother (whom I now call mamaji) and Rekha’s oldest brothers wife, Saraj, as they don’t leave the house often. Today I decided to finally introduce my waste management experiment into their household. They are the first step to my overall project goal of implementing a proper waste management system into the village.
I began the conversation with Rekha and Rajesh by discussing how much garbage the cows eat in India. They agreed with me and through broken English and Hindi I explained, with the help of a horribly hand drawn diagram, how the toxins from the garbage the cows eat ends up in the milk we drink, as well as causes the cows to become ill and die due to their systems being filled and blocked with plastic and tin wrappers. Obviously the explanation didn’t go as smoothly as typing it out in a blog post, since there is still a very strong language barrier between myself and the family, but eventually they got the point and agreed to having me place three waste bins in their home: one for garbage/non-recyclable goods, one for recyclable plastic and one for glass. Composting isn’t an essential there or in many of the households in the village since no one uses toilet paper or other organic materials (from what I've observed) and all food waste is given to cows and other animals in the village. So step one is complete: get a family to agree to be my “guinea pig”. The next step is to locate and visit the sites where I can properly dispose of each type of waste in Bikaner, the main city nearby, as well as get the family to co-operate with the program for two weeks. One week with my guidance and a second week without my help to see if they can put the effort in to separate their waste without me watching over them. I have a feeling they will pass this test since I have a built a strong relationship with the family and they know this is important to me (though overall I want this to be important to them as well). This will also be a test to my leadership skills.
Girls Club/Women Empowerment
I was having some difficulty with the girls club for a while trying to figure out what I wanted to do with them as well as creating an overall goal for the club. All the girls are in their teens therefore focus has always been an issue as all they ever want to do is girly things like paint their nails, dance or play games. Although it may sound selfish, it isn’t enjoyable for me to go there two to three times a week just to make bracelets when I could be focusing on something more beneficial for the community. I want to learn from them and I want them to learn from me. I spent some time thinking about what the goal of girls club should be and I found my answer after complaining about how I didn’t want to play badminton with them anymore. I want to empower these girls to do great things, not to sit back and play games. The AC community is a wealthy community and these girls come from good families with good jobs and they all attend school, even after 14 years of age when education is no longer paid for by the government. I sat down and thought about female empowerment. How do you empower women? With education, with motivation, with guidance…this was a start. I took some info from a blog post I posted late last year regarding female role models of the 2000’s. I wanted to educate these girls on some fantastic female leaders from around the world. The list included those from my article: Malala Yousafzai, Angelina Jolie, Amanda Lindhout, Benazir Bhutto and Wangari Maathai, with the addition of Indira Gandhi to see how much the girls knew about her. Surprisingly they didn’t know much. Of course they knew who she was and how she died but they were uncertain of what she did for India during her time in office as well as why she died (but then again, this could have been because of the language barrier they were unable to tell me what they knew about her). I put together a very simple slideshow, which included individual slides of each woman’s photo with “who is she?” written in large font above each image. I would ask them the question and then explain who the woman is and why she is a powerful female leader. The reaction from the girls was extremely positive, they showed interest in each woman and even followed up with relevant questions. After each woman's synopsis in English, they would chat among themselves in Hindi, the older girls further explaining anything the younger ones didn’t fully understand. I was so happy with the result of girls club that day that we ended it off with a Bollywood dance session. Not joking. Finally doing something meaningful with the girls and educating them on the importance of female leadership helped motivate me to continue visiting the girls each week, reminding me that no matter what class/caste you are in, education for girls is extremely important, especially if we want to see more girls grow up to be powerful and influential leaders. I’m looking forward to creating more lessons like this now that I know it is something the girls are thoroughly interested in. I noticed that they were especially enthused with Malala, a girl who has done so much for education in Pakistan and is their age.
Migrant Education
The ASP (after-school program) that actually takes place in the middle of the day two to three times a week, occurs in the Indira Colony, the migrant community or DD community, and is always a wonderful experience though we are unable to round up all the children in the community every time we visit as they are sometimes busy helping their mothers with the babies or housework. Even though some of the kids are way too young to be concerned with such tasks, it isn’t our place to interfere, therefore we work with the children that are available when we go to the community. Our goal for the Indira colony is to introduce an alternative education curriculum to the school since the children only come to school for the free meal they receive each weekday. The teachers who work there do absolutely nothing expect cook the pathetic meal they give them once a day and I am being completely serious, they literally just sit there and gossip all day while the kids run around.
A few weeks back Ali and I introduced “The Alphabet Game”. It is a matching and memory game where there are 52 cards that are flipped upside and the children take turns flipping two cards at a time until they get a match of a capital letter and a lowercase letter, for example A and a. We start the game off by going through the alphabet and singing the infamous ABC’s. We’ve found it extremely effective in helping the children learn each letter. The next step is to test their memory and have them practice writing each letter, which I will be introducing next week to the group.
Micro-finance
Currently there is only one micro-finance project implemented in the village of Gajner and it is with the women of the DD community. It is the sewing project I wrote about in an earlier post where the women are sewing designs onto pillowcases that can be sold later for profit. We are at a point now where most of the women are finished their designs and are ready to sew together the rest of the pillowcase. This means it’s time for us to establish exactly how we are going to sell these products. The Naddi cluster in upper Himachal Pradesh have established a ‘restore’ where they sell items made by members of the local community. These items include things like blankets and handicrafts. We would like to implement a ‘restore’ centre of our own in Gajner where we can sell products made by the local community as well as sell clothing, jewelry and other items left or donated by interns that have come and gone. Although it would be easier for interns to give these items directly to members of the DD community, we don’t want to teach them charity; instead we want to show them that there is value in everything and charge them as low as 1 rs. (the equivalent of 0.02 cents Canadian) per item. This is something we are looking to establish and have up and running by the end of June.
Additional Research
Along with all the exciting projects I am currently working on, I also have a few side research projects including volunteering at the hospital in Gajner and learning more about the healthcare system in India, which is actually quite impressive. All Indian citizens have access to vaccinations and medications free of charge and for each child born, the family is given 1,500 rs. Every child is provided free education until they reach the age of 14 (tenth grade/year 10). If the child is a female, the family is given an additional 7,000 rs. to help with costs associated with raising her. Ultrasounds are illegal for determining the sex of an unborn child as in the past many women were aborting unborn females. This is because females are seen as more costly to raise compared to males. Additionally, giving birth to a female means eventually having to build a dowry to marry her off (this is why in power communities, like those in Uttar Pradesh, there are so many child brides). Having a boy ensures money will be made for the family, as he will work for a living. The family is also guaranteed income when they receive the dowry after selecting a wife for their son as well as guaranteed additional help in the household as after a daughter is married off, she is to move in with her husband's family and resume the role of a stereotypical "housewife". In India, you live with your parents your whole life unless you are a married female.
I am very proud of myself and the team I work with here in Gajner as so much has happened within the last month and I am really looking forward to continuing the growth of this fantastic village. Although I only live and work with two other interns (as Ali is leaving), we are an extremely motivated and passionate team with fantastic ideas. Projects my fellow interns are involved with here in Gajner include mapping the community, measuring the levels of poverty in the Indira colony as well as focusing on gender issues and domestic violence.
So there you have it, besides having the time of my life, this is what I’ve been up to. This weekend I am off to Pushkar with Ali, my last weekend with her before she leaves me to return home to Spain, therefore do expect a very hilarious and adventurous story next week upon my return home to Gajner.
Jazz