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| Social Inclusion and Empowerment « Programmes |
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| Social Inclusion and Empowerment |
| With the support of BMZ-MI, a three year project on strengthening resilience to drought by dalit and tribal communities is being implemented in 50 villages of western Rajasthan since July 2012. 900 women and 500 adolescent girls are organised into 50 village level collectives. These collectives monitor six basic services related to health, education, ICDS, PDS, social security schemes and MGNREGA. A child tracking mechanism was initiated whereby the tracking starts with the pregnancy of a woman and continues till the child attains 14 years of age. The women’s collectives are interacting with block and district functionaries with respect to their demands and also challenging vested interests in villages. Two rounds of trainings of these collectives were conducted during the reporting period. 2000 rural households have been motivated to demand work under MGNREGA. |
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Rural poor women in Rajasthan suffer the cumulative disadvantage of caste, class, gender and location. Girls are disadvantaged owing to negative social attitudes. Adolescence is a difficult period in an individual’s development cycle. Rajasthan has high incidence of child marriage. Community resilience cannot be strengthened without addressing the vulnerability of adolescent girls. A three days orientation of 65 adolescent girls from 16 villages of Phalodi was conducted with the objectives of developing understanding on caste and gender based discrimination; providing information about the physical and psychological changes during adolescence and need for adequate nutrition; increasing the self esteem and self confidence and developing social and communication skills. 30 dalit men from Phalodi participated in a two days training on gender coverings aspects such as status of women and girls in the community, discriminatory practices, and lack of access and control over resources like land and water. Action plan was also made by the men about changes that could be brought about at the household and community level.
The two year project on Access to Justice for dalits in western Rajasthan supported by GOI-UNDP has ended in February 2012. 75 villages were covered in Jodhpur, Badmer and Jaiselmer districts. 374 dalit leaders received orientation on hindrances and legal remedies for access to justice. 106 cases of atrocities against dalits were supported through fact-finding, filing of complaint, advocacy through all stages of police investigation, presentation of charge sheet, court process, counselling and rehabilitation. Fact-finding was done in 50 cases and it has strengthened subsequent advocacy. Judgements in favour of the victims were received in 11 cases within a year of the incidents. Victims in 42 cases were facilitated to get compensation of Rs. 21,66,750. A Primer for Dalit Human Rights Activists and the report of a participatory study conducted during 2012-11 on access to and control over land has been published.
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| Mainstreaming Disability |
| We have been supporting four institutions working with children with disabilities for the past three years in Ahmedabad: Prabhat Education Foundation, Samerth Talim Kendra, Utkarsh School for Mentally Retarded Children and Learning Clinic School. Three one day workshops with parents of children with mental disabilities were conducted through three of the partner institutions with the support of mentors from BPA. The facilitators assessed problems faced by parents while attending to their children with disabilities and focused more on basic activities of dialy living. Physiotherapy is being provided to 78 children at all four centres. 11 children with disabilities from Samerth Talim Kendra were provided with orthopaedic shoes. A senior speech therapist makes bi-monthly |
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| visits to each of the four centres to guide the special educators in incorporating speech therapy techniques as part of daily living activities training. The psychological assessment of 12 children was conducted for children at Learning Clinic School. A three days exposure visit to Mumbai was organised for nine special educators from all the four partner organisations. The purpose of the visits was to explore teaching strategies and vocational activities for children with disabilities. The organizations visited were: National Association for the Blind, Jai Vakeel Special School, Helen Keller Institution for Deaf Blind, Dilkhush Special School, and Helen Keller Institution. |
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| A three days Training of Trainers on Universal Design was conducted with the support of Samarthyam – National Centre for Accessible Environment, New Delhi, with the objectives to equip the participants with an understanding of the principles of universal design, importance of accessibility and access needs of diverse groups: persons with disabilities, senior citizens, pregnant women and children and develop skills of conducting access audits through practical sessions and help participants appreciate the role they can play in their current professions. In this training there were 37 participants with members of Disability Advocacy Group, architects, rehabilitation institutions, NGOs, INGO, Western Railways, Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority and St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad. The participants conducted the access audit of Behavioural Science Centre and St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad and reports are being prepared to be submitted to the institutions with suggestions for modifications. As follow up of the training on Capacity Building of Disability Advocacy Group two follow up meetings were held to discuss the cases on inclusive practices in education and employment documented by them. Feedback was provided for improving the cases documented. Follow up support was provided for some of the cases in Sabarkatha and Valsad districts so that they could be well documented and presented in the cluster level consultations to be held in April 2012. |
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| Celebrating International Women’s Day |
| A celebration of international women’s day was organised in Ram Pir Nu Tekra, Ahmedabad on March 15, 2012, in which 22 women participated. At the Ahmedabad office we celebrated the Women’s Week at Work among the staff where in all present would gather for an hour everyday. Activities centred on watching short films, doing exercises and discussing about the history of women’s movement, gender roles, women in panchayats and the vulnerability of single women in our country. We also discussed about work place in the context of sexual harassment at the workplace, appropriate staff behaviour and non-negotiables expected by all staff. |
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| Special Project: Teaching English for schools in Scheduled Areas of Gujarat |
| The second phase of the SATCOM programme for English Language Teaching for schools in scheduled areas of Gujarat was initiated in August 2011. Workbook 3 (10,000 copies) and DVDs of classes 1-50 was disseminated to all the 230 schools enabling them to watch the classes again at convenient times. During this quarter 33 classes for Standard VIII were relayed through BISAG and three sessions were also held with the school teachers. The programme team laid special emphasis on monitoring and school support for the current academic year. The monitoring advisor, Prof. Jacob Tharu oriented the team on the nature of monitoring to be undertaken, supported in the preparation of monitoring tools, guided the team in instituting systems for regular school contact and facilitated regular workshops to share and review the observations and findings of the team. As part of monitoring the results of Special Worksheet-1 submitted by 170 schools were uploaded on the website of the Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana. Special Worksheets 2 and 3 were developed, disseminated and administered. The scores of about 7500 students from about 200 schools for Special Worksheet-2 have been analysed and is in the process of being uploaded. |
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| Visits were made to 70 schools to monitor the progress of the programme. A team of 15 SATCOM Fellows (SFs) were appointed to monitor and provide support to 205 schools across 12 districts of Gujarat. The SATCOM Fellows have made relay visits, non relay visits as well as visits during unit tests and administration of special worksheets to their assigned schools. Five follow up meetings were held at Ahmedabad to share experiences and findings from the field as well as plan for future visits. A four person team visited EMRS Tilakwada (Narmada district) to document the first case study in this initiative. A draft report has been prepared and is currently under review. |
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The curriculum and material learning package for standard IX is being prepared that will be relayed from the next academic session. Recording of activities for classes 1–16 and illustrations and layouts of workbook one: worksheet 1– 6 has been formatted and finalised. |
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