Work!

Being silly at work. Namaste!

Ok! So it’s Friday and I FINALLY have a spare minute!! We just got back from the bazaar where we spent a couple hours sweltering in the tightly packed streets fending off vendors and having the new friends we’ve met at the India Habitat Centre (where our office is) haggle for us. One shop owner got annoyed and evidently said, “Why are you bargaining for them? They are foreigners.” To which Asta replied that Leah was her brother’s wife. Haha.

Anyway, back to basics! We have had an intense week working at Society for Developmental Studies (SDS). Dr. Lall is the director and he’s pretty awesome. He refuses to take it easy on us and expects us to take our training extremely seriously. In his words “I’ve been given permission to be ruthless.” On the other hand he is hilarious, kind, generous, and a lot of fun. We went to dinner with him last night and had a blast trying all the wonderful Indian foods he insisted upon. So we work M-F 9:30-5 and some Saturdays. We are taking lectures on the SDS community empowerment model along with information about how to approach and develop strategies for community problems. The training is invaluable and we all agree that while we were (and sometimes still are) overwhelmed by being thrown into one of the most intense internships ever, we are all going to be so much better for it. The professional development we are receiving is amazing and it will reach so much farther into work with our own communities and beyond. The India Habitat Centre where we work!

So basically Alwar is a city with many outer lying rural villages. There are many artisans who live there that have passed down their trade over the generations, but who have been pushed into labor jobs due to their work not being as marketable (think potters who were valuable for pots which kept water cold, but the introduction of refrigerators cutting their demand) or middle men coming in and stealing profits and taking advantage of the artisans skills with little payment. Then congestion in the villages, wide spread poverty, and little if any infrastructure (piped water, toilets, etc.) led to even less ability to practice their trade or store their goods. The community also was split due to competition with each other over a limited market. So SDS came in and taught the artisans business skills. They taught them how to circumvent the middle man, how to manage finances to improve their business, ways to make their products more marketable (pots with designs, shoes with embroidery), how to reduce waste (kiln improvements to reduce breakage), technical skills (sewing machine), and how to work together to form alliances and get loans for their homes and businesses…just to name a few. Then they assisted with what the community specifically asked for such as literacy training for the adults. The goal (and what SDS has been incredibly successful at) is to only offer services and support that are sustainable by the people without further outside assistance. So, for instance they don’t buy a large machine that relies on gasoline which they don’t have access to without them, etc. It’s an amazing model that has had incredible results…which we will get to go see in about a week!!!!!! So for our own work we are each responsible for our own research report consisting of two parts. The first is an overview of the rural villages we will be visiting in a week and how the interventions and strategies SDS have developed affected them. The second part is specific to each of our focus. I am focusing on primary education and literacy as related to community empowerment, Leah is dental hygiene, Kireeti on planning and governance, and Kidan on media. We each are creating surveys for local officials and community members related to our focus. For instance I plan on surveying district officers, teachers, and students. We will then use this data to analyze any road blocks and causative factors that hinder further enrichment of these goals along with strategies to help. IT’S CRAZY!!! But also awesome, and so exciting to be part of. We head to Agra tomorrow just for a break from work and to see the Taj Mahal. It’s supposed to be blazing hot, but we’re all still very excited! Other than that we just try to keep cool. It was 118 degrees yesterday and expected to be worse in the deserts where we’re headed to work. Even the locals here have said the heat is extreme and much worse than normal. I guess even in the rural villages they talk about global warming even though they haven’t heard the term, reasons for it, or anything about it from outside sources!! Amazing stuff, and really sets in the reality of the situation.