I am finally sitting in front of my mom’s computer, after having spent the past 10 days or so visiting various educational/community development projects in rural/suburban South India. The experience has been incredible. Aside from the lack of email facilities leading to cellphone posts with “tuing tu” from the middle of nowhere, its been a real learning experience.
So far we have visited five projects, and have a few more to go. My notes for these extend to several pages and I have unfortunately not had the time to write them down coherently. Until then, here’s a brief description of each, and stay tuned.
Also, I shall update the photo gallery as well. Unfortunately some technical difficulties have resulted in some very buggy HTML in the photo gallery.
Project Descriptions:Â
Odanadi, Mysore: A center for victims of human trafficking run by the very inspirational Stanly and Parshu with the help of Ramesh and a bunch of dedicated volunteers, has setup a remarkable facility for children of prostitutes, abused children, as well as children/people subjected to any kind of human trafficking. We spent two days here, learnt about the steps being taken to develop them mentally and socially through psycho-social techniques (dance, arts, etc.), and also how to empower them economically through entrepreneurship.
Kuvempu: Located in the remote villages around Shivaganga in Chitradurga district in Karnataka, after a four and half hour drive from Bangalore we had a wonderful experience visiting the Vidya Kendras in various villages that helped kids study after school. We also learnt about vocational programs and had a really eye-opening conversation just before leaving which brought out a lot of issues that affect people in the area.
Timbaktu: A collective focussed on simple living, five to six hour bus ride away from Bangalore, here we met some really smart individuals who have developed a collective that is helping educate children and develop the local community through agriculture, environment, awareness and economic programs
RHEDT: A project that works in tribal areas near Coimbatore, and involved spending two hours in an auto climbing up remote hills.
you can see the pictures in http://www.sinhatravel.com/photo/India
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