By TwoCircles.net staff reporter,
Cambridge: Annual conference of Association for India’s Development (AID) got off to an energetic start on Saturday May 28th, 2011. Over a hundred volunteers arrived from different parts of the United States to take part in the 3-day long conference held in MIT Stata Center.
Program started earlier in the day with a breakfast that true to AID philosophy consisted of locally grown organic products served on the plates that participants were asked to bring with them.
AID Boston president Pavan welcoming the participants
General Body Meeting of AID was the first order of business after the breakfast. AID program and policies were discussed and new Executive Board members were introduced. AID raises more than a million dollars every year through fundraising and donations. Out of more than 30 chapters, Bay Area, Boston, College Park, and Seattle chapters are some of the biggest chapters when it comes to raising funds.
Praful Chandel, a village health coordinator with Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS) was the keynote speaker for the day. JSS is working the area of health in remote villages of Chattisgarh. Praful Chandel has been working with JSS for more than a decade and he shared his experience in controlling diseases, health education, and providing health care to population living in over 50 villages in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh.
Praful said that there is a false notion among urban Indians that rural areas have cleaner air, pure water, and fresh food but reality is far from it. There is a huge health crisis brewing in rural India that is not being addressed. Survey done by JSS shows that even when it comes to common diseases like heart diseases, diabetes, TB, etc. condition in villages is worse than urban india.
Praful Chanel (right) was the keynote speaker for the day one
JSS started its community health program in May 1999 and since then they have faced lots of challenges and learned lots of lessons in how best to deliver health education and health care to a rural population. They had to be mindful of people’s daily routine and local customs and design their work and program accordingly.
So they started a mobile clinic that came to their area once a week for giving them proper training. Health Worker Training started in 2000. Most of the people were semi-literate. Baiga tribe’s health workers were not permitted to eat food prepared by non-Baigas. People were not ready to come to Ganiyari for training.
They started an innovating way of medical training by teaching them through pictures. Packaging and instruction material was redesigned with all instructions and identification done visually so that those unable to read can recognize medicines and dosage through pictures.
Health workers were first trained in the treatment of malaria since malaria was rampant in the villages. They had extended discussions of controlling malaria. The success of combating malaria helped JSS gain confidence of the community.
They gave medicated mosquito nets but found that people were using these nets to catch fish. Therefore JSS had to modify their program and start handing out clothes to catch fish along with mosquito nets. They were also given mosquito repellent oil for people who worked in the jungle and exposed to mosquitoes there.
Remote villages, non-existent roads made it difficult to go from one village to another. Previous bad experiences with government hospitals made villagers reluctant to go to hospitals even when provided with transportation. Villagers thought that JSS were missionary people and thought they were funded by foreign religious funding.
Ravi and Kiran discussing strength and challenges of AID
Village quacks or “jholachap” doctors have created a situation where now patients demand injections and saline bottles, even when it is not required.
Season of festivals make it difficult to deliver treatment. Therefore training constantly needed to be adjusted to suit the local environment. Malaria season overlaps with the festival season and therefore treatment and control becomes a big challenge.
Government does not recognize the epidemic. Chandel told a story of a 19-year old girl who died of malaria, just after two-days of fever. Government didn’t recognize that she died of malaria and in fact there is no record of her death. And there are numerous examples like that.
After lunch, AID founder Ravi Kuchimanchi and Kiran Vissa, a Jeevansathi working in Andhra Pradesh gave a presentation on 20 years of AID reminiscing about the early days of AID and recalling the long journey. Ravi outlined the philosophy that sets it apart from any other organization, instead of focusing just one issue, AID works on all issues because as problems are interconnected, solutions are interconnected too.
Ravi went back to India with an initial plan to develop a model village each of the 500 districts. He soon realized that this was not practical. AID’s current model is to work with few NGOs and movements within India. AID work has thrown up many community leaders and bring into prominence issues that are important but not getting enough attention.
Ravi gave an example of Aravid Kejariwal, who is a big name in the movement against corruption in India. He was an AID saathi and worked in the area of RTI.
Several AID projects have ended up on the frontpage of newspapers e.g. lokpal bill, BT brinjal, Binayak Sen campaign, etc.
A section of the audience
Ravi encouraged all AID volunteers to be engaged in making an impact in India. Ravi emphasized that AID is a popular organization among NRIs but do not shy away from raising controversial issues in India. For example, taking a stand against Narendra Modi made them unpopular in some circles among the NRI community but they refused to compromise with their principles.
Later sessions were organized as workshops for AID volunteers to learn more about how to steer campaigns, to keeping their members engaged and motivated to nuts and bolts about managing projects.
Dinner was followed by a play “Sounds of Silence” presented by AID Boston volunteers that told the story of displacement of people and exploitation of land and resources by big corporations at the expense of people living there. The story was told by interesting mix of Bollywood songs giving new meanings to their words by changing the context acted out by the actors.
Sunday session will feature noted Gandhian human rights activist Himanshu Kumar who has been working in Dantwada for the last 17 years.
Links:
Livestream of the conference: http://www.livestream.com/aidboston
[Photos courtesy of Rohitesh Gupta from AID Buffalo]