Making of a Knowledge Centre in Rural Uttaranchal

A case study of SBMA

Gairsain is a small place in Chamoli district in Uttaranchal. It is located in mountain valley terrain of Himalayas and has a predominantly agrarian community marked by large scale migration of its youth population to the near by cities and metropolis of Indian national capital.

One World South Asia and Plan International - Non Governmental Organisations based in New Delhi started working with local NGO- Sri Bhuvneshwari Mahila Ashram (SBMA). SBMA was already partnering with Plan International for getting support for their child sponsorship and child centric community development programme in that area.

The new initiative was born in August 2006 out of the concept of developing knowledge centre for the rural people. The beginning was done through a community consultation where mostly youth participated. A group of twenty youth emerged as the leaders as they had interest in media and were assertive. They were from 12 villages. These youth facilitators called a consultation of the children below eighteen years of age from 120 villages and chose twenty child volunteers based on their assessment on writing skills, presentation style, assertiveness, and content of their stories submitted in a writing competition.

Gajendra Nautiyal, an experienced local journalist trained these youths and children on writing skills and further honed their skills in vernacular language.

In September 2006, a training programme was conducted for ten youths (ten other discontinued) and twenty child journalists to expose them to a variety of media like comics, photography along with ICT tools like Radio and Internet at state capital Dehradun.

After this workshop, Mr. Nautiyal followed up with this group to continue writing stories on social and developmental issues in their communities to practice newly acquired skills. ‘Initially this group used to write stories as heard from others, there was no enquiry done and were no references’ recalls Mr. Nautiyal. ‘The stories looked imaginary and were not very reliable to the readers’ says Nautiyal. He continued and organized several meeting for them to give feedback and also learn from each other. Gradually they started writing good stories. They wrote stories on social problems like alcoholism and second marriages etc. They also wrote success stories and stories of innovations in their community.

They got a chance to attend a further training on comics at Goa in November 2006. This refresher training gave a boost to their aptitude to make comics on social issues. Similarly a refresher training was organized in January 2006 at a media centre in Noida on radio. Ten participants participated in radio refresher training.

This group who attended radio training started working on their radio production. They wrote scripts for their programme and came to One World South Asia office in New Delhi to record and edit their programme. They used voices of the community to make it interesting and appealing to the community were they intended to narrow cast it in community awareness campaigns.

By March 2006 they recorded several programmes and took them to the community and played using tape recorders made available under this programme. They had sufficient media material with them. They planned a media campaign on child rights using wall papers, comics and radio in Dhargaidh village in Gairsain block. They put wall posters on panchayati chowk (common place of gathering of the villagers), placed tape recorders and played recorded radio programmes on alcoholism and girl child education. They invited Bal Panchayat members, Mahila Mangal Dal (women Self Help Group) to see the posters and listen to the radio. Visitors glanced at posters but they listened to the radio programmes and it appealed to them because of its local flavour. After listening to the radio programme they went back to comic stripe posters and paid attention and started discussing the issues highlighted in the comics and photographs displayed.

One of the Mahila Mangal Dal members who generally do not used to participate in group meetings came calling when she listened the radio programme being played by the children at panchayati chowk. She is now regular at the meetings and they play radio programmes during meetings.

Later, when one another NGO was organizing a training workshop for the Van Panchayat Sarpanch (Heads of the village forest councils), invited SBMA to display the campaign material to the sarpanchs. The campaign was gaining momentum.

Encouraged by the response from the community and also from within their own organisation and supporters, they went ahead and planned a computer and Internet workshop for the six youths who had shown some interest in taking this media further after the Dehradun training in September 2006.

In May 2006 SBMA launched its first Rural Knowledge Centre (RKC) at Saliayana, Gairsain. This centre uses office computer and has a v-sat connectivity.

This centre offers computer learning and Internet browsing facilities to the budding knowledge workers. The have also learned to put local news and other village information on the web portal powered by open enrich–a community communication software developed by One World, National Informatics Centre and UNESCO using Hindi interface.

This RKC also produces multi media community content using stories written, photographs taken and comics made besides producing radio programmes on useful information.

KC has extensive community linkages, as they are regularly organizing campaigns in the community.

SBMA plans to expand the services to other domains. Knowledge workers are engaged in compiling locally useful information on common diseases, health facilities, environmental best practices, agriculture, alternate livelihoods, and educational opportunities. They plan to produce multimedia content on compiled information, so that it could be conveniently understood by the local audience.

Saliayana Knowledge Centre also has a phone help line for the public. Any one from the near by villages could pick up the phone and dial the help line number to access useful information available at the centre or on Internet.

Integration of various media and folk medium of dance and drama has been the strength of the centre as they are able to produce content in format that is acceptable to the community.

What does it take to organize a knowledge community in rural villages? ‘It was important to ensure group cohesion and an opportunity for learning new skills and also to keep up motivation of the volunteers. There were challenges also from within. Initially it was difficult for the organisation to understand the importance of having a knowledge gateway for the villagers – but today they stand convinced after seeing the outputs and the newly grown confidence of the children and youth participating in the activities of the centre’ says Gajendra Nautiyal - knowledge leaders of Gairsain who have nurtured a cadre of knowledge torch bearers serving the Gairsain community.

Narendra Deo
Project Manager (Advocacy Centres)
Grassroots Communications
One World South Asia

Yes Comics Can Change ------!

Good News for those who Dream for children Happiness. Yes! comics can bring back children happiness! It also proves that processes of empowerment are better way then Activity based Program.

Luxman Singh A Amazing kid Fellow from Mehalchoury, developed himself after receiving training that he is able to draw comics in different issues. One of his comic shows a boy being beaten by his drunk father. He was inspired to draw comic after witnessing this. The boy got 10stiches as he sustained injuries in his head. After becoming upset Luxman decided to draw a comics on this event. He drew and made 20 copies of it and displayed it all important places in Mehalchoury. Community started talking about it and was able to identify the father. Other community fellows quizzed the culprit and he felt guilty over the entire episode. He vowed not to consume liquor in future. Motivated by this story Vyapar Mandal of Mehalchoury encouraged Luxman and his friend and a number of copies of his comic were photocopied and displayed at other places. It is learnt that this effort is being appreciated by locals and it was able to leave positive impression on the people fond of liquior.

This example shows that instead of “josh without Hosh “activities we need process based activities. Same approach can sustain the interventions to promote children happiness and to fulfill their dreams.

Let children learn Media skill, let them get relevant information to shape their dreams.

Gajendra Nautiyal