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Partner project in India | Home |
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Partner project in India | Home |
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When new seeds and fertilisers come onto the market, the project tests them out first and provides demonstrations for local farmers. It also organises seminars, conferences, workshops and short training programs. It has become well-known for the success of its training and was recently asked to conduct training for the development workers of Tata and the managers of Canara Bank.
Every year in October, a Science Fair is held where every project activity is represented in some way. The students give scientific demonstrations, present songs and dances, enact scenes from historical epics and show what they have learnt at school. The spice unit sells its products, the Health Education project and staff from the health clinic set up a stall and college students put on their own original dramas. This fair has become so popular that busloads of schoolchildren from nearby towns and villages come to see it.
This year, the project has applied to CAPART, a central government agency, for a grant to run "Village Knowledge Centres". These are basically computer centres to be established in rural areas and provide villagers with easy, cheap access to information of various kinds, including their land records, the latest seeds etc.
A women's income generation scheme (the spice unit) was set up in 2000 with grants from Rotary International (sponsored by the Rotary Club Midtown Chandausi), the Rotary Club of Norwich, England, the Rotary Club of Koblenz-Ehrenbreitstein, Germany and a special volunteer’s award given by Pricewaterhousecoopers to Kiran Patel, one of the project visitors who lived and worked as a volunteer at the project.
There is a particular need for income-generation schemes for women as, in rural areas, women suffer most from poverty and male-domination. The only way to help them get out of this is by providing them with the means to earn some income. They only have a share in decision-making in their families if they are able to contribute economically. Without this, they are powerless.
The aim of the unit was to provide an income-generating scheme for uneducated village women. Various money-making ideas had already been tried out such as pappadom production but these proved too problematic, mainly because of difficulties with quality control. Of all the ideas tested, the most promising was the grinding of masalas.
Whole spices were bought in bulk from the nearby market towns and then cleaned, dried, ground and packaged by local women. They were sold as ‘pure’ (in contrast to the adulterated spices sold elsewhere).
However, after five years trying to make this unit economically viable, the project has reluctantly closed it. The costs and difficulties of marketing the spices proved overwhelming and losses began to mount. At the moment, the project is investigating the possibility of running a combined unit of spice packaging, flour-milling and rice husking.
The project is also the registered office for an international organisation, INTAF (International Task Force for the Rural Poor) which is a network of rural development workers worldwide. Every three years, an international conference is held, attracting development workers from many countries. The last one was held in london in July 2005.
A twice-yearly research journal, the IJRS (International Journal of Rural Studies) is produced from Amarpurkashi. It publicises the work of development projects, prints articles on a wide range of development topics, reviews current publications in the field of rural development and encourages development experts and workers to contribute articles of relevance and interest.
Note also that under the IVCS volunteering scheme you can stay as a guest of this Indian development project, and learn more about grass roots development at first hand.