Day 21, 22, 23

9th , 10th, 11th May, 2011

OMG! These kids are too much!

29 kids - 21 boys and 8 girls of roughly same age(14-16) have filled the grampari campus with a lot of fun and a lot of chaos. They are here on a 3 day camp which would include the four values of IofC, Importance of villages and Career opportunities for the youth. The first day started with the introduction session. I thought they were too shy to speak up. But that shyness remained only for 2-3 hours. After that as the sessions started and they got familiar with the place, the cacophony raised. By the dinner time, they were full fledged in their moods. But then they are kids. They are made to be mischievous!

The camp went wonderful. The kids were introduced to the idea of MRA and the four absolute standards. Later, we had discussions about various topics on the same lines. I opted to sleep with them in Grampari. Well, I must say, I had a horrible night! Some or the other noise kept on bugging me.

The second day was more of Grampari tour and Shram daan. They had a feel of what grampari worked on, the types of projects and livelihood programs. They also did shram-daan (labor donation). They built a tippytap, cleaned the weeds and the compost pit. In the evening, they discussed various problems they face in their villages. After dinner, it was dance, dhamaal and masti!

The third day was more of serious one. It was more focused on the opportunities in rural places and career development.

A few points that I learnt during the whole 3 day camp:

• Some things that we take for granted, are extremely important for villagers - eg. electricity, water and sanitation.
• We need to put ourselves in their shoes to understand their point of view. They are very simple and honest. Its just that we fail to understand that.
• Let the kids know the reality of the cities. They think that the migration to cities is the best possible solution to all the problems they face in the villages.
• Some of the sharpest minds of India reside in villages. Don't ignore them.

I made many friends during the camp. Pratik, Tejas, Sameer, Shreyas, Amit and Satish are few of them. Hope to see them soon.

The 23rd eve we had a meeting with Mr Ashok Mandre from Abhepuri. I must have referred him in other posts. He is very keen on making a website for his village. We discussed about the possibilities of it and how the website would be helpful in the development of the village. The discussion ended with 3 options.

1. A social website which lists out the achievements of the villagers
2. An internal site which would help them in organizing their data and increase in transparency of the operations of grampanchayat.
3. A website containing factual data about the village.

He has to decide on one of the options and come back to us.

Thus were these 3 days. hopefully, more would come later.

-SD