The Gaddi
Women's Self-Help Society
An Himalayan Women�s Association in India
2004 Report
Note: This letter from the Society was edited by Lynn Kirby.
Dear Friends at SHAMA, Inc.,
We are lucky and happy to have friends like you who are concerned and able to help us in our development projects year after year. Before we enlighten you about the developments of our project since last year, it would be appropriate to elaborate the underlying philosophy of our work.
All our projects from the start stress development at the micro level in the rural areas, i.e. benefiting people in their daily lives. Whether it is the women earning their living by making Tofu, peanut butter, etc. or through the tailoring schools where we impart the craft of stitching to the women and now also providing them with work through which they are earning, or with the computer project where we strive to teach them how to use the computers in their daily lives. The basis of all this work is the Gandhian belief that we need to develop education and opportunities for people in the rural areas, which helps in balanced growth of any economy.
Since last year, we have developed a lot both personally as well as in our work:
We have managed to consolidate and organize our projects in a way whereby the Tofu/Jam-making project and the tailoring schools are able to operate without us having to be present all the time.
The Tofu and Jam-making project, which generates income, has been operating since last year as a totally self-sufficient project, running on its own income without taking any grants or aid from anyone.
The two tailoring schools have been operational with the teachers trained to take independent responsibility of their respective centres. We have kept a manager for these two tailoring schools.
The manager of the tailoring schools is also responsible for running the Library and education centre for women, teaching them the basics of reading, writing and simple arithmetic.
The computer centre and the library however, we want to shift to more interior areas, where there is a greater need for these facilities. This is our next step because we want to spread our project into villages across these mountains where such facilities are hard to find, and set up small units of income generation and education, where each unit will be an independent operating unit.
Over the past year, we have been busy identifying places where we might start more projects like the ones we are already running. Across the Dhauladhar Mountains lies the region of Chamba valley, which we have been actively surveying for the purposes of our future projects. This is also an underdeveloped area, where there is large-scale emigration of people to the cities because of lack of income opportunities for people. Agriculture, which till recently was the main occupation of the people, is still at the subsistence level with the techniques which prevailed a hundred years back. The developing tourism industry does offer employment, but since most of the children are not very well educated, it leads them to find jobs at a subsistence level. This follows the same old trend of the rich getting richer and the poor remain so... The thrust of our project in this belt would be mainly on education and income generation opportunities at the village level, for people in this area.
This year SHAMA, Inc. has given us a grant in a new field: for initialising a handicraft project for handmade paper and wood-craft products, thus helping us to provide training for an alternate source of earning for the people in these under-developed areas. SHAMA, Inc. is also helping us in our Computer project. The computer project was started and has been running for a year and a half on our personal funds. The funds provided by SHAMA, Inc. would be quite helpful for developing the Hindi computer-training programme for rural areas and for the addition of an information and communication centre with the use of internet tools. Through this facility, we can help the people in education and development technologies in agricultural and cottage-scale industrial level. Although the grant for this project is a one-time grant from SHAMA, Inc., we are happy that it has helped us define our dream of taking the technology and opportunities to the people at village level. The Internet centre and the handicraft unit are still in their infant stages, and the concrete shape will start appearing by the beginning of next year. I am confidant that next year when we write to you it would be with a lot of news.
At the end we would like to thank you all for the support that SHAMA, Inc. has extended to us. We would like to add that it is not only the money from our friends that helps us, but also the moral support and the technical help extended by them in our work.
Web design by Lynn Kirby, 2004