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Activities
Water Related Schemes
Health & Hygiene
Youth Development
Learning Centres
Temper for Science in rural
India
Women's Empowerment
Activism against Social ills
Protection of Heritage
War Widows
Adventure

Youth and Community Development the corner stone of future

This is boundless in form and content, the real health indicator of any community. We try and integrate small initiatives with every village that is adopted. Youth programmes as part of any structured approach to rural education just do not exist in India. Primary school education is drudgery with bare facilities and rudimentary content.  Very few schools  have any benches or desks not  to speak of sports. With no power in most remote  villages there is little scope for any reading at home. The foundation of education in general seems scuttled for want of facilities at all levels. The social fall out from this is obvious. Even a drop could therefore make a sea change. This is a vast human resource crying for attention. With attention it is the best vehicle for national integration and fostering good society with civic sense. And equally forbidding if neglected.
Our aim is to provide a small package with each scheme to attract youth by filling visible gaps

• A learning center with a rural library and a computer kiosk
  Interstate, inter regional exposure tours for children upto 16.

• Two football and volley ball courts at each village.

• An air rifle shooting range

• One gym at the district level

• Revive village wrestling

• Introduce a cross country and bicycle event for the district.

• New and hardy sports such as rugby, archery and martial arts.

As a trial model we took up the above activity on a small scale at village Salaita, in Yamuna ravines. The condition of the primary schools in the village as shown in photograph below, typical of the environment in most remote villages of the country. Despite this there is spontaneous eagerness to strive for some achievement. example- Salaita is proud to have produced our Olympic hockey team goalkeeper in Devesh Chauhan. Would we not achieve much more if we can provide some basic grooming facilities for sports in our villages?

First batch of 13 children on their first ever visit outside the Yamuna Ravines, in Delhi

Gram Sabha - AVM Sahni and Maj Gen Chauhan giving awareness on benifits of self help and voluntary work in community missions

Exposure tours have an immense value in social integration and learning from experience.
Building skills and abilities in the community from young to old is an essential part of self help culture without which the community cannot stand on its won feet. This requires training. Knowing what others have done from which the community could benefit especially for schemes at hand requires exposures and visits.
The check dam project with a focus on rejuvenating environment and income generating opportunities, brought the community in touch with distant establishments hitherto unknown and from where much of the fruits of research have yet to reach the grass root level. New varieties of grazing grass, bamboo and other trees saplings have been brought as a result of visits by teams to the Forest Research Institute and the National Grassland and Fodder Research Institute. The villages have just no idea that such backup for them exists anywhere, as extension services do not exist. Another visit organized  to Jhansi exposed the community to various rural technologies being promoted by Development Alternatives and their self help groups in villages of Bundelkhand.
An all women’s team participated in the Jalsammelan organized by Tarun Bharat Sangh in Alwar. The women of Salaita who had never been permitted to venture out displayed a new confidence. A small change but a significant one nonetheless. 

Women's Empowerment

We lay a big stress on women’s empowerment in communities we work with. The foundation for this is through exposures and education the first model having come up in Village Salaita. Our initiative was integrated with the project for construction of the checkdam. This gave us an opportunity to introduce  self help culture by organising various committees (samities) required to execute the scheme for ‘water’ where the womens committee (mahila samiti) had to play a big role. This was followed by  picking up an apt theme early childhood grooming and management of a village school which evoked a big response from girls. A one year  diploma course on this them was available with the National Open School  through distance education which would also equip the trainee with a qualification for being absorbed in the community primary school. The first set of trainees course will be appearing for their final examination in Oct this year. The community has also been introduced to a health workers course with the ultimate aim of equipping the community with their voluntary health workers and providing an health center for the complex. This exposure has further encouraged womens participation  in the affairs of the community. A breakthrough was achieved when SALAITA fielded a womens team for the Jalsammelan organized by Tarun  Bharat Sangh in Alwar which brought together women water activists from all corners of the country on a form supported by UNDP. This was the first instance that such a team was organized by any village in the entire region. Of the momentum can be maintained women of Salaita will become trend setters for the state.

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