Bharathi Trust

Introduction

Bharathi Trust is a non-profit development organization working for the cause of upliftment and empowerment of Irula Tribal communities living in the interior pockets of Thiruvallur district. Since 1990, it has been working among the Irula communities in more than 60 villages spread over 5 Taluks of the District. It has been conducting a number of development programmes such as Sangam formation, awareness camps, liaison work with government for obtaining development schemes, day care services, motivation centres for eradication of child labour, etc. Bharathi Trust was started by Siddamma, the director of the Trust. 

Educational Philosophy ( Presentation by Siddamma)

I have been working with the community of Irulas in Tamilnadu for several years. I have been involved with organizing them, raising awareness, mobilizing and educating them. Many of them live in interior villages and are not aware of their rights or about available schemes from the government. They are mostly illiterate, settled near forest areas. A village organization (people's organization ) called Sarpam has been created. The sarpam has been working on ensuring that the rights of the Irulas are obtained. Irula sangams and activities happen through the sarpams. I have been working with adults for the past several years. Over the last 5 or 6 years we realized that working with adults alone is insufficient and more recently we have started working with children. I have noticed in almost all the areas that 100% of children do not go to school at all. We have been working with motivational centers for the children to encourage them to get back into schools. We have taken the children away from work or hanging around the house and got them into motivational schools. In terms of running of the schools - the teachers are all from the community themselves. 11 schools are being run by the community. The community has been involved fully in starting the schools. The community provides space, gives 50% of the running expenses of the school in terms of materials and helps with any manual work including building the school. They also ensure that the teachers come regularly and the children attend regularly. In our case - we work with community, the community in turn works with the teacher in the motivational centers and teachers at the motivational centers in turn start working with the government school. Our teachers have now started working with the government school teachers. They have now started adopting some of our methods and use of local resources. The government schools have also reduced child beating and are taking an interest in more joyful learning methods. We made a different syllabus for children based on where they live - on the edge of the forest or near the sea. We have been trying to introduce various alternative methodologies based on their backgrounds. After their experience in the motivational centers we have managed to get 500 children to go to government schools. Our schools have no child beating, learning is made fun. We have seen that the learning levels of children have improved a lot. We believe that the community has to ultimately take part in the education process. Working on new methodologies/alternative syllabus is one aspect of education. Community involvement is equally important. Without this involvement education cannot succeed. This is my understanding after working for years in the tribal areas. Parents are realizing why education is important. In villages with no schools slowly the demand for education should come from the community and they should demand this from the government. We have represented nearly 100 villages with no schools at all and spoken with the government to bring in at-least a single teacher school there. Once the school exists we can influence what type of education the school should provide. Various communities are now approaching the education dept for single teacher schools.

Methodology (Presentation by Siddamma) 

We have been working with the Irula group of tribals. We believe in education not only for children but in education for everybody; education for the whole community. We first started with community work, and then later started our education work. Our community work included organizing people to fight for their rights, to get their basic necessities and implement schemes which are available especially for tribal communities. In terms of rights we started with one village, where the land had been grabbed by the landlords. We started our activities there and now they have got back their 30 acres of land. From then on we have developed people's organizations in different villages. This now covers 300 villages and reaches 20,000 people. The people 's organization is registered separately. So during these 5 to 6 years of experience, I was interacting very closely with the community. Many discussions were conducted; we had many meetings with the different groups of the Irula people and leaders. Later on we all realized that education is a very important role in the process of development. We also realized we had to start an education program for the younger children because nearly 98% of the children were not going to school. In some villages not even a single child was going to school. There was also the added problem of already grown up children. We had to decide what type of education needs to reach these children. We wanted to try and give them at least minimum literacy and then get them to join government schools. So we decided to start motivational centers for the children. Asha came forward to help us set up motivation centers functioning for the next 2 to 3 years. So within 2 years we had two tasks, one was to increase the literacy level and inculcate the habit of coming to school. The children were used to wandering around the forest areas and raising cattle. To get them to come to school and sit in the classroom was very difficult. Right from the beginning this was discussed and we decided to get a teacher from within the same community. The community had to be involved in this process. The teacher needs to first talk to the children and spend time with them. From the very beginning we worked with the teachers, who were girls from the community, to make them understand why we need school and what kind of school we were going to have. We talked about how to motivate the children to think about schooling. As the teachers started working the children became very close to the teacher. The first month of schooling mainly involved getting to know the children and had no formal activity. We realized that we had to locate the school within the community itself. This way the entire community will get to know the school. Designing the school became a responsibility of the community. The construction of the school and some of the building raw material was provided by the people. Our organization contributed what could not be provided by the community. The school was constructed by the community. For a few days they stopped going to work and instead took part in the construction of the school. It was a very good process with high involvement. News about this soon spread to neighbouring communities. When I visited the village to check on the school construction I was very surprised to see the whole village there. They had made a whole vessel of food so that they could eat together and keep building for the whole day. The community decided who the teachers would be and who would become the classroom helper. All these decisions were taken by the community. Once the center started, for three months we didn't have any academics - we just had some games, plays, lots of music and arts. Music and arts are very integral to this community. They like to dance, sing and enjoy themselves. The first three months of school just had these activities. The children would also draw on walls. Everything was displayed to be seen by the community. We then introduced languages, which was one of our main aims. Many groups have shown the use of flash cards. We didn't make them with drawings. We instead asked the children to collect the material that they know already. For example some children living close to the forest area collected all the leaves they knew which are medicinal. They use these leaves to treat small cuts. These leaves are very relevant to their lives. The brought the leaves and stuck them on paper, repeated its name and slowly learnt the word associated with it. This is how we introduced language. For words we are also using different pictures. We ask the children to write their names on the walls and also days and months. We ask them to come and identify their names. We later introduce simple sentences and gradually longer sentences, paragraphs. Things are introduced step by step. We first introduce the Tamil language, and later start with mathematics up to 9 digits. All the material used is from the community itself. All the teaching materials are prepared the material using local resources. We have been running these centers for three years now. By the second year we were happy to see children learning. We made different groups, each group having their own teaching materials like the flash card, sentence cards. We have different letters and they make words from them. Different types of methodology are used. This is the third year and half of the children are in government schools. Out of eight schools one school was taken over by the government. Government teachers and our teachers are working together in this particular school. We're expecting all children will go to government school. Some of our teachers have been called by the government teachers to help them to prepare teaching material. Four teachers are working part time in the government school. Our teachers are not too qualified but are able to work with better qualified government school teachers. We have 17 teachers. Shyamala who is here has helped with training them and building their confidence. We've now started monthly meetings with the government teachers, the community and our teachers. This has developed very well. Recently I attended a meeting (a first experience for me). Government officers had come that day to find out how things are shaping in this government school and what community feels about this school. An open discussion took place and one parent from the community came up with the recommendation that parents who don't send their children to school will be talked to by the community. The school should not punish the child/parent. It is the community's responsibility to handle the issue. The government officers were happy that the community has come forward to take up responsibility of education. The teachers now want to conduct a kalajaata (street play) to campaign to increase enrollment in the different villages other than those with their schools. Last year they conducted their own kalajaata and received lots of response from other communities. Through this process they have also learnt about different complaints with the enrollment process. These complaints which included demanding certificates, demanding fees where they should be none were noted by our teachers and submitted to the government department. The teachers demanded this be taken care of. There were articles on this in the newspapers. The teachers are planning to take this further. After these years we find the need to build a resource center where everybody can come and participate. Shyamala can explain this in greater detail. 

Presentation by Shyamala 

Tamil Nadu is a caste ridden society. This is the first time that the Irulas, tribal people have asserted themselves. This is a big achievement by Bharati trust and Siddamma. Usually there is a fair amount of hatred between the Dalits and other communities. If one community asserts itself then other communities stir up and political parties get involved to take advantage. However in this case the way the Irulas have asserted themselves, whether in terms of livelihood or caste or anything else, it has been done in such a way that other communities have started respecting them. They now accept them on their own terms. So it is a silent revolution, a social change. Previously the Irulas used to bow their heads and not wear regular chappals. Those who were bonded laborers are now treated with respect by large land owners like Naidus who own 10 to 100 acres of land. This has been achieved over the past six years. This (is a ) kind of education, not only school education is important. Whether you call it community education or adult education, it is an education. It is education for both sides. The upper class has also started respecting the Irulas. The Irulas have also gained some self-confidence. These Irula teachers who have studied only till 10th standard are now being asked by government schools to help them. Thers is tremendous self confidence gained by the Irulas. It is culmination of these experiences that made us to want to have an Education Resource Center. We have already named it, 'Avayyar education resource center'. We are now appealing to all of you. This resource center is actually for the communities; all communities will come together and help form this resource center. We are actually locating this where different communities can participate. We hope to break out of caste conflicts so different communities can work together. People with different material resources or skills will share their own resources via the resource center. It will be interaction between the communities, the teachers and children. We want a model school with different curricula for child-centered learning to help children think creatively and independently. Not only this, we also want to emphasize a value based education that will encourage cooperativeness, rather than competitiveness. We want experimental workshops and a library of not only books, but also innovative methods like what many of you have shared and shown. We would like to have all those things for our library. Please help us in building this resource center. A big appeal to all of you to share all your resources - pedagogical, anything you feel like sharing. We would like to really have a model center that could be not only used by people in Tamil Nadu, but throughout India. Thank you. 

Contact Information 

Siddamma 
184/14, 
III cross street, Jaya nagar,
Thiruvallur-602 001. Tamil Nadu 
TeleFax - 04116 62607. 
E-mail : siddamma@md4.vsnl.net.in bharathitrust@yahoo.com  
Website: http://www.ashanet.org/projects/tamilnadu/irulas

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