Only one more to go - You're doing well!

For those of you still interested in what’s been happening with me over the past 15 months I am sending what will probably be my penultimate update.

My work has progressed well and a few projects I have initiated are finally underway. I am working with female prisoners in our local female jail and currently am supporting a woman named Bala to visit the jail twice a week to give yoga, meditation and counselling sessions to the women there. I myself as a foreigner am not allowed to enter the prison, so my side is more organisational. I also support a local organisation, Tamil Nadu Depressed Women Welfare Society (TNDWWS) (Please see www.tndwws.org, a website I created for them to see more of what they do) to go to both the male and female prison every fifteen days to give HIV/AIDS awareness to the inmates. These projects are very cheap as I only pay for the transport costs, their time is given voluntarily. I pay for these things from money which was donated to me before I came away.

I also am in the initial stages of conducting an income generation project for the female inmates. I had the idea that they can make handmade greetings cards, focusing now only on Christmas cards, but this will develop into other types of cards in due course. I have a women who is skilled in embroidery visit the prison to train the women in how to make Christmas designs on cloth. I then will attach the cloth pieces to handmade paper from Sri Aurobindo paper factory in Pondicherry. These cards cost me about 38p to produce, which includes the cost of materials, shipping and payment to the women. Money from sale of these cards will go towards the next batch and also it is hoped to extend this programme to released women and wives of current male prisoners who have been ostracised from their communities and have little chances in making an income for themselves or their family.

Another thing I am working on is fundraising for Kodaikanal organisation Action for Community Transformation (ACT) India Foundation. Check the site I created for them www.actindiafoundation.org, they work solely with forest dwelling tribals in the Palani Hills of Kodai. The tribals living there score low on every socio-economic indicator going, and the organisation has not been able to do as much as it would like due to the director’s insufficient English, necessary when trying to contact donor agencies. Projects I am currently trying to get funding for include tuition centres for the children, who ten to drop out of school at age 8, or 13 if they are the lucky ones. They also have limited chances of income generating and are at the mercy of local coffee plantation owners, who pay them just 50p for a days labour, and sexually abuse the women whenever they take their fancy. Health in these tribal villages is very low, due largely to malnutrition and anaemia, which is suffered by about 70% of the population, bought about from poor wages and inability to afford nutritious food. Their malnutrition and anaemia leave them wide open to TB, which it is estimated about 15% suffer from. As they have little education about this disease they are prone to spread it to family and community members, hardly surprising when all family members share the single room that constitutes their house. Some also have such poor quality housing that I would be hard pressed to actually call their dwelling a house. For some their shelter is made from any material they can find, such as opened cement sacks, scraps of tarpaulin, and leaves, held up by sticks. They cook on wood fires inside their huts and are severely affected by the smoke as it has no outlet. Traditionally Tribals have been a neglected population, they fall under the ingrained hierarchy system and few NGOs (in our area at least) have come to their assistance.

Last month I gave a yoga class to 23 female “barefoot doctors” belonging to rural Dalit communities in a district called Pudukkottai. This was kind of fun for me, but the space we had was cramped and the electricity often wasn’t working, which wouldn’t have made such a difference anyway as the room we were in had only one fan. I taught the girls meditation, a breathing exercise and Suriya Namaskara (Sun salutation). I was really impressed by the flexibility of these girls, especially so as none of them had every done any physical activity before. It was intended that these girls will then go to the villages where they work and hold yoga classes for the landless labourers. However I had to tell some of the girls to practice more before they could go, as if yoga is done wrong more harm than good will occur.

Since March of this year I have been trying to register my own NGO called HoldingHands International, and a few weeks ago I finally got registered. I wanted to start my own organisation for a number of reasons. My organisation will be a partnership organisation, as working in a place where the local language is anything but English I am crippled in being able to do the village level work. As I make new partnerships, and strengthen existing ones I have more of a voice when it comes to decisions and pressing for work to be done timely and to high standards. Also the type of work I am involved in is highly competitive. I have been without a salary for the past 15 months and given my experience I am still under-qualified to apply for a salary job with one of the known NGOs. By managing my own organisation I am able to show to future employees my capabilities and effectiveness at organising and getting work done. Also by having my own organisation I am my own manager, I can decide where I work, how much I work, and what my involvement with a project will be. I also can apply for grants for projects which my foreign partners are unable to obtain, purely due to the fact they are not UK registered. However, as I am a new organisation getting funding will be problematic. Funders like to see your work history. They want to know that you can be trusted to spend the grant in the ways agreed, and that you have the necessary skills and resources necessary to implement a project. I believe in myself somewhat, without trying to sound arrogant, as I have seen the (poor) quality and ways of working of organisations established and working in the field for more than 20 years. As it is likely I will not be able to procure any donor grants for my programmes in maybe the first two years I have taken to try and find other ways of funding, such as through sale of my cards, and also through sales of other products I will obtain locally. These include plates made from palm sheaves (if this is the right word, it’s not a palm leaf, and neither is it the trunk, it’s the part that’s shed as the tree grows taller) which are 100% bio-degradable, 100% organic and reusable so long as wet food does not sit on them for too long. I also have been granted permission to sell paper products from Sri Aurobindo’s paper factory. They make really nice files, notebooks, photo albums, picture frames, cards etc, all from 100% natural paper. I also will be relying on my own ability at fundraising from the public, of which I have a few ideas, and also from friends and family. I invite you to take a look at my website www.holdinghands-international.org and see my accounts pages. I want to keep everything I do, and everything I spend totally transparent, so that people can know where every penny is spent.

So currently I write this from Mysore, in Kanataka. I decided to come here to do a month of ashtanga yoga. I have only been here for 3 weeks and only have another week to go. I took a week off and went to Kodai, to ACT India Foundation to meet my friend Soum, who is a documentary maker. He made a documentary of the lives of the Tribals, which I hope will aid me when I try and get the organisation funding from the UK. The film should really help as it’s plain to see from the way the Tribals live that they are inadequate in so many ways when trying to modernise or compete with others in employment, health, education and, well, life basically. The yoga here is good, but classes are only for an hour and a half each morning, the rest of the day I have to myself. While this does mean that I have plenty of time to be doing me work, it does also mean that I will be spending £100 of money I can barely afford to spend. It is a shame really as I have been working really long days for quite a while and was looking for something different to do before coming home, but it’s not really the experience I was hoping to have. Also although there are chances for me to hang with other westerners and most are really nice, they are all pretty much travel virgins who have never taken public transport in India before or eaten at a ‘locals” place. It is unfortunate that I can’t eat out with them, but I now feel that paying more than 60p for a meal is somewhat expensive! The foreigners here are happy to spend 3 or 4 times that amount on a single meal. I think when I came to India 3 years ago I too would spend that amount, but when you’ve been here for so long, you realise the true value of the currency and I totally know that I can eat well for 25p!! I will miss some things about Mysore after I leave next week. I think the distance from work will be one thing. India is starting to piss me off somewhat, and it’s come at good time to hang out with foreigners for a change!

Anyway, I will be coming home on August 23rd. I got accepted to do a masters at Manchester University in Management and Implementation of Development Projects. I decided however to postpone until 2007 as my organisation only just got registered and I wouldn’t want to leave it now still in it’s infancy. I will be coming back to India next year, either immediately after Christmas, or in February, depending mostly on whether I have managed to save enough money to be able to afford to come away for another 8 months, and also depending on whether I love in London and am able to finish my diploma in International Development Studies, at Birkbeck University. I actually am very much looking forwards to coming home. There are so many things I have been deprived of over the past 15 months, which for most of the time has been ok, but now I find myself changing somewhat as I adjust to little interaction with people of my own culture and language. I like the simplicity of life here, and the realism that you are forced into, but to be without friends, family, a social life, activities outside of work, comforts, familiar food, etc, takes it’s toll after a while. It’s strange because although I am used to living in India, and don’t feel so different when I am walking in a town, to the locals I will always be seen as a foreigner, and will always be stared at and honoured purely due to the colour of my skin. I attract more “friends” that I actually want, good friends of course I don’t mind, but still, to show you the difference in cultures, a good friend gave me the advice “don’t marry someone you love. It’s better to not know them first and then let the love develop”. When this is the general attitude of most people here (and this is just one example, I could give many more), I hope you can see how it may be hard to relate. However, despite all the downfalls of living in India in a non-tourity place I still don’t feel ready to leave for good, and am glad that I will be coming back in August to again work. However, when I return in August there will be some changes. I think I may only be back for 6 months or so, and 3 months will be engaged in a kind of field experience. There’s a university here called Gandigram Rural Institute. One of the professors is my friend. He’s actually in the process of creating an online post graduate diploma course, for me originally, well inspired by me, but it will be open to all foreigners. It will onvolve 3 months of online learning and 3 months field work. I have helped him devise the syllabus, and also set the price!! He requested that seeing as he did this for me, I HAVE to be the first student. If anyone is interested in this, it’ll be some kind of international development studies course, I told him to charge £500, please let me know.

I only wanted to write something short for those of you that have difficulties reading my usual blurbs but again, I have failed! I would appreciate hearing from you, even though I may not have been able to contact you individually. For the past few months I have been working 60 hour weeks, and when not working I rarely feel like sitting in front of the computer to type, yet again. So apologies my friends, please don’t think it’s because I’ve forgotten you or moved on. This certainly is not the case. For those of you that I can, I look forwards to meeting this year. I look forwards to a regular life for the 5 months I’m allowing myself.

I hope you don’t mind me probing you for funding, if you take offence at this, then please just ignore it. Any help you do offer will not only help the deprived poorest of the poor here in India, but you will also be helping me by aiding the firm establishment of HoldingHands, which will be most valuable in years to come as the first years are the hardest. Your help helps me to live my dream and will be of benefit to me for the rest of my life as big donors and potential employers start to give me confidence. I hope to expand my work to other countries and other communities in need as the years go on, working my way round to Africa. That’s the vision now, but of course that may all change. I vow only to work with the poorest of the poor, in communities which have yet to receive any government or NGO assistance. I am interested in Tribals and also helping deserving communities get a leg up when they themselves are unable to do it for themselves. I don’t want to make our communities reliant on NGOs, but I want to give them a chance that they may be the ones to shape their own future, in a way that will be sustainable, so their future generations will not need aid or assistance as they have finally become self sufficient, and players in the modern world.

Thank you for staying with me this far. Your encouragement and support means a lot to me, especially on low days when I question all of this and the point of what I am doing. Although I will be home in 2 months, I still appreciate your e-mails and posts from those of you that do. For those of you worried that I have changed into someone you can no longer relate to, have no fear, I am still the same Ruth I always was, I still like the same things, only now I have a little more direction and focus in my life. I look forwards to coming home, and doing stupid things, hanging out, and being the person I was before I left.

With much love
Ruth xxx

P.s For those of you free and able please come to a barbeque at my parents house in Burford on the weekend after I get back. It’ll be on Saturday 26th August. All are welcome and I’d love to see as many of you there as possible. There’s plenty of parking space and lots of sleeping space too.