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| ANISHA - A Campus full of hopes |
Part 1
As we prepare ourselves
for the arrival of children from the remote village schools around Mahadeshwara
Hills a flood of memories surge in my mind. We are getting ready for the
culmination program of the series of event we carried out in about two dozen
schools of three grama-panchayaths of Marthally, Ponnachi and Mahadeshwara
hills. This is the time when the Education department gets stern in disapproving
extra-curricular activity of any sort for any class in the Govt. schools! We
had cautiously left out students appearing for any Board examination. We did not want blames from anybody that our
activities disturbed their academic pursuit in any way.
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| A simple yet rich kitchen garden at ANISHA |
The project was to
establish Organic Kitchen Garden in the schools and provide nutritional
supplement in their Mid-day meal. Besides providing an opportunity to fix many
nutrition based ailments in children we linked the exercise to science
teaching. Many outdoor activities were designed to go along with the chores of
sowing seeds and watering the plants. The necessary expertise was sourced from
the solid experience that Anisha- a
grassroots NGO that propagates Organic Farming among small and marginal
farmers, had in the field. Rajan and Valli, the founder trustees of Anisha had
researched methods of soil preparation and selection of crops for the area as
well as worked hard passionately to rope in local community into their nature
friendly farming practices.
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| Seed bank of posterity |
Three years ago our
mutual friend Mr. Gururaj Budhya introduced me to Rajan and Valli and proposed
to be part of their outreach activities among children. Initially when I was
called to interact with the children over week-ends, they saw children
responding better to their initiatives. Soon we decided to pool in our mutual
experiences in propagating Organic Farming among school children. A yearlong pilot
project was worked out in sixteen schools of Marthally Panchayath. It had
components ranging from teacher’s orientation program to practical Kitchen
gardening sessions for children. After the completion of the project a third
party evaluation was also called in. The suggestions made by the evaluating
committee were seriously considered in envisaging the current project.
In the last week of
July 2016, Valli called to fix up a date to kick start the program at the
earliest as ‘aadi’ or the sowing
season was fast getting over. I
particularly wanted the program to have a solid launch and not an unceremonious
beginning; some “higher up” in the education department must at least inaugurate
the event. Beyond publicity or their personal charisma they would drive in some
seriousness in the schools and the community. My long standing experience with
the system told me how important any matter would become if you managed to get the
signatory himself to grace your program besides providing a signature of
authority in green ink upon your proposal.
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| Rajan with Children |
We were looking forward
with fingers crossed for the DDPI to inaugurate the program which she had given
consent to. In fact things were not so easy from her point of view. She was
carrying a transfer order; some people contemplated that it was a suspension
order! Rajan and Valli were for not to go near the office for some time as the
permission for the program was granted. They had spent several hours for many
days at the DDPI’s office, beyond the office hours. They strongly felt it is
better to set off with the program immediately and show results in the field.
But the fact that Chamarajanagara District had a very dynamic and promising CEO
was strongly at the back of my mind. I was slightly ambitious to have her come
over to inaugurate. To meet her and get an acceptance to come over to the program
would take up another few days. But Valli reasserted her stand. ‘Children have
to be distributed with seeds after a daylong introductory session in the schools;
by the time we go to the last school the season would be gone. There is no time
to lose.’
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| A meeting to make the dreams come true |
We immediately got an
appointment with the CEO and she readily agreed to inaugurate the program on a
shortest convenient for her. With her acceptance, came the compulsion for us to
re tailor the inaugural program. The event had to be in a Govt. School, show
case the real need of the program and be accessible to the guests as well as the
crowd that had to be mustered to match the dignitaries on the dais. We had
already fixed up Kadaburu GHPS as the venue. The Headmaster who was welcoming
to us earlier when, the DDPI alone was the guest, started fretting and
veining. He thought we were drawing the
hawks eye upon him just as he was about to complete his glorious service of a
teacher. In three months time he would retire and didn’t want to meet the lady
officer. Like many other headmasters and teachers he too was narrating versions
of how strict new CEO was and how badly she had treated three teachers the
moment she took over the office. Of course they were not emphasizing how loath
they were and how they had kept their schools. Some teachers applauded her move
and secretly revealed to us what the headmasters were uneasy about.
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| A kid with his fruit of labour |
We personally visited other
schools to invite the headmasters and students. It was astonishing to know that
five headmasters had already applied for leave during the inaugural day and
three more suggested that they would not be in town. It took a bit of a time
for us to realize this hatred “up-and –coming” was out of their fear psychosis.
In fact we tried to invite the PDO of the panchyath and the BEO; they were on
some unofficially official duty and not available till the last minute.
- Manu K
