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IMMERSION FIELD VISIT OF SERP
I always feel field visit a pilgrimage, a special journey to understand the fellow countrymen who are less fortunate, less privileged, to learn from their native wisdom and get the picture of factors which affect their life negatively or positively. SERP or society for elimination of rural poverty, an autonomous society of the department of rural development Andhra Pradesh has been working to ameliorate the condition of the poor through various interventions. As a course curriculum of PGDRDM course, we the NIRD students, Five months back, in march 2010, had gone for field visit to understand the intervention done by the SERP. During that visit we stationed at village for four days and interacted with the self help group (SHG) members to zila samakhya (ZS) members. As a student our understanding was clear about SERP that this organisation is with the poor, believe in poor’s ability and doing multi dimensional intervention to bring a change in poor’s life.
Recent immersion field visit was different from the earlier one. In this field visit we travelled more than 650 kilometres, stayed three nights at three different places, attended five meeting, saw more than six interventions and interacted with more than 100 people. The 90 hours (from 4th august to 7th august) spent in the field was an enriching experience and every minute of the field visit was a great learning for us.
Self help group is the back bone of community based organisation promoted by SERP. This is the foundation on which four tier structure self help group (SHG), village organisation(VO), mandal mahila samakhya(MS) and zila samakhya( ZS) are made. These community based organisations (CBOS) are instrumental in carrying out the development interventions of Serp.
As per our immersion scheduled, at first we interacted with SHG members of aadarsh at medikonda village. This village come under dharma sagar mandal which is adjacent to Warangal town. There we met with the members of Aadarsh self help group, which was set up in 11 years back. This was a mature SHG with 15 members, saving per month Rs1500/- , got seven times bank linkage ranging from Rs 25,000/- -3, 95,000/-. This SHG is paying Rs 12000/- per month for loan payment. There are various committee such as audit committee, bank linkage committee etc which function under SHG, which take care of concerned components. This SHG prepare its own micro credit plan for all the members in which the needs of SHG member are prioritised, loan amounts are decided and sent to bank or MMS through VO for loan. Every member of this group has taken loan and most of them have utilised the loan amount in income generating activities. Right now they are living comfortably in comparison of five years back.
During meeting of aadarsh SHG, I happen to see one sumitra, member of Shri raj rajeshwar self help group. Thirty two years aged, inter pass sumitra, is a SHG member from last five years. She was the late comer in joining SHG but after joining she took active participation in all the activities of SHG. She took two time big loan one 5,000/- and another 15,000/- rupees and several times small loans. She is working as community resource person (CRP). Recently she was sent to Bihar as an external CRP to assist there in formation of village organisation. She stayed in akour village, benpatti block of khagaria district for one month, imparted training to 15 SHG, each SHG two days training and helped informing two village organisations. When I asked how she feels about it, she said smilingly “development is a contagious process, which happened here it can happen to other place also, I am happy that I helped in mobilising people and worked tirelessly to carry out my responsibility. For this I was paid handsome amount”. There was satisfaction and sense of worth on her face.
Next day we attained the VO as well as MMS meeting at geesgonda. Besides data of VO and MMS we also came to know about the role and responsibility of VO, MMS , their office bearers , responsibility of master book keeper, master trainer, CRP etc. we saw different maintained accounts and other books and interacted with various committees and sub committees and came to know about their responsibilities, their functions and duties. One interesting thing I found there that VO give grade to every SHG on the basis of panch sutra which is informally known as ‘MRSIR’. This panch sutra is:-
Meeting regularly
Record maintaining regularly
Savings without fail
Internal lending
Repayment
As per our scheduled we dedicated our two days in understanding the Community based organisation from SHG to ZS and came to know about the resource persons at various level and all about them related to project work. Next two days we utilised in visiting the places where SERP’s interventions are going on. We visited place where education, NPM, health and nutrition, dairy, EGMM, neighbourhood school (managed by MMS) works are going on.
Education
The SHG movement in AP has reached to maturity level where a large number of SHG received the big loan from bank under total financial inclusion. This financial assistance brought a relief in the life of SHG families. But livelihood is just a start to live a dignified life, but to lead a better life it is very important to have quality education and better health. SERP’s intervention in education is a one step forward to realise the cherished dream of poor to live dignified and better life. No children should be deprived of quality education; every child should have access to standard and right kind of education. With this notion SERP has started the concept of ‘Balwadi’, a school of kids age 3-5, which act school less play ground more, a school where traditional kind of teaching is discouraged and teacher herself become kid with kids.
training for balwadi teachers is going on
When we came to know that at balwadi training centre narsempet, balwadi teachers training is going on, we decided to visit the centre. We went there and saw training was in progress. There were 35 participants (teachers) from khammam district, underwent 16 days training from seven trained traininer. These trainer received training of sixteen days at sodhna resource centre. The participants who came to receive training were selected through written and interview and their minimum qualification was matriculation. The training modules emphasise to understand the child psychology, make children learn through game, story, song, drama and different unconventional method. All the 35 participants were taking part actively; they were dancing, prancing, singing, and doing mimicry of different animals. . The participation of trainee teacher was impressive.
Midday meal
Next we went to Education centre at gunjur village of kottugurra mandal. In village we come to know that EC is running in primary school premises. In fact SERP had given Rs10, 000/- for the construction of hut and it was constructed but it is not convenient and safe for student to study under the roof of hut in rainy season. When we reached there, students were having their mid day meal. We stayed there for an hour and chatted with children. Children were chirpy, active and very friendly to teacher. There were 22 intakes of kids in bagwadi and that day 17 was present in the school. The teacher showed us a register in which she maintains the weekly basis the participation of individual students. This school was second home for the children.
Disability
As per rule, only women can be the member of self help group but disable self help group is an exception. In this group, women, men and children who are disable, can become the member of self help group. During this field visit we had an opportunity to visit this kind of group in raghunathpally block. Swayam Krishna mandal viklang samakhya is such kind of block level group (MMS) which has 790 disable members. Out of 790 members 450 are female and rest are male. About 100 members of this group is suffering from multiple disabilities and their disabity percentage range between 90-100 percent. This mandal consists of 37 village organisation and 69 exclusive SHG for disable. These SHGs are directly federated into mandal viklang samakhya. When one member of differently able group was asked “why there is a need of forming special SHG and mandal level organisation when mandal level organisation already exists”, she replied with broad smile “despite of our disabilities we want to be self reliant, we want to find the solution of our problems ourselves”. She informed us that swayam krishi mandal viklang samakhya helps its member in getting physically handicapped certificate, bus pass, train pass, wheel chair, tricycle, artificial limbs and hearing aids. The function of differently able self help group is same as other SHG members. They do saving, internal lending, take loan from bank and VO, prepare macro credit plan and discuss various government scheme. Each member of differently able group save 50/- per month and those members who have no livelihood they also contribute the amount as differently able people get 500/- per month from government. This mandal had received 20 lakhs from DRDA five years back, due to effective management of krishi mandal the corpus is nearly 32 lakhs. DRDA also assist polio members of this mandal by giving 15000/- for operation and other expenditures.
One enthusiastic member of swayam krishi samakhya, saiya sahera, who happens to be a teacher of neighbourhood school, took us to neighbourhood school which is adjacent to samakhya office. This school is opened especially for mentally retarded children age 0-14 and managed by MMS. The objective of this school is to make M R children self reliant so that they could do daily routine work themselves and give them elementary knowledge of mathematics and language. DRDA has given 1 lakh rupees for toys and essential equipments. Two months back when this school was opened, the total strength of student was 25 but now only 10 students come to school regularly. As some of students live far from mandal, they cannot afford transportation charge and in some cases even parents are also uninterested. The class timing of school is 9.30-4.30 and students who attend the school, they get free lunch in the school. This school has got one teacher and one aaya. The teacher gets 1000 /- per month and aaya gets 500/- .
Where disables are considered as a class apart, they get discrimination even in their own home, governments initiatives are like drizzling in scorching sun. In saiya word “we owed a lot as government opened a school and gave me meaning of life by sending me mahboobnagar for exposure visit and making me teacher in the school but government support is needed for long run in order to make every differently able people self reliant”.
The immersion field visit was quite motivational and inspirational. We got a chance to interact with frontline soldiers, real heroes who are taking part in SERP development activities with passion and zeal. Their dedications are really contagious and our motivation to work for rural India has gone one notch up. We are thankful to our organisation that has given us an opportunity to understand its initiatives better on ground level.
RAMANUJ DUBEY
I always feel field visit a pilgrimage, a special journey to understand the fellow countrymen who are less fortunate, less privileged, to learn from their native wisdom and get the picture of factors which affect their life negatively or positively. SERP or society for elimination of rural poverty, an autonomous society of the department of rural development Andhra Pradesh has been working to ameliorate the condition of the poor through various interventions. As a course curriculum of PGDRDM course, we the NIRD students, Five months back, in march 2010, had gone for field visit to understand the intervention done by the SERP. During that visit we stationed at village for four days and interacted with the self help group (SHG) members to zila samakhya (ZS) members. As a student our understanding was clear about SERP that this organisation is with the poor, believe in poor’s ability and doing multi dimensional intervention to bring a change in poor’s life.
Recent immersion field visit was different from the earlier one. In this field visit we travelled more than 650 kilometres, stayed three nights at three different places, attended five meeting, saw more than six interventions and interacted with more than 100 people. The 90 hours (from 4th august to 7th august) spent in the field was an enriching experience and every minute of the field visit was a great learning for us.
Self help group is the back bone of community based organisation promoted by SERP. This is the foundation on which four tier structure self help group (SHG), village organisation(VO), mandal mahila samakhya(MS) and zila samakhya( ZS) are made. These community based organisations (CBOS) are instrumental in carrying out the development interventions of Serp.
As per our immersion scheduled, at first we interacted with SHG members of aadarsh at medikonda village. This village come under dharma sagar mandal which is adjacent to Warangal town. There we met with the members of Aadarsh self help group, which was set up in 11 years back. This was a mature SHG with 15 members, saving per month Rs1500/- , got seven times bank linkage ranging from Rs 25,000/- -3, 95,000/-. This SHG is paying Rs 12000/- per month for loan payment. There are various committee such as audit committee, bank linkage committee etc which function under SHG, which take care of concerned components. This SHG prepare its own micro credit plan for all the members in which the needs of SHG member are prioritised, loan amounts are decided and sent to bank or MMS through VO for loan. Every member of this group has taken loan and most of them have utilised the loan amount in income generating activities. Right now they are living comfortably in comparison of five years back.
During meeting of aadarsh SHG, I happen to see one sumitra, member of Shri raj rajeshwar self help group. Thirty two years aged, inter pass sumitra, is a SHG member from last five years. She was the late comer in joining SHG but after joining she took active participation in all the activities of SHG. She took two time big loan one 5,000/- and another 15,000/- rupees and several times small loans. She is working as community resource person (CRP). Recently she was sent to Bihar as an external CRP to assist there in formation of village organisation. She stayed in akour village, benpatti block of khagaria district for one month, imparted training to 15 SHG, each SHG two days training and helped informing two village organisations. When I asked how she feels about it, she said smilingly “development is a contagious process, which happened here it can happen to other place also, I am happy that I helped in mobilising people and worked tirelessly to carry out my responsibility. For this I was paid handsome amount”. There was satisfaction and sense of worth on her face.
Next day we attained the VO as well as MMS meeting at geesgonda. Besides data of VO and MMS we also came to know about the role and responsibility of VO, MMS , their office bearers , responsibility of master book keeper, master trainer, CRP etc. we saw different maintained accounts and other books and interacted with various committees and sub committees and came to know about their responsibilities, their functions and duties. One interesting thing I found there that VO give grade to every SHG on the basis of panch sutra which is informally known as ‘MRSIR’. This panch sutra is:-
Meeting regularly
Record maintaining regularly
Savings without fail
Internal lending
Repayment
As per our scheduled we dedicated our two days in understanding the Community based organisation from SHG to ZS and came to know about the resource persons at various level and all about them related to project work. Next two days we utilised in visiting the places where SERP’s interventions are going on. We visited place where education, NPM, health and nutrition, dairy, EGMM, neighbourhood school (managed by MMS) works are going on.
Education
The SHG movement in AP has reached to maturity level where a large number of SHG received the big loan from bank under total financial inclusion. This financial assistance brought a relief in the life of SHG families. But livelihood is just a start to live a dignified life, but to lead a better life it is very important to have quality education and better health. SERP’s intervention in education is a one step forward to realise the cherished dream of poor to live dignified and better life. No children should be deprived of quality education; every child should have access to standard and right kind of education. With this notion SERP has started the concept of ‘Balwadi’, a school of kids age 3-5, which act school less play ground more, a school where traditional kind of teaching is discouraged and teacher herself become kid with kids.
When we came to know that at balwadi training centre narsempet, balwadi teachers training is going on, we decided to visit the centre. We went there and saw training was in progress. There were 35 participants (teachers) from khammam district, underwent 16 days training from seven trained traininer. These trainer received training of sixteen days at sodhna resource centre. The participants who came to receive training were selected through written and interview and their minimum qualification was matriculation. The training modules emphasise to understand the child psychology, make children learn through game, story, song, drama and different unconventional method. All the 35 participants were taking part actively; they were dancing, prancing, singing, and doing mimicry of different animals. . The participation of trainee teacher was impressive.
Next we went to Education centre at gunjur village of kottugurra mandal. In village we come to know that EC is running in primary school premises. In fact SERP had given Rs10, 000/- for the construction of hut and it was constructed but it is not convenient and safe for student to study under the roof of hut in rainy season. When we reached there, students were having their mid day meal. We stayed there for an hour and chatted with children. Children were chirpy, active and very friendly to teacher. There were 22 intakes of kids in bagwadi and that day 17 was present in the school. The teacher showed us a register in which she maintains the weekly basis the participation of individual students. This school was second home for the children.
Disability
As per rule, only women can be the member of self help group but disable self help group is an exception. In this group, women, men and children who are disable, can become the member of self help group. During this field visit we had an opportunity to visit this kind of group in raghunathpally block. Swayam Krishna mandal viklang samakhya is such kind of block level group (MMS) which has 790 disable members. Out of 790 members 450 are female and rest are male. About 100 members of this group is suffering from multiple disabilities and their disabity percentage range between 90-100 percent. This mandal consists of 37 village organisation and 69 exclusive SHG for disable. These SHGs are directly federated into mandal viklang samakhya. When one member of differently able group was asked “why there is a need of forming special SHG and mandal level organisation when mandal level organisation already exists”, she replied with broad smile “despite of our disabilities we want to be self reliant, we want to find the solution of our problems ourselves”. She informed us that swayam krishi mandal viklang samakhya helps its member in getting physically handicapped certificate, bus pass, train pass, wheel chair, tricycle, artificial limbs and hearing aids. The function of differently able self help group is same as other SHG members. They do saving, internal lending, take loan from bank and VO, prepare macro credit plan and discuss various government scheme. Each member of differently able group save 50/- per month and those members who have no livelihood they also contribute the amount as differently able people get 500/- per month from government. This mandal had received 20 lakhs from DRDA five years back, due to effective management of krishi mandal the corpus is nearly 32 lakhs. DRDA also assist polio members of this mandal by giving 15000/- for operation and other expenditures.
One enthusiastic member of swayam krishi samakhya, saiya sahera, who happens to be a teacher of neighbourhood school, took us to neighbourhood school which is adjacent to samakhya office. This school is opened especially for mentally retarded children age 0-14 and managed by MMS. The objective of this school is to make M R children self reliant so that they could do daily routine work themselves and give them elementary knowledge of mathematics and language. DRDA has given 1 lakh rupees for toys and essential equipments. Two months back when this school was opened, the total strength of student was 25 but now only 10 students come to school regularly. As some of students live far from mandal, they cannot afford transportation charge and in some cases even parents are also uninterested. The class timing of school is 9.30-4.30 and students who attend the school, they get free lunch in the school. This school has got one teacher and one aaya. The teacher gets 1000 /- per month and aaya gets 500/- .
Where disables are considered as a class apart, they get discrimination even in their own home, governments initiatives are like drizzling in scorching sun. In saiya word “we owed a lot as government opened a school and gave me meaning of life by sending me mahboobnagar for exposure visit and making me teacher in the school but government support is needed for long run in order to make every differently able people self reliant”.
The immersion field visit was quite motivational and inspirational. We got a chance to interact with frontline soldiers, real heroes who are taking part in SERP development activities with passion and zeal. Their dedications are really contagious and our motivation to work for rural India has gone one notch up. We are thankful to our organisation that has given us an opportunity to understand its initiatives better on ground level.
RAMANUJ DUBEY
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