Hi all,

Music for Harmony is back!

It is an event led, organised and managed by young people to celebrate peace and harmony. It is an effort by Pravah, a community of changemakers, to bring everyone together and make a difference.

This year again, we are getting together to understand and spread the message of peace through music, puppetry, theatre, photography, and such creative outlets.

We invite you to help us create a photo exhibition. What do you think peace means to you? What around you signifies harmony? Send in pictures of anything and everything around you that bring you happiness and joy. Let’s put together peace in pictures and make memories!

You can email two-three of your pictures (high resolution pictures, please!) by November 25th, 2009 at youth.pravah@gmail.com. You can even send us hard copies (5” X 7”) of your pictures at the address given below. Make sure they reach us by December 7th, so everyone can be a part of this! We’d also like to request you to send a short note describing the pictures and how it signifies peace. It’d help everyone to understand your point of view clearly.

Call Prachi at 9891963336 or our office at 01126213918 for any queries.

SMILE Pravah team

Pravah

C-24B

Kalkaji

New Delhi

www.pravah.org

smilevolunteers.blogspot.com

Movie: Gender Bender
Date: 7th October, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room, Deptt. Of Social Work, Jamia University campus

The second day of the film festival saw the movie Gender Bender. Titled thus for the changing roles of women, the movie forced a re-look on the traditional definitions of gender, and gender-specific roles. To get the audience thinking along the same lines, a teaser was organized – a mind jog where the participants were asked to delineate various jobs into male/ female. It was deliberate on the part of the facilitators (Nishu and Sonal) to not give them time to think – we wanted to record their first responses. With this activity, the movie started.

After the movie, the discussion touched on multiple issues, and an effort has been made in this report to record all of these, and the interconnections between them as well.

Perceived gender roles – The audience was asked to revisit the jobs that they had categorized into gender definitions and say if they wanted to change some of those responses. Through this discussion, we also tried to check if these roles were assigned because of some intrinsic gender-specific qualities, or were they just part of a stereotype. It was decided that although roles were necessary, it was also important to allow individuals to make their own choice – and that their choice be respected. Also, the roles, though different, should not decide the gender dynamics; the status of a male/female should be the same.

Reservation for women – With equal status, the question of reservation for women also came up. Here there was a divided opinion. Some were all for reservation in educational institutes, while some felt that an opportunity should be provided to girls to allow them equal access, but admission should only be on merit. From this, the discussion moved to reservation in public transport, like buses and the metro. Members of the audience thought that this was not justified.

Eve-teasing – From buses, the discussion progressed to eve-teasing – reasons for it, possible consequences, and who, if any, is to blame. This discussion was intense, and had to be carried on from the seminar room to the garden, due to non-availability of time. There was no closure here (and neither were we aiming for it), but the participants realized the role they had to play in it, and thus took the first step towards being active citizens.

The discussion came to a close with a vow to take back some learnings from this space into personal lives, and to be the change they want to see.

On the 13th of September, the monthly meeting of SMILErs was held and it went on from around 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening!

Many things were discussed during the course of the day related to our targets, our accomplishments of the past month and our future goals, the details of which will come up soon.

Through the final discussion in which Abhijit, Neeru, Sudeep, Surana, Nishu, Rashmi, Neha, Sulab and Anurag were present we decided to modify our action project and slightly alter our future proceedings.

Firstly, it was mutually reached that the goals were to be modified a bit keeping the current scenario of working into consideration.

Secondly, it was decided that the film club was doing a great job in increasing visibility of Pravah in various colleges which was highlighted by the fact that we have been asked to return to all the colleges to which we’ve been. So it was decided to strengthen our relations with those college students by continuing the screenings and discussions so that they might be involved with Pravah as and when something comes up in the future. It was also decided to reach out to more colleges through similar means so as to start the process in those colleges too.

Thirdly a new project was discussed and was decided to be started asap. It was established by consensus that the Rural Internship was all about grass root level movements and engaging positively with those people to bring about some sort of change and enriching our knowledge along the process. It was felt that this aspect was previously missing from our action project and needed to be fused with our plan of action so that we don’t lose touch with our learning’s. So the plan was that we will take up a backward / underdeveloped community and develop a plan in that space. The plan broadly had 3 aspects :

1. Initially, it was about interacting with the community through various conventional and unconventional means so as to get an insight into their lives and develop a bond. This is meant to be a continuous process.

2. At the same time it was decided to revive the ACR (action research group) so as to effectively compile the information on the community, establish various trends about them and concluding something with all the data. This will be very time consuming and intensive process which will require a great amount of dedication and seriousness on our part. At the same time it will be in all probability a very fun process in which we will get to learn a lot.

3. Using all of this it was decided that we could develop and launch some sort of program if things worked out well that would benefit the target community.

Apart from this a plan to Jaipur was decided so as to witness a community project and learn from it. It will take place at the earliest

Meanwhile search of the community will also begin.

Also as usual we ppl had a lot of fun!!

Looking fwd to seeing u all.

Keep :)ing

SMILE'rs :)

Sorry to inform all of you that the movie screening organized of the movie "Born into Brothels" at IIT on the 12th of September at 5:00 p.m. has been called off due to non availability of space on the particular day. We apologize for the same and will make sure that we inform you whenever the next screening takes place.

However the presentation of the Rural Internship by the SMILE volunteers will take place on Sunday the 13th of September and we hope to see all of you there!

"NSS IITD" in collaboration with "Pravah" organised the screening of "India Untouched" on August 29, Saturday facilitated by SMILE volunteers. The highlight was the discussion part after the screening. Beyond all expectations, audience found the relevance of the issue and almost everyone present there was an intimate part of the discussion. The issue of the movie was well known to all, but the way it was put there in the movie and later the points discussed seemed to enlighten everyone and put a lot of unknown facts forward. The way the audience discussed their personal examples related to the issue, showed it was very near to their hearts.
Some of the major points that came out of the discussion and movie were:

· The awareness of the fact that it was still so prevalent both in practices at the grass root level and psychologically in the so called educated elite, the point to think about is, does it exist in IIT too? (as highlighted by the JNU student case).

· The fact that people who are victims of untouchability further perpetuate the practice (subdivisions in Dalit castes and how some Dalitsub-castes subjected other Dalit sub-castes to various atrocities that they themselves were victims of).

· Someone pointed out that the Manusmriti isn’t an integral part of the Vedas and that in the Bhagvad Gita Lord Krishna offers help to everyone irrespective of their caste.

· The caste discrimination subconsciously still exists in our hearts even if we don’t explicitly practice it in reference to the lady who denied any caste beliefs but still wanted to strictly marry within her caste.

· State machinery uses castes to divide us for their own political gains.

· It was new to some to that caste distinctions occur in almost all religions and even states like Kerala which is a communist state and boasts of the highest literacy rate in India has such a rampant growth of caste based practices.

· There was a heated discussion on the issue of reservations and whether they should be community based or community, on the creamy layer issue, the positives of the system of reservations which drew some interesting and thought provoking arguments from either side.

· Finally some were perplexed at the reasons for this sort of discrimination and longed for the prevalence of humanity in all.

This brought us to the question of taking initiatives and not waiting for the society to change but to start changing ourselves. The effort to start the process of thinking and self-questioning thus got underway. The very hope to change and not to accept things as they are seemed to flame in everyone. It was very encouraging for us to see your enthusiasm and to hear out your point of views.

SMILE Pravah would like to continue its association with IIT Delhi and we eagerly await any comments on the movie or related issues. We would also like to further conduct such screenings and discussions if feasible. Please feel free to write out your views of the event and also to contact us for any sort of information or comments.

Anurag anurag0999@gmail.com