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 :)

SMILER’s from IIT, in collaboration with NSS took up the initiative of giving their rural internship presentation at 2LT2 in IIT. The session was being moderated by Abishek and Anurag. It started with an activity wherein, the audience was divided into pairs and one member of each pair was told to hold the index finger of other member and the latter had to free their finger. Everybody was then asked that how did they free their fingers and spontaneous came the reply from all that they forcefully pulled their finger out from the grip. But no one had requested the other member to leave their finger. So the point that was stressed here was thinking out of the box and looking at the alternate and sustainable ways to deal with things.

The audience was asked that why do they feel volunteering is important?
Following were some of the responses:-

Leadership quality enhances.
To be heard by the larger society.
To help other’s and not just looking at our own personal benefits.
Volunteering is a two-way learning process.

There was a brief discussion on the last two contradictory statements and finally the conclusion that the audience arrived upon was that volunteering is not just giving something to society without any personal benefits but the learning that unfolds and the skills/qualities that enrich the volunteer there-on help in his/her personality development.

Then the question was thrown to the students that how does volunteering help us and following were the responses:-

Provides Satisfaction.
Helps in networking.
Personality development.
Communication skills are enhanced.
‘Job karke hum engineer ban sakte hain, insaan nahi’
Also one of the students said that rural people are not aware about the schemes meant for them and neither do they have an access to them. So, volunteering is about reaching to these lesser privileged people and in his words – ‘kisi ko to pehla kadam lena padega’.
People have a lot of expectations from IIT’ians- that they are educated, they are the cream and would help the masses.

Abhishek and Anurag then gave a brief introduction of Pravah and the SMILE program of it. And also shared their rural internship experiences:-

Abishek Chaudhary: who went to SECMOL, Ladakh shared that his main task there was to teach students. He also threw light on the fact that in 1990, the pass percentage was just 5-10% in the village where he had gone and how SECMOL took up the initiative of “Operation New hook” of improving upon the educational status of the village. He also said that the internship was the most cherishable period in his life.

Anurag: who had gone to Sabuj Sangha, Sunderbans for his internship shared that he chose the organisation because it works on a lot of issues and for the holistic development of people. He gave a brief introduction about the organisation, where he interned and threw light on the Cyclone AILA disaster that had struck the coastal areas of West Bengal on 25th May, 2009. He emphasised on the hostility, warmth and kindness of people and the very fact that despite being poor, they are very welcoming and gracious.
He concluded with his learnings- that he learnt to get out of his comfort zone, learnt professionalism as he had to finish the tasks assigned to him in time and to have fun to the optimal level.

Abishek Surana: who went to Satpuda foundation in Maharashtra, shared his experiences of living without electricity for 1 month and going to jungle for the first time. He also stressed on the fact that everything has to reach the bottom too and has to be sustainable like if electricity is not reaching to all, then what is the use of having it. It leads to more disparity and urban- rural divide.

Other SMILER’s also shared their experiences of their rural internships.
There were a few questions by the students:

Who made the arrangements for you to stay in the rural areas?
How was the reaction of people regarding the work you did?
Why doesn’t scheme reach to the masses?
What change did you bring there?

Response: Political motives and corruption are so deeply imbibed in our country that leads to deliberate lack of resources to the people and deliberately keeping them away from the resources. To bring about change in a month is very difficult but the very fact that we are sharing our learnings and screening movies on social issues conveys the fact that we can bring in some change somewhere. And more importantly if we change even our own selves is an achievement.


Moderators also shared about the changes in themselves:

Our problems suddenly seemed very small in front of their’s.
Have become more self aware.
Filled with optimism.
Knowledge about many issues has enhanced.

The session was concluded with the following lines and then the video, which summarised the whole process of rural internship experience:

Peel life to see the real life,

Expand your boundaries.

Keep :)ing

SMILE'rs :)

Date: 9th September 2009
Venue: Mata Sundari College for Women, Mata Sundari Lane
New Delhi- 110002

Introduction:

The movie screening at Mata Sundari College was Different in many ways. The observations that came up during the screening and facilitation has been a great leaning experience in terms of our planning and Implementation of the whole Movie Screening Process. The Movie was screened in the computer lab of the college and it was encouraging to see that not only did the students turn out in large numbers but also one could see that there was active involvement of the teachers, admistrators and the members of Matasundari Movie Screening Society. The Movie screening started with a brief introduction of Pravah and Smilers and then we screened Skin Deep – “A documentary which reflects on the eternal search for Ideal Feminity and how it permeates the self image of women.”


Issues :

The Screening of the Movie could not complete due to a power cut, however the discussion was more or less Fruitful. A number of interesting perspectives relating to following issues were discussed and elaborated

FEMINISM IDENTITY

STEREOTYPES PORTRAITS

GENDER


Discussion :

• The discussion commences with the audiences expressing their views on the movie and the issues that were evident from the narratives of the characters who hold an integral part of the movie
• Once the discussion gathered momentum a small activity was undertaken o understand the stereotypes that are generally formed especially in context of the term Beauty/Beautiful
• The activity was basically a one word association, wherein each one of us tried to define beauty in one word and a few interesting question and viewpoints emerged
• What does the term Beautiful mean?
• Beauty is not all about physical appearances it is equally relevant to the inner self
• “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” – The way we look at things often influence on what is considered as beautiful
• Then the discussion was routed towards the stereotypes- Its Origin, Impact and personal experiences.
• Our society is male dominated and a lot of stereotypes have been formed by them
• Instances were quoted by the audiences to show both the sides of the gender discrimination



Summary:

The active involvement of the audiences intensified the discussion and gathered momentum at different times, in spite of the fact that the movie screening could not be completed due to frequent Obstructions such as power cuts which did lead to unforeseen delays. However, the fact that a lot of people were actually willing to carry forward the screening at a future date was very encouraging. One of the high points of the movie screening was that a number of students approached us and asked if in the future we can organize more of such event and even create spaces for students to discover. We have learnt our lessons from the screening and a quote by Mr. Clay P. Bedford top executive of Kaiser Industries in California sums up our experience.

“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives”

We would like to thank the Teacher's for their support in carrying out this screening and also thank the students for showing so much interest by being an active part of the discussion.

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!

Our third screening was held with a very enthusiastic crowd from the Sociology Department of Miranda House college. The screening was held in the college auditorium and was attended by over around 25-30 students. The day started with the SMILE’rs sharing their Rural Internship experiences with the audience and it managed to generate quiet a lot of interest among the students.

The movie screened was “Rehanna” which is a journey of a Muslim woman who decided to break the shackles imposed on her by the society and work for the betterment of other women who might be in the same position as her own. After the screening was over the general consensus among the audience was that they felt charged up and emotional some of the initial reactions generated from the audience were:

"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