Puvidham Rural Development Trust
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Mission Statement
SUSTAINABILITY is a WAY OF LIFE- a culture that is handed down through generations! Most of the problems of the present system stem from the distance that it has decided to maintain from nature. In nature, everything is a process. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is separate. Continuity of life is at the core. Everything else succumbs to this law. The whole is nurtured by the parts and it nurtures and protects the parts in return. Every creature’s need is met to the full by the bounty of nature. There is no paucity of food and when there is; the creatures adapt and discover new ways to survive. Everything flows in cycles even the hardest of rocks erode, sediment and melt again. Nothing is static. Our mission at Puvidham is to understand the connections between nature and humans. We are doing this through education. The trust runs an alternate farm school on the principles and ideologies of the ancient Indian Gurukul education where experiential learning was valued above everything else. The values that make human beings live in harmony with their community and the environment are the core of the learning process. Physical participation in everyday living enhances the physical, emotional and psychological health of the individual. Our Belief is that: 1. Change in the attitude of the people can be only lasting investment towards sustainable development. 2. A region or a country can sustain itself only if it cares for its lands, forest and children. 3. People should pay for their development, however little, as they value more the things they pay for than the things they get free. We provide equitable pricing as against fixed prices. 4. Rural kids should be taught to value their environment and should be encouraged to take up farming alongside some other small-scale income generating activity so that they continue to live on their land and have an alternative income source. 5. Women need to learn basic health care, diagnosis of common ailments and their basic treatment and about the importance of children’s nutrition. Knowledge about herbs has been passed on by word of mouth for centuries and that tradition needs to be revived and confidence of people in home remedies needs to be reinforced. Our mission is: 1. To work for the education in the rural areas especially in the fields of ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION, non-formal education , adult education, skill development and other related activities . 2. To work for the furtherance of the well-being of people living below poverty line in the rural areas and addressing their health, nutrition and environmental problems especially of women and children. 3. To work for unpolluted and productive farmlands as a necessary condition for the wellbeing of the masses. 4. To promote organic farming, afforestation and other ecologically sound land use systems and strive to develop educational material of relevance in these areas and to disseminate information regarding these issues for the welfare of all poor farmers. 5. To run schools and other educational programs and skills development programs for children, adolescents and adults in all the above fields and related fields. 6. To conduct research, training , documentation and pilot projects in the fields of Education, Agriculture, Building technologies and Alternative energy technology applicable in the rural areas and existing solely for philanthropic purposes and not for the purpose of profit. 7. To study and follow the work of other agencies working in the fields of Education, Agriculture, Alternative energy and Rural development. 8. To financially support youth who are doing organic farming for a period of 3 years and helping them to become self reliant in organic inputs, food and other basic necessities. 9. To disseminate the learning of last 35 years in the fields of soil conservation, water conservation, afforestation, permaculture and bio dynamic farming, eco-friendly construction, child friendly learning processes through workshops for families, students and youth. 10. To provide affordable natural healing space for the economically challenged people. 11. To grow herbs, process millets, make organic products and make them available to the poorest at an affordable minimum price so that the latest understanding of natural healing reaches them. 12. To provide technical and economic support for people below the poverty line to build affordable eco friendly houses with mud and alternate technologies of Laurie Baker so that they can take pride in their house and build it according to their needs instead of being forced to construct a regular box like space with cement concrete which is not habitable.
About This Cause
Meenakshi was born and brought up in Mumbai. 20 years in Mumbai opened her eyes to the various facets of the urban life and the realities behind these. Her search for an alternative brought her to Auroville near Pondicherry where she worked with low-cost eco-friendly construction technologies and organic agriculture. But she always wanted to grow our own food organically and have a school where learning was a natural and fulfilling part of life. From Auroville she moved and tried to work with other development organizations (NGOs). After working with these organizations for some years she decided to settle down on her own and practice the various alternatives in farming and education. She and her husband Umesh were financially very constrained and in 1992 bought a completely degraded 12 acres in the drought prone area of Dharmapuri. There were about 2 acres of arable land where they could grow dry land crops and 10 acres of eroded hill slopes which they could only hope to regenerate by creating a forest. For the first 3 years there were good rains and they were able to do farming and a lot of soil and water conservation work. Numerous indigenous species of trees and grasses regenerated. They also planted forest trees and sowed fodder grass. The completely barren brown piece of land was slowly coming to life when the rains became erratic and undependable. In 1997 the rains failed completely. The crops all dried up in the fields. That year they decided that they could not completely depend on rain fed agriculture to support us and so they bought some more land in a valley with a dependable source of water. But due to a history of intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides by the previous owners, the first two years of organic farming failed to produce good yields in the irrigated land. In the third-year natural balance began to establish itself. They were careful not to apply any sprays when they noticed beneficial insects. By the fourth year the land had regained its health and the outputs improved. By 1999 they were able to grow most of their food and even sell some rice, oil, dal and spices. Their confidence in natural methods increased. The people around were becoming curious about these methods because they saw the input output ratio clearly. Around this time Meenakshi decided to work with local people and help them to convert to organic methods of agricultural, not directly but through their children - the future farmers. She started a Puvidham Learning Centre - a farm school in 2000 based on the ideologies of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, using methods demonstrated by Maria Montessori and David Horsburgh. She employed a local graduate and trained him in these methods. It started with 7 children in 2000. By 2002 there were 45 children in the school. In May 2002 she registered a trust to carry forward the work with the help of other concerned people. The school charges a fee of one day’s wage of the parents for one month’s fees, for day scholars and as the hostel accommodation became necessary 4 days wage of the parents based on the occupation and the economic situation of the family. Until the time of Covid in 2020, the school catered to 100 odd children all from the local area with some children from cities. The children from cities normally had behavioral issues or learning difficulties. The environment of freedom and responsibility that comes with it helps these children to learn self-discipline and their self-esteem improves making them better learners. During Covid, they were unable to raise funds for the school. The parents of the children who learned here paid a variable fee depending on their income and often this hardly covered the food and accommodation expenses. For learning and other craft activities ASHA for Education, London chapter, supported them for the last 20 years. During covid this support dwindled and they were unable to restart the school at the same scale in 2021. Over the years, the school has evolved a curriculum for education for sustainable living. This education was actually wasted on the local farmers' children as they are actually living a minimalist life while continuously facing the pressure of their families to leave the village and move to the city. Meenakshi had hoped that over the years the parents would become interested in organic farming and they could support the children to set up small startup businesses connected with the land and the local resources. But the parents have their own biases, fears and aspirations which indicate that they do not want their children to remain in the village. So, in 2021 she decided to make the school completely residential and started doing workshops for parents to explain what kind of education their children would be getting in Puvidham. The workshop “RETURN TO THE SOIL” is a two-day workshop hosted every month, where the Puvidham staff shares their experiences and all the sustainable techniques and urges parents to admit their child in Puvidham only if they commit to changing their lifestyles to be more eco-friendly and minimalist. They were very particular about this and slowly the number of children in the residential school increased to 25! They then started to do a week-long workshop every month following the Return to the Soil workshop, called “SCIENCE FOR SUSTAINABILITY” for children that went to other schools and extended the possibility for these children to try out the way of life at Puvidham for a week before they decided to get admission! This way they felt they could inspire more children to care for the environment and develop leadership skills in children to carry the ideas on sustainability that they have evolved to the next level of implementation. Subsequently they received requests for workshops on mud construction. This was a great opportunity to showcase the experiments in mud that Meenakshi has done and create awareness about the importance of not just building a mud house but also learning to live in them sustainably integrating the ideas of water harvesting, water reuse and composting toilets! So they offered another week-long workshop “HOME AND BEYOND” once every 3 months. All these workshops are priced very reasonably and cover only the running costs of the workshop. The reasoning behind this is that anyone who wants to learn sustainable living should be able to afford it and that it should not become a space for the elite who attend workshops but never live according to their new learnings. A lot of young people are looking for solutions to the crises of these times. They feel the need to do something about the issues but do not know where to start and how to continue in the face of all the criticism and the social pressures. Puvidham was established in 1992 and we have been through the process of regeneration of land, soil and water conservation, afforestation and finally started a school that provides a holistic education through these processes with an understanding of the emotional and social challenges that everyone who wants to make a change faces. Our workshops empower them to go back with hands on knowledge and the support of a community where they can belong and come back anytime. Areas of concern: • This region is drought prone and farming is undependable, so people move to nearly cities and towns for work. Educated youth leave the countryside and seek jobs in towns. This leaves the land further degraded as there is no one to care for it. • The land is undulating and sloppy. The slopes are cultivated and sowed with low demand crops like horse gram and are fast degrading. Soil and water conservation measures are non existent. • The soils are very poor and the vegetation sparse. • Nutrition levels of the children are very poor. Health care facilities leave a lot to be desired and people often incur debts to pay doctors. • Money borrowed at exorbitant interest rates result in people incurring large and crushing debts. Possible Interventions: • Creation of local employment opportunities like a nursery, manufacture and sale of vermi-compost, organic pesticides and herbal sprays, embroidery and tailoring, paper making, screen-printing, bread and biscuit baking, soap making etc. All this can be sold locally on a small scale. • Establishment of a micro credit program so people can borrow at reasonable rates of interest and educate on planning for expenditure ahead. • Education and awareness about the ecological and economic benefits of diverse and well planned tree plantations on the slopes to arrest soil erosion. Provide saplings for planting on the slopes and advice on water harvesting techniques such as contour bunding. • Help improve soil using techniques such are green manuring, mulching and crop rotation. • Provide first aid, medical advice and homeopathic and herbal medicines, health education and awareness. Create a regenerative health center where all the alternative medicine options are available to the poorest of the poor for minimal price. • Support Youth to take up regeneration of their farm lands and help them start some small enterprise for alternative source of income.