Village visits

As part of our time in Bangalore, time was arranged for us to visit some villages being worked with by an organization called PORD (People's Organization for Rural Development) which is being funded by an organization called CRY (Child Rights and You), both of which the Walton College has supported for a number of years. We visited three villages: the first had only been working with PORD for seven years (the least time of the three we visited). After sitting with the villagers and asking questions, it was clear their number one concern was education for the children, and in particular, a preschool that could help educate and take of the children while the parents worked during the day. Because this is a government right, PORD’s main objective is to get these people concerned about these very entitlements, and empower them to get the help they need. A man also spoke up that there are not enough jobs in the area for the adults, and that they often must be migrant workers, which only exacerbates the issue concerning children being left behind without a school or daycare. Though it was not vocalized, it was apparent another main concern, especially for PORD, is that most of these rural tribal villages do not have access to clean drinking water.

As the day progressed, we saw how PORD’s presence is having a powerful effect on the lives of these people. By the time we reached the third village, it was clear that not only were the adults empowered by knowing their rights and exercising them, but the children were incredibly educated on those things that will help them break the cycle of poverty—caste system, human trafficking, child marriage, corruption, and male-child favoritism (which often involves female children never receiving education and getting married off very early).

There was a great deal of discussion amongst our group members after the village visits, and I think it is always important to highlight that educating, empowering, and mobilizing people is never a clean and easy process—time and again we see that breaking cycles such as poverty, racism, and sexism is a learning experience for all involved, and moving through the first to the last village was a great indicator of this very physical, but cerebral process. Learning to think critically is a messy act, it takes practice, and it means there will be times of overconfidence in bad ideas, under-confidence in well-thought-out ones, and silence in times of serious working out of things. All this to say, it was ever apparent that the first village, having only recently been exposed to the idea of empowerment and mobilizing for the sake of the collective, were running a lot on emotion and passion and still had some discord, but the next two villages had had time to develop a clear vision for the group as a whole and had a calm strength about them, speaking to us with real clarity about their goals and achievements as individuals and as a collective.

So, I think PORD and CRY deserve tremendous commendation for the extremely important and long-term work they do. The empowerment of people is the long-term solution for improving livelihoods.