KUCHINERLA-
A story behind the sketch.
It was some 5 to 6 years ago, as part of my work with Nalamdana, the NGO I belong to, I visited this little village of Kuchinerla near Mehboobnagar-Andhra Pradesh.
The region is arid. Poor villagers raise a cotton crop in fields not owned by them. Cotton blossoms are pollinated using a male flower- contacting a female one- by human hands in the field.
Preferably young hands- child labour. The poor parents send their little girls (sometimes as young as five years old ) as they have little fingers, and can be easily made to work long hours.They bend over the plants and work their way from one end of the field to the other, inhaling the deadly chemical pesticides used to keep the crop healthy. Of course there is a strong rumour (belief) floated that only girls in their pre puberty age can ensure a bountiful crop!
Our visit was to one rescue farm cum NGO- where an amazing man (Dr.Reddy) seemed to have evolved a system of rescuing girls from these fields, and making them attend school, created with unbelievable wisdom, a bridge school which helped put them into existing main stream schools within one year! He had been saving around hundred little girls per year when we visited.
This is easily the most fantastic work I have ever seen in my life-time, and in my 20 years of field experience in Nalamdana.
Thanks to our funding partner- World Education, Boston, we visited this NGO to share our skills and learn from them.
The school had informal classrooms, under the trees as well as in simple sheds. Telugu and English alphabets and related pictures drawn by teachers and children hung on branches. They sang songs, went through books, quickly graduated to next levels within months.The residential school came up for firing by parents who saw no future in their girls learning English or Telugu. So life skills and square foot gardening was introduced to help them learn simple facts about nutritious diet, easy to grow vegetables etc. The farmer parents soon saw this was useful.In fact they too could contribute to this learning.
We spent three days here, shared our fun teaching tools on adolescent and re productive health education. Mostly the teachers found our entertaining teaching aids very useful.We screened our films in the village for the parents and rest of the community.
We sat with the children at night singing songs.
Would love to go back and see how they have progressed.. Some day!
The sketch shows a girl at her books, with the free roaming mascots- some geese on the farm. And of course the cotton fields in the background.The circular diagram in the left corner..well that's another whole story!
Posted on 17th Jan.2014.
