AID Delhi newsletter October 2007

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Association for Indias DevelopmentDelhi Chapter Newsletter

October 2007

Table of Contents From the Editors Desk

From the editors desk 1

Project UpdatesAashayen 2AID Gurgaon 2AID Prayas 3Parichay 3Nai Disha 3Khoj 4Youth Task Force 4TARA 4

ArticlesHow to make a difference to the society Ankit Khanna 5India AgricultureYesterday, Today and Tomorrow- Vikas Happa and Venu Kapoor 5

Volunteering Selva 6

Treasury 7

Organizational Shuffle 7

Photo of the Month TARA 8

Photo of the Month Prayas 9

Contact us 9

Yet another hi to all the readers. This tim

while drafting the editorial Ive been thinking to sharefew thoughts with you people and would like to put it ia crispier manner. This month got a sign of relief for mafter sharing a lot of responsibility with the peoparound me and the interesting part is they have comforward to share the load. Id say that the candles whicwe lit on 2nd of October to show our solidarity towardIndian farmers have brought the signs of light amonlot of our people. That day is still in front of my eyewhere the entire family of AID Delhi gathered togethto say a word to our farmers. It was an event whic

took place across the globe. We might have not had thgreatest event with only 200 odd people turning out buthe fire the candles have lit in a few peoples heart is stiglowing. The candles which we lit in the heart ohundreds of people while we collected signature mighbe still glowing. Thats the change we could make. Afew people still ask me Whats up with Agrarian Crisafter your vigil? Please keep me updated. That is thdifference weve made. They now feel for it. If they reaan article related to it, now they will pay attention to i Well before loosing the track of what I was trying

conclude, let me come back to it. The candles we lbrought the potential of lot of other people among uIt has brought our prospective leaders and visionary ithe limelight. 2nd October from this year has beeannounced as Global Non-Violence day.

There are also a few more issues Id like to shar with you people. We at AID Delhi level have lots meeting. I have observed that apart from a very few threst always come late or prefer to come late. We at thlevel as professionals should strict to timings. We aknow the value of x minutes of ours and we alsshould respect the x minutes of our counterpart.

agree that there might have been traffic and somimportant work on the way etc., but I question Do wdo the same thing if we are going to catch a train or flight? We never do it. Infact we reach at least 2minutes earlier to catch a train before its scheduledeparture although we know that it never departs on ittime. I take this as an opportunity to request people tbe on time from here on. It will be really useful foeveryone at any point of your life.


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Education, the focus area of AID Delhi thisyear is going fantastic among all the projects despiteAshayen where there is a huge volunteer crunch. Imstill not able to sort out the problems over there but Ifeel that a workshop for volunteers would do themagic. Lets hope that things become better at Ashayen soon. AID Prayas have just started toimplement Eureka kit and it might bring some changein the structure. We will soon start to implement it onour other projects once we replicate them

Delhi is getting chiller and we are experiencingpleasant weather these days. Ive also been planningfor a winter cloths distribution drive later thisNovember. Id request volunteers to collect cloths andblankets for the same.

There is a bit of organizational shuffle too

within AID Delhi.

I also wish all our well wishers a very specialDiwali. Will reach you people again after a monthbreak. Till then.Happy Reading!

-Selva,Editor, AID Delhi e-newsletter,

[email protected]+91-9891358457

Project Updates: Aashayen

Project Updates: AID Gurgaon

Aashayen desperately needs a coordinator as of noand more volunteers. Approaching students of DUmight be handy. Tanya, Akshta and Rahul have joineour team.

Selv

[email protected]

+91-989135845

AID Aasheyen is in a biggest trouble thesedays. We are undergoing severe volunteer crunch andthe coordination between the volunteers class timingsis getting worse than ever. Despite all these factsregular classes were held. Kalindi's vocational trainingclass has been a huge hit among the children whereeveryone finds things interesting. Dussara festival diddamaged the class during that weekend. Kalindi's

absence is also a big loss. Dolly and Nitin have beensticking to their timings and taking classes regularly. Atul started with profiling the families. We are stillsuffering with the space problem and we need to findan alternate as soon as possible.

As always, the month of October was alsfilled with lots of activities for AID Gurgaon. Duringthis month, we achieved a milestone of 50 children inour project Unnati. Earlier, Unnati School had onlyone batch of 30-35 children however, this month westarted a second batch at the school. Currently, projecUnnati has two batches, Batch A and Batch B with atotal of 50 children.

In October, we also started the Right toInformation (RTI) Cell in AID Gurgaon. Wconducted an RTI awareness session for volunteersMoreover, we have filed an RTI application related tothe public transport system in Gurgaon city. Also, weare in the process of filing an RTI applicationregarding the condition of government schools in

Jharsa.

On the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibilityfront we are doing well. As a CSR activity, we hadorganized an exhibition of handicraft articles made byLiteracy India in Hero Honda on October 24 th. Alsowe are organizing the same exhibition in Evalueservin the first week of November.

In the coming months, we will work towardreplicating Unnati Project in other bastis in Gurgaon

Further, we will organize RTI awareness campaignand will file RTI applications related to various otheissues faced by the common man in Gurgaon.

- Pallavi [email protected]


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Now I can say that Prayas is on right track! Last3-4 months were very challenging for us, we hired fulltime teachers, we approached Govt. School to provideroom for our classes, we talked to Moonlight Schoolowner, but nothing has worked out for us.

Finally we had to take decision to go back in the

community, at mufti sahibs room for our eveningclasses too (Night classes are already going on therefrom the beginning of Prayas).Now we have startedmaintaining attendance, we bought one trunk forstationary storage, we have announced that we will giveprizes to those kids who will be the most regular andgood performer in class. Apart from this we havenoticed one thing, even Vijay Bhaiyya has alsomentioned this earlier that first of all anybody needs alanguage to express, language is the first step towardseducation .It is applicable for our kids also .So we have

decided to give more emphasis on Hindi .Teaching kidsto read and write Hindi is the topmost priority for usnow. We are trying to implement Eureka Kits for

improving Hindi. We focus to teach ] and

for elder kids. All these efforts are working

out good for us till today.One more and important thing I want to

mention is that in Prayas we have a good team ofcommitted volunteers that includes Ruchi, Raj, Nikhil ,Kanan, Neha, Rajat, Anand, Anuradha, Arun, Atul &Darshan (Me ) and now we have our vision for Prayas .

Because of this team, now the dependency on any singlevolunteer is very less which is a good thing.

Watching our kids in school uniform andwatching their enthusiasm is motivating for us. I can sayon the basis of my personal experience that ourvolunteers have become the change in the life of PrayasKids though very small but the change is there. Kudosfor our team of volunteers!!!!!

-Darshan Mehra, AID Prayas

- [email protected]

Project Highlights

1. Production: The kids worked real hard this time toinnovate and have come up with new products forDeepawali stalls. We hope our supporters would like th

new products on offer.2. Spices stall at STM crossed Rs. 10,000.3. A team from BITS Pilani visited Parichay this monthand purchasedproducts worth Rs. 6,000.

Volunteers:Active Volunteers: Akanksha, Shelly, Naval, andPuneetaInactive Volunteers: Shashank, Pow, and Navneet

Parichay team wishes everyone a happy and glitteryDeepawali."

- Punee- Coordinator, Paricha

- [email protected] 981836112

Project Updates: ParichayProject Updates: AID Prayas

Project Update : Nai Disha

1. Curriculum planned 4th and 5th class.2. Picnic planning going on (mostly on 3rd november)3. Computers problem still there, 4 out of 6 computersare not working.4. Volunteers crunch.

-Rajat Maheshwar

Coordinator, Nai Disha- [email protected]

- 981099459


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Project Update : Khoj

1) Classes at all centers are going well despite of

volunteer crunch

2) Hats off to Pawan, Zubair, Aproop, Mrs.Sangeeta & Annie for their immense efforts

3) After a long waiting KHOJ managed to publishedits first eNewsletter, Credit goes to Shikha Chunkee

4) An initiative of Mrs. Sangeeta named Sakshamstarted at Prabhat Tara, every Saturdayfor Kidsworkshops

5) Corporate Executive Board organized a healthcamp for KHOJ kids on 06th Oct 07

6) On 16th Oct 07 Mrs. Sangeeta organized a trip forKHOJ kids to American School

7) Mrs. Sangeeta organized vaccination of hepatitis Bfor KHOJ Kids at PRABHAT TARA on 27th Oct 07

8) Zubair has taken initiative and started Zubi KidsBank, Kids from Bikaji and Jor Bagh centers aresaving there money on daily basis. Till now around 5000have been deposited from all of them

Ritesh Kumar

[email protected]

1. Aheli is working with MCD schools nearPandav Nagar. We plan toreplicate entire process in MCD schools inSouth Delhi.

2. Siddarth, the newest member of our Group, hataken up MCD roads andGarbage dumps in Qutub institutional Area nea

his hostel campus.

3. We will be organizing RTI workshop by ArvinKejriwal in IIT very soon.

- Abhinav Kumar [email protected]

Project Update : Youth Task Force

4. YTF has revived with new energy, vigor andjosh. Now we have bettertechnical knowledge to deal with corruption inPWD roads. Many new andactive volunteers are joining the RTI movementwith YTF.

5. We have identified 5 new PWD road projectsand re framed our roadRTI. Fresh application will be filed this week

Project Update : Tara

October is the birth month of TARA. In th

month of October TARA celebrated two mucanticipated festivals EID and DUSSEHRA.On the 14of the month Kulsum didi got laddoos for the entirteam and celebrated Eid with the children. Then camthe festival of Ravan, much hated and loved, the mawas not burnt in the community because the membedidnt want the children to learn the meaning oviolence at any cost. A lot of guests had come to enjothis day and the day began with Ram Lila performed bRavi and Roocheca (friends).

The team had called a sev puri wala who mad

amazing sev puri for the children as well as thmembers who relished every bite of it. We had juicand samosas too. Well no occasion at TARA

summoned without laddoos so we had loads of it too

After spending hours on eating, laughing, learning ansinging we called the day off but before the childre

left they were gifted a gada each.Towards the end othe month the children received a sum of 200 rupeefrom their school for winter uniform and the parenbought them the very next day.On the last day of thmonth the children were taken to attend a fair organize

by Jamia Millia Islamia. At the fair, children bought litttrinkets and had their favorite chowmein and juice. Wethe month ended with a hope for a better future for thchildren and the members.

-Kulsum Rashee


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Society is a system where each one of us as anindividual, interact with other individuals, and differentconstituents of the system to ensure social, physical and

mental well being of everyone involved. Wheneversomething goes wrong with any interaction within thesystem, it disturbs the overall equilibrium. Thisdisturbance impacts each one of us directly or indirectly,either in short-term or in long-term. Thus everyindividual is responsible to maintain the balance. Abetter society is one where every participant works forthe overall development and well being of allparticipants. But its unfortunate, that we dont realizethis, till the time something goes wrong or someonemakes us realize.

It is sad, when someone thinks of serving the

society; he looks for pastures such as joining a NGO,helping poor with food, clothes etc., donations andrelated social activities. These are definitely the avenues,but they arent sustainable. They only rectify the damagework. This is the least one can do and one should do with genuine heart and holistic approach. The mostgenuine way of serving the society is by fulfilling yourresponsibilities towards your family, friends, colleaguesand society as a system. Some of them could be:

1. Perform acts as a responsible citizen: obey civilrules and encourage other to follow same

2. Accept social and cultural values as a part ofyour demeanor

3. Take good care of your family and elders4. Take steps to bring equality in society: Upper

class cant grow beyond a limit unless lowerclass progresses with them

5. Vote as a responsible citizen6. Encourage peace, harmony, unity and

discourage violence and hatred7. Generate avenues of livelihood which are

sustainable.I know its easier said than done. But at least we canaspire and try harder. Nothing comes easy. Its notsomeone else; it is required for us, our families and ourfuture generations.

- Ankit [email protected]

Agriculture in India is one of the mo

prominent sectors in the economy. Agriculture anallied sectors like forestry, logging and fishingaccountefor 18.6% of the GDP in 2005 and employed 60% othe country's population. It accounts for 8.56 % oIndias exports. About 43 % of India's geographical areis used for agricultural activity. Despite a steady declinof its share in the GDP, agriculture is still the largeeconomic sector and plays a significant role in thoverall socio-economic development of India.

The monsoons play a critical role in the Indiasub-continent's agriculture in determining whether th

harvest will be bountiful, average, or poor in any giveyear. The entire rainfall in the sub-continent concentrated in the few monsoon months. This evident from the fact that Irrigation facilities arinadequate, as revealed by the fact that only 53.6% othe land was irrigated in 200001, which result ifarmers still being dependent on rainfall, specifically thMonsoon season. A good monsoon results in a robugrowth for the economy as a whole, while a poomonsoon leads to a sluggish growth. Farm credit regulated by NABARD, which is the statutory ape

agent for rural development in the subcontinen Adoption of modern agricultural practices and use technology is inadequate, hampered by ignorance osuch practices, high costs and impracticality in the casof small land holdings.

AGRICULTURAL is an age old source livelihood for a large portion of population in INDIAIt started with the use of primary tools and sesufficiency motives where market for agriculturproduce was not there and people cultivated for sel

consumption. But with the coming up of unorganizemarkets initially, slowly and steadily agriculture becama source of income and is still serving around 65 to 70%of Indian population.

rticle: How to make a difference in thesociety - Ankit Khanna

rticle: India Agriculture yesterday,today and tomorrow Vikas Happa and

Venu Kapoor


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Boon in agriculture came with the introductionof policy reforms like GREEN REVOLUTION AND WHITE REVOLUTION OPERATION FLOOD1and 2 etc. After independence, considering India'sgrowing population, the government took steps toincrease the food production. Yields per unit area of allcrops have grown since 1950. The 1970s saw a hugeincrease in India's wheat production. This is known asthe Green Revolution. Reasons for the growth are thespecial emphasis placed on agriculture and steadyimprovements in irrigation, technology, application ofmodern agricultural practices and provision ofagricultural credit and subsidies. Green revolutionstarted with rich states like Punjab and Haryana. there isno doubt that these policies did help in bringing up theagricultural status in India and as a result today India isthe largest producer in the world of milk, cashew nuts,

coconuts, tea, ginger, turmeric and black pepper. It alsohas the world's largest cattle population (193 million).India ranks second worldwide in farm output. It is thesecond largest producer of wheat, rice, sugar, groundnutand inland fish. It is the third largest producer oftobacco. India accounts for 10 per cent of the worldfruit production with first rank in the production ofbanana and sapota. There are several other examplesalso. Agriculture is a collective word used to describe various other related activities like horticulture,sericulture, harvesting, forestry, animal husbandry etc.

But what is suffering today is the food grain production. The investment in this sector has gone downremarkably; to serve 75% of population there is only 5%investment (how unfair). The ramification is nothingbut 10lac suicides by Indian farmers. This rampantpractice is found not only in paucity driven places like vidarbha but also in rich states like Punjab where thegreen revolution had said to have gained momentumfrom. These suicides are as a result of corruption atstate and at every level which has left these poorfarmers under heavy debt. The govt. has waived theseissues completely and claims other reason for thesepractices.

We know, India started globalizing with 1991reforms. This trend and MNC coming in, has changedthe shape of Indian agriculture.

Due to opening up of the economy, agreemenand treaties have allowed international organizatiointerference; as a result of policies of the World Banthe cost of production for Indian agriculture haincreased tremendously which has without doubhampered the production and the farmers.

India today is said be the fastest the mo

potential economy in the world; the formula is just tfollow the foot prints of the developed countries; tparaphrase, use the development model of thdeveloped countries when they were in the state wherIndia is today.

The govt. says NO TO FARMERS. They claifarmers as additional burden on the country becausnow they want high tech. and high breed variety of foograins which is only possible by private sectointerference. This is also a development model odeveloped countries where the private sector is int

agriculture and has done no good anywhere. In USAthe farmers used to get 20% income but with the advenof chain like WAL-MART this percentage has gondown to 4%. So one can imagine what would happen iIndia.

To recapitulate, Indian agriculturewas thBACKBONE of the economy, which has become thBLACKBONE and which will be seen in wemanicured hands in the future.

Vikas kaul happVenu kapoo

- [email protected]

Article: Volunteering - Selva

Any activity which involves spending time, unpaid

doing something which aims to benefit someon(individuals or groups) other than or in addition t

close relatives, or to benefit the environment. This how most people define volunteering. I would first likto appreciate my fellows to take over this responsibili

of volunteering. While thinking one should ask question - why should that responsibility come to aindividual? The answer to it is simple -responsibilicomes with ownership. When one owns a thing, thebegin to attach some responsibility towards it. All of uhave taken this responsibility because wetook ownership of it.


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AID Delhi funds Usage

AID Delhi Meal a Month Generation

-Anuj [email protected]

Now, one should look at the next step after taking theownership. For example, a person takes a responsibilityto keep the road in front of his house clean because heowns that house. This person would be a keenonlooker. He would take care that no one throws any waste over there or spits in front of the house etc.,because he knows that if he fails to do so, he is theultimate loser as it would cost him the cleanliness of his

own home. Likewise, we come to volunteer with anownership towards our society, which draws in someresponsibility from us. After committing to fulfill ourresponsibility, if we fail to give it our due efforts, we willbe the ultimate losers by losing on our ownership of thesociety. Committing might be a relatively easierdecision; the real element is sticking to the commitment.I mean, I may chose to call myself a Volunteer, but if Ifail to take up the ownership of the community/societyI live in, I fail in my commitment. If we must commit,we must also try to accomplish our commitment at any

cost. I hope that all of remain committed for ourselvesand let us aim to do something to have a better society.- Selva

- [email protected]

Treasury - Anuj

Organizational Shuffle

The following are the organizational shuffle during thlast month of AID Delhis activities.

Overall Volunteer Coordinator Arun RajOverall Project Coordinator Darshan Mehra

Khoj Coordinator Ritesh KumarTARA Coordinator Sanjeev Kumar SharmaYTF Coordinator Abhinav Kumar GuptaAashayen will be coordinated by Nitin at the absence oKalindi. The AID Delhi volunteer coordinators mobi(9213797167) will remain with Arun and Darshan wibe having the other AID Delhis number (9211467341 Anuj have donated his mobile to AID and his onumber will be used by AID Delhi part-timer. 9818248459).


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Photographer Ravi Rao

Project - Tara

Description - Anil, age 7 years, it was clicked during the dussehra celebrations..as you cansee in picture no. 1 all our kids have small gadas..we distributed them when Anil had gone toattend nature's call so he missed out on his gada.. out of anger and without complaining hejust walked out of the vicinity. wen one of our guests Roocheca asked him wat hadhappened he told her he didnt want to be a part of the celebration because he didnt get his

gada.. so Roocheca drew a smiling face on the floor to make him laugh and Ravi capturedthis moment with his camera..

Photo of the Month


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Photographer - Anand K Gupta

Project Prayas

Description - Prayas, started as night class around two years back. No particular goal was

defined but yes we were and still are; clear that a sustained effort towards education in this'out of development radar' community will definitely bring some perceivable change infuture. Though, we are unable to gauge the success ofour effort in this community (Muslimdominated population of around three thousand consistingofmigrants from UP, Bihar andWB) at this juncture but these pictures 'a glimpse' are enough to motivate 'can do' spiritedvolunteers. Sabreen, Asmeena & Ishrat are the children in the picure

You can easily estimate their palpable enthusiasm bythe fact they were all returning fromtheir School at 4:00PM in evening after putting up six hours and directly came to Prayasclass. Subsequently, they were coerced to go home to change dresses and take a break.

Feedback: aid.delhi mail.com Web: htt ://delhi.aidindia.or Phone: +91-9213797167Send your Cheques toSelva Ganapathy.RDepartment of Chemical Engineering,Indian Institute of Technology,Delhi - 110016Hauz Khas

Publications TeamCoordinator: SelvaEditors: Selva, Puneeta, Gauri, Pallavi, Charu, KunaDesigners: Selva, Arvinder, SaurabhWeb Designer:Anirban

Photo of the Month


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AID Delhi newsletter October 2007

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