Katha Women's Cooperative

[ SHE ] ² stands for

• afe Water  & anitation / Hygiene

• ousing  &   ealth, especially Reproductive Health

• ducation  & conomic Resurgence

Our problems are many ... But not so many that a good dose of activism and some present-to-the-moment information technology cannot solve!

Katha's poverty alleviation programme through quality, fun education got its IT extension in 1995 when one computer was brought into the learning centre that Katha had started in a large slum cluster in 1990. Since then, we have slowly grown, bringing more computers in through donations and through grants specifically for buying computers.

Today, with a Lifelong Learning centre for adults in our community and two Labs for our 1200 pupil-school, our community is moving towards IT, and even non-literate women are beginning to feel the change ! We are not seeing computers as the panacea for addressing the problems of poverty and lack of even basic amenities that our people face. But we do say that the tools of technology can bring faster succour.

In this, Katha also sees the community moving towards greater self-esteem and confidence that comes from being able to handle computers and the knowledge through networking this gives. We see our community not just dreaming, but using technology to make the right to knowledge theirs; by networking, finding out how others give themselves good governance for bettering quality of life. Using sophisticated software, they will make give themselves choice -- in things from health choices to honing their knowledge of rights and responsibilities.

 Moving effortlessly over the technology divide, our IT uses the power of story to culture-connect India's vast and diverse peoples, and move from passive into active tolerance, from mass to critical culture spaces.

It focuses community strengths on community revitalization through deeply bonded yet specific programmes such as Hamara Gaon which enable a better quality of life; social, spiritual and physical to be attained through (SHE)² , a doubling of women's visibility and power/empowerment.  

IT helps people connect with other empowering processes around the world and use these tools, to bring the basic amenities to the community. Yet, IT has always placed maximum importance on individual learning and potential, as well as on individual gain. In Katha we ask -

· CAN THE "I" IN IT WHICH NOW STANDS FOR THE INDIVIDUAL, STAND FOR "INCLUSION"?

· CAN THE "C" OF COMPUTER BE ENRICHED BY THE "C" OF COMMUNITY?

THE KATHA  SUSTAINABLE LEARNING PATTERN means gain for all - the individual, the family and the community. Some of the issues that have formed part of the learning process at Katha are -

Safe Drinking Water

· the problem: Our community of 1,00,000 people have no safe water. In fact very little water.

· On the ground solution: Mapping the areas having no proper access to water and our women committees negotiate with the government agencies to fulfill these.

Raising awareness about water borne diseases, their causes and precautions etc through our lifelong learning center.

· the IT solution: Our students have been using computers to scan samples of water from the thirteen different sectors of our large community to check for germs through microscope on the computer screen. Here while doing this the children come to this realization as to how safe the water is for drinking. The children take this realization back to their family. Then they visit the areas where water in unsafe to warn users. And to tell them how to purify the water.

This method has spread more awareness than any community awareness programme precisely because the child saw it himself and the message spread from -

 Child             Family                Community. 

· This has made the learning process more relevant and convincing.

· In the long term, Katha's working with the community to have a GIS study done so we can identify underground water sources in this densely populated slum cluster, so that water sources are closer to hand for sets of households.

Sanitation

· the problem:   With just five community latrines/toilets for this large population of about a lakh, hygiene and sanitation are inadequate and badly maintained.

· On the ground solution: - Women Committees to take the initiative of taking voluntary action (Collecting money and covering the overflowing drains) and advocacy with the MCD and various government agencies.

The women committees to take up the maintenance of these toilets in their hand and thereby, setting up an example before the government agencies.

Raising awareness about the importance of hygiene & cleanliness-its harmful effects  through our lifelong learning center.

· the IT solution: The immediate need is to raise awareness within and outside the community. Posters, hand bills etc., designed at the computer centre. To make the sulab more women-friendly by pointing out safety hazards - through IT models using existing software and those created by students.

Hygiene : Show, don't tell! So again, workshops and discussions amongst students leading to proactive spaces and team contests etc., using, inter alia, video cams, digicams, the net etc. And these going onto Katha-TV .

· The IT solution: Students will write petitions, letters, proposals, and bring awareness in the larger community and in government. The Katha Media Centre, run by the children, will launch a campaign in the local media and through the net, for raising awareness about basic amenities in slum clusters; they'll put out stories and interviews to move from plan to action. They will capture telling pictures of the community. They will tell the story as it is ... And get stories out into leading newspapers.

· KTN or the Katha television Network, seen as a community initiative is actively on to this. Students are beign trained to make community issues more visible and rememberable.

Housing

· the problem: The houses were built with no idea of ventilation or safety.

· On the ground solution: Help the committees to approach the various government agencies and HUDCO for housing loans. Equip them with adequate information about the various government schemes at our lifelong learning center so that they benefit from it.

· the IT solution: We are looking at mentors from design schools coming in to work with our students who, in turn, will work with the community. mentors we are approaching range from town planners and students of architecture to interior space designers and engineers. The idea is to bring better houses in the existing sites.

Health

· the problem: Lack of health facilities. Doctors are expensive. People are not literate so they cannot find out if a medicine is past expiry date. The road leading to Katha learning center has been paved many times over and yet is pot-holed badly and filled with rubble. The garbage dump often has water that comes up to the knees of cows standing there, looking for something to eat. The stench is unbelievable. The road however boasts of a variety of economic activities.

· On the ground solution: - Raising awareness about the importance of good health especially reproductive health, common diseases-cause, symptom, cure. Here more stress will be on home remedies. Our lifelong learning center will be the medium for this.

· The IT solution: Alongside more down-to-earth solutions like English for our people so they can read what's written on cartons of medicines; helping them decipher the prescriptions of doctors and helping them ask for their rights with chemists; the basic right to health and family well-being will be addressed again through posters and handbills designed on the computers; letters and petitions to people in power; interviews and essays in newspapers.

And through Katha-TV, stories, street theatre, contests and child-to-mother  communication tactics, to bring better health, especially reproductive health to ourselves.

The use of our health and environment magazine TAMASHA in raising health awareness is already being undertaken.

Education

· the problem: Many children are still not in school; the dropout rate is high; street children are not able to access any education at all. We are told 60 % of delhi lives in slums, children whom Katha has always treated as special-needs children. So their education has to be specials, too: not just traditional subjects, but holistic education that brings in community revitalization and sports into the main curriculum, combining these with reinforced doses of computer training, vocational and entrepreneurship training as well as rigorous leadership training.

· On the ground solution: Use the Balak and the Balika mandal as an inducement programme whereby they will be first asked to come and join any vocational skill, craft and bakery etc and slowly motivate them to take up full time educational classes. Bring traditional and nontraditional learning into the daily classroom as comfortable team players in the cause of sustainable education.

Further to make education interesting introduce more innovative concepts through continuously providing feedback to our wing developing teaching and learning materials. And intensive, consistent and continuous teacher training that develops creativity and critical thinking and commitment. Since 1990, Katha's training has included a paper on "teacher as the Centre of community Action."

· the IT solution: This time it is straight and simple computer's jazzed up hype that's getting children into our learning centre. Tamasha! Roadshows is a van with a computer fitted inside it which goes to traffic light areas where children congregate to beg, to bring fun and colourful stories and moving pictures -- to excite them into a nearby school! It is education that follows the same Katha pattern - the KA or Questing Curriculum; a syllabus drawn from the best syllabi in the world - more than 20 syllabi were studied and compared before the Katha syllabi was drawn up; the very special Story Pedagogy that brings the fun and ability to make the connections of story to the process of learning.

Economic Revitalisation.

· the problem:  Poverty alleviation is at the bottom of all learning - or so believes Katha. Since 1990, this has been our mantra. Unless we can build the economic muscles of our families, our community we can never get children away from child labour. And working children don't have the mind or the energy to thinking of schooling as a possibility or preparing for a distant future as anything but a luxury. The main problem is family incomes: When we started in the Govindpuri Slum Cluster, the average family income/month here was Rs 600- Rs 800.  Katha took on the daunting role of bringing Rs 800 into the hands of our women. Since 191, we have been training about  100 women each year in skills that can generate more income. And the result? Our student strength has gone up from 5 in 1990 to 1200 in 1995 (where it has remained.) But there is still a long way to go .

· On the ground solution :

In 1990 we started an income generation programme with our women. And this has taken monthly family incomes from Rs. 600-800 (1990, slum Wing Survey) to around Rs 2500-3000/month/woman in our cooperative The income generation programme is totally run by the women, with support being gradually withdrawn as they become more self-reliant and proud members of their own, Shakti-Khazana Women's Cooperative!

 After a survey, Shakti-Khazana's Women's Cooperative chose the following income-generation activities -

1. Catering.   Office lunches and special orders.

2. Bakery. Excellent cookies, cakes, puffs and pastries. Our women have been handpicked by the chefs of Taj Mahal Hotel, Delhi for training and our bakery products are better than even what the Taj makes - or so people say!

3. Squashes and Pickles Unit. Small. For local consumption.

4. Tailoring and Embroidery. Local and export orders.

More self-sustainable groups of women to be formed with the aim of helping these groups increase their take up income generation activity to increase their income and also encourage them to set up a suitable micro enterprise.

 We are working towards converting this into a small modest mall. And the women see hope in this for their family! This is what we think can become a mall.

 Our Shopkeepers Guild networks with the government agencies requesting them to provide license to them. This effort has already begun and they have received a good response. Thereafter they will approach the Department of Architecture and planning for designing the mall.

· the IT solution:   Katha's student use the computer to do comparative charts and pie diagrams to understand where economically the families are and where they want to be; and to chart out realistic economic progress that makes sense -- right from datelines and  mathematical equations that show people where they are now, where they should head.

One major activity is the formation of the BHUMIHEEN MALL -- through getting the shopkeepers together to work for economic resurgence.

IT will help them chart progress; link them to development work elsewhere in the world; build bridges for them with people (Indian and others) who live outside India but can help in various ways by building skills and helping them re-skill for a sustainable future.