Reflect and ICTs

Case study:
Visit to Gram Vikas Education Resource Centres, Orissa

By Sigrun Rottmann

Rudhapadar is located in Ganjam district in the southern region of the State of Orissa. The inhabitants of this rural area are mostly members of the Kui tribe who suffer from chronic drought, hunger, health problems and face discrimination and mismanagement by government officials as well as rich and "upper caste" members of the community. The majority do not know how to read and write.

Gram Vikas was founded in 1979 and has grown into a well-established NGO with more than 300 full-time staff and projects in 13 districts of Orissa, most of them in the Southern and Southwestern region of the state. According to its "Millenium Mission" published in 1998, the organisation aims "to enable a critical mass of poor and marginalised people in the hinterland of Orissa -adivasis, dalits, small and marginal farmers, landless, women - to empower themselves to achieve a better quality of life. Environmental sustainability, Social and Gender Equity and Sustainability of Peoples' self-governance institutions are core values that drive this mission."

The core activities of the organisation are carried out through two key programmes:

The Resource Centre
The Education Resource Centre in Rudhapadar was established in 1999. At first it complemented an informal education centre and was meant to make material used by facilitators and teachers widely available to interested members of the community.

Today the Resource Centre is housed in a separate building next to the newly established Residential School and opposite the Gram Vikas "Campus" in Rudhapadar. Staff explain that it is accessed by children and adults from more than 40 villages in the area. Adults often drop by on their way from or to adult education classes or before or after a visit to the Gram Vikas dispensary in the village.

Once a month the centre celebrates an "open day", inviting people to visit and make suggestions and contribution to the collection of materials. It also organises "science fairs" to strengthen knowledge of scientific and environmental issues. Prior to our visit we were told that the main objective of the Resource Centre is to spread information about health, education (primarily related to science, knowledge of local resources, herbal medicine), and provide locals with access to information about government schemes and benefits.

The material is stored in one big room, its walls covered with charts and posters depicting animals and their names in English. There are, for example, a bird chart and a food chart as well as some wall hangings and picture-stories about "The Fox and the Crow" and "The Lion and the Bull".

The room also contains a "library" consisting of glass cabinet with books about a range of subjects, and a table with paintings and drawings produced by facilitators, children and community members.

A wide range of objects is on display on several tables. The biggest collection is that of scientific material. It ranges from magnets, self-made measuring devices and star maps to a telescope and a microscope. A table with local resources like grains and animal skins is also available, as are picture books, photos, some traditional musical instruments and a small keyboard. Some curiosities have also found a home here: A fluffy bird starts singing when registering a movement in front of its eyes, and on a plastic musical box with two small figures who kiss and turn with the music. During our visit, Gram Vikas staff turn both toys on again and again and are visibly amused by the spectacle.

According to staff, on average about 15 to 20 people visit this collection every day, although they cannot say with certainty how many of the visitors are adults. The Resource Centre is so popular that people have demanded to open similar centres in all villages, with the result that the NGO is planning to establish centres in all Panchayat villages in 2004.

According to the ITDP-Manager in the area, Gram Vikas also plans to produce videos on health and development issues and show them on VCRs in the Resource Centre. There are also plans to install a PC in another room in the small building and use it for the documentation of projects like the experimental herbal garden that villagers are growing on the Gram Vikas compound. The Manager says that the Centre has generated curiosity and interest in more information materials, and that Gram Vikas is still thinking about how to best develop this initiative further.

The Concept of Information and Communication: The Education Resource Centre displays a lot of educational material that captures the imagination and can help to understand scientific facts and issues connected with natural history, local resources and musical traditions. What puzzled me, however, was that some parts of the collection appeared to have been put together in a coincidental fashion rather than following a concept, with some objects of entertainment value mixed in. I was also surprised that almost all the charts displayed on the wall were in English. I was told that they were used to teach English at the school, but I wondered of how much use they would be to adults who visit the Centre who, even if they know how to read, will need somebody to translate.

I did not see any indication of the Centre providing government information, although I had been told that it does. The ITDP-Manager told me that Gram Vikas mostly disseminates information about schemes and benefits at meetings with communities and committees. She also mentioned that the NGO tends to intervene and do advocacy work at government level on behalf of communities and individuals, adding that "they could of course on their own, but nobody would listen to them".

The NGO sees itself as an intermediary between governing bodies and villagers, rather than aiming for communities to demand their rights and entitlements directly. This approach probably also influences decisions about access to information technology and media. When asked if Gram Vikas has any plans to explore possibilities of communication between communities or between villagers and other people and agencies beside of Gram Vikas, the ITDP-Manager in return asked "Why, with whom should they communicate?"

The Resource Centre in Rhudapadar is a big step towards providing materials for educational purposes in rural areas. It is, however, not embedded in a comprehensive information and communication strategy and seems to have been established in a context where communication is largely understood to consist of the contact between Gram Vikas and the communities. It deals with the knowledge of physical "things" and does not include material that might help to understand concepts like power relationships, politics or even communication itself. I saw no indication that the Centre supplies material that could be politically relevant or contribute to empowerment of community members.

Participation, Ownership and Sustainability: The Resource Centre clearly has been set up by Gram Vikas for the communities rather than by the communities. Only now that it has been established, does Gram Vikas encourage people to contribute ideas and material and listen to demands to set up more centres.

Gram Vikas apparently plan to eventually hand over all projects to the communities, but they have not set a schedule for the organisation's withdrawal. The ITDP Manager says that this would depend on how fast Gram Vikas can build capacities of community members. Several people are currently being trained to run the Resource Centre, but overall management and ownership will remain with the NGO. Videos to be screened at the Centre will be produced by Gram Vikas experts, and how a computer might be used in the future will also be decided by the organisation. All this indicates that Gram Vikas pursues a strategy of top-down intervention and does not involve people in an analysis of their education and information needs and what type of intervention they, the community members, find relevant and appropriate.

We did not have the opportunity to travel to villages to ask about the acceptance of the Centre and to get a better idea of its potential sustainability. But as long as the Centre is run and equipped by Gram Vikas, and as long as the NGO as a powerful organisation in the area encourages people to visit it, it will probably attract visitors. Thus it is likely the question of sustainability will not have to be dealt with for some time.

Accountability and Access: It is impossible to assess how easy or difficult access to the Resource Centre is for community members without conducting a survey in the villages. The catchment area (more than 40 villages) is big, and considering the distances between communities as well as the fact that most people do not have private transport, a lot of people probably find it quite difficult to travel to Rhudapadar. There were hints that Gram Vikas sometimes provides transport to the Centre, but I was not able to verify this information.

Gram Vikas is obviously accountable to its donors as well as to the communities it works in, but it is unclear how villagers monitor a powerful organisation with a lot of resources and knowledge that runs almost all, if not all, development projects in the area.