Fellowships are beautiful in a sense that they unlock our potential, expose us to the needs of the communities and provide directions for our future endeavours. Tangibly, fellowships help us to establish appropriate networks in the sector, help us to engage with various stakeholders – govt, administration, communities, and other organisations, and cultivate skills of project design and management, monitoring and evaluation, etc., and instills values like empathy, responsibility, trust and much more. Fellowship programmes are largely successful for the fellows, organisations and also for the communities to some extent. One of the fellowship programmes of the Maharashtra Government, launched by Sri Devendra Fadnavis, Ex Chief Minister, in 2015. The fellowship was a 3 year programme with an objective to fill gap in governance in rural areas where fellows were expected to work across 26 indicators like health, housing, education, migration, skills, livelihoods etc. They are required to create a village development plan, execute sustainable projects, deepen awareness about various government schemes, identify beneficiaries and help them avail benefits of existing government schemes like PM Awas Yojana, PM Kaushal Vikas Yojanaa and many more. More than 100 students have been selected for the batch of 2017, with a commitment to bring change for the better in next 3 years.
I came to associate with 5 such ex CM fellows who have been the strength and support for each other throughout the fellowship, did a remarkable work in their communities, with the administration and the government in Beed district of Maharashtra. Beed district is drought prone, migration affected area where people out migrate for sugar cane cutting season in nearby towns in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. This affects the lifestyle, education, health, their eligibility for government schemes due to their migrant nature, and a large number of instances for child marriages. Many of the fellows have contributed remarkably to bring better living for the communities. They have strengthened structures and institutions like panchayats, supported for women participation in Panchayat meetings, helped in proliferation of government schemes like ration cards, PM Awas Yojana etc.
While recalling his fellowship days, Vaijnath Ingole, one of the ex fellow mentioned that he has facilitated Construction of 70 houses under Awas Yojana in Pathan Mandva village by providing supporting documentation in time with tehsildar which has further taken up by district magistrate. He also mentioned that 4 people in the village got a sum of 10,00,000 each under PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana to build skills and begin with their enterprise where one of them set up a printing shop and a cyber cafe. Another fellow, worked to enhance education in collaboration with Zilla parishad schools, bringing library and other teaching materials and learning toys for children in school in Chandan Savargaon through his skills of stakeholder engagement, storytelling and fundraising. The other fellow has intensively worked on strengthening water structures and providing clean drinking water to villages. These just few stories, through this fellowship a remarkable work has been done by the fellows and state government.
Beed that has been a neglected district for long in terms of execution of development policies has came in the eyes of the CM due to exemplary work done by the fellows in 3 years. 5 fellows from the district share a strong bond of friendship, have trust among each other, and commitment to bring change for the better in the communities. All this has been strengthened from their fellowship to their post fellowship journeys. A lot has been done but a lot much has to be done, with this belief, the fellows completed two and half years of fellowship and came to realize that once this comes to an end, they’ll all be scattered and separated, living their lives and with no clear plans of coming together again. With this thought they sat with each other, in a old restaurant in Ambajogai, where they usually come to meet each other for weeks. In a mid of conversation about next steps and costlier food, an idea popped up to set up a restaurant where people can come and hangout with their family and friends and enjoy unlimited traditional and quality food in just Rs 80. It was a good exit post fellowship to be together. In a couple of months before fellowship was to over, they set up their restaurant in the mid of the city. They worked as cook, servant, and done every thing required. In next two months, they hired a woman who needed a job and they started paying her salary of Rs. 8,000 from their pockets.
The restaurant was going well, until they realized that it was not sufficient for them to run their livelihoods. Also there was not much to do as it does not needed 5 people at a time. It was decided that two people would continue with the restaurant, one person moved to Pune for a better job at Krushi Vikas and for the other two they have to figure out. One of them DadaSaheb Ji who has prepared extensively for Civil Services examination and reached till interview stage, came with an idea to establish a career academy in Ambajogai. Ambajogai is a hub of educational institutions in Beed distict where many students from neighboring villages came to study medical, engineering, nursing etc. Even in their restaurant, many students come to have their lunch. While understanding their expectations and requirements which other academies and coaching center fail to address, DadaSaheb Ji came with an idea of establishing a career academy different from regular coaching classes, equipped with professionals from different sectors, experiment and application based learning, career counselling sessions. He onboarded various stakeholders like district administration, educational institutions to make this venture successful. By the end of fellowship in 2020 February, this Daksh Career Academy has been setup and a date of 22 March has been decided as inaugration and if your memory is sharp enough you would know this date. “Nation Wide Lockdown” had been imposed and everything came to a close; the restaurant, the academy and the spirits of these 5 friends.
It was an emergency situation throughout India, the spread of the virus, physical and social distancing, the lockdown, unavailability of ration, shortage of medical aid like masks oxygen concentrators, people packed in home, education stopped and everything for the fellows come to close. For two months in a row April and May, all friends moved to their respective villages as fellowship also came to an end. In those months, they are got calls form the villages they have worked with, about non-availability of ration, need for oxygen concentrators and masks. A lot of voluntary services have been rolled up by the government. This was actually an opportunity in disguise. They coordinated among themselves to come together to serve the people who needed them. All of them came up for voluntary services, DadaSaheb Ji began reaching out to government and various organisation who were distributing masks and sanitizers and free ration kits to the communities in rural areas. DadaSaheb Ji also coordinated with various organisation like IVolunteer, Manavlok, Education above all – a Qatar based organisation, who were ready to help and support with needed amenities at the time of an emergency. The supporter organisations required the documents for better aid delivery and to establish the trust the person calling for aid. This is just to ensure better delivery to the needy and not concentration of such amenities. The friends has managed procurement of amenities by providing documents of another organizations. The fellow come friends came back to Ambajogai and distributed thousands of ration kits, lakhs of masks and few oxygen concentrators. This activity has begun from mid May 2020 and its running endlessly with a commitment for a cause of bringing better lives for the rural communities who have potential to bring a change.
The activities continued by the incorporation of GramUrja Human Development Foundation in October 2020 by 5 friends who began their journey as fellows by initially strengthening health infrastructure during Covid and continued by education through rural volunteers who began taking online classes or offline classes in small batches in their villages. The organisation acquired study material with the support of other organisations like Pratham, Toy Bank etc. Continued with developing a full fledged Fellowship Programme called GramHunar where trained rural fellows engage with zilla parishad schools supported by Wipro Foundation. Then continued with GramUdyam Programme, a livelihood initiative where they arranged seed fund from Azim Premji Foundation and provided with EDP training with the support of Youth Aid Foundation and continued with governance initiative called Gram Connect with millions of lives being impacted since its establishment. After 5 years of their changemaking, they have reached a turnover of more than 1 Crore and impacted more than 10,000 households through their interventions.
The journey has been tough but these five individuals made it happen and steered through odds by believing in themselves and in each other. Let me know in the comments what do you think of this inspiring journey of GramUrja Foundation.
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