Bringing Digital Literacy to Kenyan schools

“We have no reason anymore not to improve our grades, because now we are better equipped, even more than our neighbouring schools who have been outperforming us” said Boniface Nakori, the head teacher of Sionta Primary School in Samburu County. The school, which was constructed in the middle of a pastoral zone, did not have many facilities, until recently. It is a similar story in the neighbouring Turkana county, where many schools do exist, but with inadequate facilities. One of the tenets of providing a basic education is accessibility, but if the education that we provide our children is to be meaningful, there has to be an equal emphasis on quality. And today, providing quality education also means ensuring that children are not left behind on the rapid strides made in the digital age.

Under its Education Resource Centre (ERC) project, Pragya conducted training across seven schools, in Samburu and Turkana counties in Northern Kenya, and provided schools with digital learning equipment and teaching learning materials (TLMs). The provision of DVDs and other materials ensures that quality education is delivered to the students. In many schools, the system was already in operation for sometime now, and the feedback from the students was enthusiastic. In the Kapua Primary School, the TVs had been linked with satellite television, enabling the school to tune into education programs. Mrs. Kerio, a guidance and counseling teacher in Nakwamekwi School, found the material useful in teaching the students about sex education, especially the symptoms and effects of various sexually transmitted diseases. The teachers found the materials immensely helpful in teaching science subjects that tend to require a lot of illustrations, which was made easy; and in some instances, the project helped the students who had never used laptops to do so. One of the outcomes of the project is that it familiarizes the students with digital materials, providing them with the necessary skills and confidence to function in the digital age.

Engendering Change - Himachal's first solar wind power plant

A recent agreement signed between the Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board and Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) will see a 2.5MW solar-wind hybrid power project being set up at Rangrik, Kaza in Lahaul & Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh in India. The solar – wind hybrid plant, to be commissioned by 2017, is part of an attempt by India to transform its energy sector. In the recently concluded Paris Climate change agreement, India has agreed to generate 40% of its total energy from renewable sources by 2030.  By 2022, India is looking to add 175,000 MW of clean energy, of which solar and wind energy are estimated to constitute 10500 and 52500 MW, or 90% of the total output.

Besides the ostensible benefits of clean energy, localized energy generation has a huge impact on the lives of people living in remote rural communities, where reaching traditional grid based power is a challenge.  Pragya’s foray into providing clean energy to the people in remote communities was through a pilot solar – wind hybrid system in Lossar and Youche villages in Lahaul & Spiti, and the Shyaso village in Kinnaur, both in Himachal Pradesh. Lahaul and Spiti is part of the larger cold desert region in the Himalayas, a sparsely populated region with a huge renewable energy potential.

As part of our efforts to increase the use of renewable energy in the area, Pragya worked closely with the village members and district officials, training the people in the use of renewable energy technologies, and using the pilot project to encourage more districts to use renewable energy to generate electricity. As part of the advocacy efforts, at the national level, we organised a workshop on “Accelerating Renewable Energy Deployment in Rural Himalayas” in July 2015, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Dr. Ashvini Kumar, the Managing Director, Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) was the chief guest of the event.

Empowering the Hinterlands - An Update

In ancient times, a scapegoat was an animal on whose back the sins of a community were placed, and was cast out in the desert, which is where the term scapegoating comes from. One of the forms in which this practice continues to live, is witch hunting, still prevalent in parts of India today. In the hinterlands of the country, it is convenient for the community to transfer its misfortunes on those already at the margins: widows, unmarried or old women.

According to the most recent report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB, 2014), out of the 156 murder cases relating to ‘witchcraft’ reported in the country, 47 were from Jharkhand.  The report does not include cases of violence not resulting in murder or the social death that the victims accused of witchcraft suffer. Witch-hunting is mainly used as a pretext for rape or grabbing property, but sometimes illness or sudden death of people or livestock can also trigger the anger of the community.

Speaking at the inauguration of the Pragya Sashaktikaran Kendra – Empowerment Centre (EC) – in Ranchi, Dr Mahua Manji, Chairperson of Jharkhand State Women’s Commission, said, “witch-hunting mainly occurs due to health issues in the community”.

In the rural areas of Jharkhand and other states, people rely heavily on Ojhas, or spiritual healers or exorcists, in spite of the presence of Primary Healthcare Centres. A lack of understanding of basic health issues and formal healthcare contributes to high mortality rate from diseases, and the Ojhas, with no formal training in medicine, are often the ones to brand and therefore instigate the violence against the ‘witches’.

Punam Toppo, a social activist who has been campaigning to prevent Violence Against Women (VAW) for more than a decade, has felt the effect of this violence first hand. Her grandmother, under whose care she grew up after her parents passed away, was accused of being a witch; the family was designated a social outcast and was forced to move out of the village. Ms. Toppo is associated with the Association for Social and Human Awareness (ASHA), which works for the empowerment of women in the grassroots. Pragya has partnered with ASHA in Jharkhand, and together we have formed Women’s Peer Groups (WPGs) in 10 villages in Ranchi district, raising awareness about the basic issues of health, nutrition and women’s rights.

Pragya has also established an Empowerment Centre in Tezpur in Soniptur district of Assam. The state, which passed legislation against witch hunting in 2015, has been in the news for the high prevalence of witch hunting practices. Our project in Sonitpur covers a total of 10 villages in the Dekhiajuli and Chariduari blocks. The formation of the WPG in Batachipur village saw the participation of upwards of 100 women. We received an enthusiastic response from Ghargra Kachari, Gormara Kachari, and Shantipur villages in Dekhiajuli block and Bogijuli village in Chariduari block.

Pragya has expanded its presence to Jharkhand and Assam with the establishing of these ECs and will be moving to include Bihar shortly. This is part of a joint project with the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women (UNTF), and will cover ten districts in five states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.

3rd Anniversary of the Uttarakhand floods

17 June marked the third anniversary of the Uttarakhand floods that killed more than 5000 people and left the infrastructure of the state in shambles. The intensity of the floods was such that the state government has not been able to arrive at a number of ‘official’ deaths in the disaster, with many families of the deceased yet to receive a death certificate.

In the aftermath of the disaster, a report by the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) has indicated that unregulated construction of dams in the Alaknanda and Mandakini basins, along with adverse weather conditions, could have led to the flooding.  Human intervention is increasingly seen to be the cause of disasters in the Uttarakahand, with recent reports that the fire in April 2016 leading to a large-scale destruction of trees and forest cover could have been man made.

Despite the widespread destruction of infrastructure and huge toll of the floods in the state, there are signs of recovery: people are making their way back to the pilgrimage site of Kedarnath, and the ‘Valley of flowers’, a popular tourist destination, opened to the public for the first time in 3 years. There are untold stories of the strength and resilience of survivors in the face of calamity, everyday individuals building their lives from scratch, after they saw it washed away three years ago.

Pragya has been working to rehabilitate the livelihoods of the people in the areas that are worst affected by the floods, by providing the people with alternate sources of income, in a state whose economy is geared toward revenue from tourism. We are also piloting a grassroots, citizen - led early warning system to be implemented in the districts of the Uttarakhand in the coming year. 3 years on, we remember all the people who lost their lives in this tragedy, and the lessons remain clear: concerted conservation efforts and minimizing human intervention in the environment are a necessity if we are to avoid tragedy on such a scale in the near future.

Addressing the Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN)

In the year 2000, Ms Gargi Banerji was awarded the Whitley Gold Award for her efforts, as the Director of Pragya, toward the conservation and cultivation of medicinal plants in the Indian Himalayan region. The award brought us international recognition, allowing us to expand the scope of the project, which received continued funding in 2003 and 2005. We collaborated with the Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) in a landmark five-year ‘Water Access and Wasteland Development project’ that was completed in 2011.

Ms Banerji visited the Whitley Fund for Nature in London this June, 16 years after being conferred the Whitley Gold, to deliver a talk on the work that Pragya is doing; the interleaving years have seen Pragya increase the ambit of its work to integrate livelihood & social development, rights & welfare, and critical technical interventions in the management of natural resources into its projects. Our growth has been mirrored in the long list of individuals and conservation projects associated with the WFN today - a testament to its influence.

Pragya has long been involved in the Himalayan region of the subcontinent, and when the region was struck by a series of disasters - the Uttarakhand floods of 2013, the J&K floods of 2014, the Nepal Earthquake of 2015 - we immediately moved to mobilize resources to provide rescue and relief. Our experience of work to provide relief in the aftermath of each of these events deeply impressed upon us the need for a comprehensive, grassroots plan to mitigate the effect of disasters, an aspect that was highlighted in the framework adopted at the World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) held in Sendai, Japan in 2015.

In the remote rural regions of the world, the rampant destruction of the environment is only heightening the effects of disaster. In a world where the frequent disasters due to climate change is a reality we all face, and not the myth it was taken to be a few decades back, preparing for the next big ‘event’ is not enough. At Pragya, our goal has remained the same: to work for the conservation of sensitive ecosystems and the development of the marginalized communities, who are most affected in the event of a disaster. Our preparations to meet the challenges of natural disaster have to integrate conservation efforts to mitigate, and reduce the risk from disaster.

Addressing the WFN, Ms Banerji spoke about Pragya’s work at the grassroots in this regard, working with members from the local community to reduce the vulnerability to disasters by piloting an ‘Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction Approach’ that uses conservation efforts to increase the health of local ecosystems in a bid to naturally reduce the effect of disasters.