One year

Talking of milestones, Poonam and I completed one year of volunteering with Bala Janaagraha. Janaagraha is a NGO in Bangalore whose aim is to increase civic participation in local governance (Janagraaha=People Force). Their motto is Gandhi's 'Be the Change You want to see'. They are most known by their campaign 'Jaagore' which was co-branded with Tata Tea before the elections last year.

In these things, it is best to catch them young, and so Bala Janaagraha is the track focused on children. Each BJ volunteer is assigned to one of 32 schools in Bangalore, where he or she would teach 8th standard kids about local government and the role they have to play in it. The intent is to:

1. Equip them with knowledge (whom do you approach when the lights fail? When the garbage is not collected? for giving inputs on road planning?)
2. Equip them with values (what are your responsibilities in governance? How do you contribute to better solid waste management? Why do you need to conserve energy?)
3. Equip them with skills and abilities (children are encouraged to speak up, debate, participate, and act)

So it is like teaching them Civics: we just try to make it practical and interesting.

The year ends with the children doing a project that helps them realize their power to change things. For instance, the project could be 'How to make your neighborhood more pedestrian friendly'). They are supposed to observe, analyze, take action , prepare a project report and present it in competition with other schools.

A Challenge: Poonam and I were given a tough school: Crescent School is a conservative Muslim school, with kids mostly from low income families. The kids' English is poor despite being an English medium school, so we had to teach in Hindi. It was quite challenging, but also an education, as we haven't interacted with such children at length before. The school management was helpful and appreciative of our efforts, as were the Janagraha people. Here are some pics of the final BJ Fest where children from various schools presented their projects. I was the master of ceremonies for the event.

Overall, we both felt that we had achieved a small measure of good through this volunteering, and had fun while doing it. It is also humbling to see that the driving force behind Bala Janagraha are a set of elderly, educated and dynamic South Indian ladies.