Jee-news - Winter 2007
Letter from Andrew
The Jeevika Lecture 2007 was delivered by Dr Vandana Shiva on 19th November to a fascinated audience in Amnesty International's Human Rights Action Centre in London. Dr Shiva's subject was 'Living Economy, Living Democracy', and she was kindly introduced by Lord Navnit Dholakia. She stressed that rural poverty in India is further deepening under globalisation and that schemes for village livelihood ('jeevika'), supported by local stakeholder groups working outside the official village panchayats, are key ways to resist the heavy assaults by government-backed corporations on biodiversity, and on traditional access to common land and water.
During 2007, Jeevika Trust has continued to support our main partner Schumacher Centre for Development in Delhi, and we have taken big strides in building a range of Indian NGO partnerships and livelihood projects. As reported below, we have high hopes of being able to fund an extensive programme of these starting next year from the Big Lottery Fund. Programmes Officer, Judith Crosland and I visited partners in Tamil Nadu and Orissa in September and March of this year. An important start was made, through an exciting new partnership with SCAD (Society for Change & Development) in Tamil Nadu, on a programme for revival of traditional village water-reservoirs which have become disused over the past two or three decades.
I hope that you will find this new style, re-launched Jee-news useful and interesting. During the interval since the last newsletter we have invested in better 'technology' to enable us to keep you more frequently informed, and to extend the email readership of Jee-news. We are very alive to your reactions - so please email us with any feedback or comments, whether positive or critical, you would like to offer us.
Andrew Redpath
Executive Director, Jeevika Trust
Letter from India
Orissa remains near the bottom of the state league tables in India with 49% of its population living below the poverty line; over 50% of all women are illiterate; and the infant mortality rate of 82 deaths per 1,000 (under 1 year) being the highest in India. 43% of Orissa is forest and hence forest tribal communities are an important element of Orissa's population - and of its rural poverty and marginalisation. Largely situated under these forests, Orissa has mineral deposits which are among the richest in India, so that conflicts between mining corporations acting both within and without state government licences to exploit bauxite/aluminium and other metals have for some years been in collision with the traditional way of life of the tribal people. Of these, the conflict with Vedanta Mining has been highly publicised. SCD has played a strong role in local advocacy in support of the tribal people, with some degree of success.
This is why our recent partnerships with both the National Mission for Bamboo Applications (NMBA) and the Orissa Forest Department, to promote village livelihood schemes, illustrate an important way of addressing poverty issues. In addition to our bamboo-craft pilot project started last year with funding from Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, NMBA is now supporting 3 new SCD schemes for bamboo livelihoods - directly assisting marginalised women villagers to develop and make products which have real and marketable added value. Apart from plentiful timber, which is highly vulnerable to logging interests, the forests also contain a huge wealth of natural plants and other non-timber forest products - the Forest Department is backing work by SCD in this area. We have a field office in the capital Bhubaneshwar, which we share with OASIS, a new network of 700 grass-roots NGOs who will participate where possible in these schemes.
We appreciate the support that Jeevika Trust is giving us in this work, and hope it will be of interest to Jee-news readers.
Dr D K Giri
Director, Schumacher Centre for Development, Delhi
India Awakening
Thanks to a Big Lottery Fund (BLF) grant awarded this year, Jeevika Trust is undertaking research and building the capacity of three of our partner organisations - Annai Mary Foundation and Mithra Foundation in Tamil Nadu and Jeevan Rekha Parishad in Orissa - to improve their skills and expand their pilot activities enabling them to plan a broader programme of livelihood projects for women, to be developed in 2008. This is a vital step towards our goal of helping create thousands of new livelihood opportunities in rural India.
In particular, Annai Mary Foundation is currently working with 100 Scheduled Caste and Tribal women to generate income through beekeeping, kitchen gardens and craft activities; Mithra Foundation is working with 112 families affected by HIV/AIDS to generate income through candle-making and chickens; and Jeevan Rekha Parishad is working with 100 Tribal women to generate income from beekeeping.
SCAD, in the south of Tamil Nadu, may assist in providing learning-support to the three partners as a model NGO which has 20 years of experience of building its capacity and delivering a wide range of projects to Scheduled Castes and Tribal villagers. As mentioned already, SCAD, partly funded by our successful Walk for Water in June, has this year completed the main works for revival of the first 3 ooranies.
"The Challenge"
Charity challenge events are everywhere these days and many of them involve undertaking long flights and arduous journeys. Jeevika Trust would like to offer you something different. We would like our challenge events to be accessible to everyone even to those with limited time and energy but we would also like to keep our Carbon Footprint down. For this reason, we aim to organise events that are reasonably local and that can be undertaken in an afternoon, day or weekend but we need your help!
Would you like to take part in one of our challenges? Why not consider developing your own event? Our Walk for Water will be held in Kingston annually but we want to plan other activities; some suggestions so far have included. a night Halloween Walk along the South Downs, a rickshaw race from London to Brighton, climbing Mount Athos. But if you have your own idea then please let us know, the crazier and more daring the better!
Jeevika Trust needs to raise thousands of pounds to support our partners struggling to address absolute poverty in rural India. "Making Poverty History" can be challenging and rewarding for its own sake but it can also be a life changing experience, great fun and a chance to make new friends. Please contact Rosemary or Mark to find out more about supporting a challenge event or even running one of your own!
A Big Thanks!
Walk for Water
24th June 2007
Thank you to all those dedicated walkers who turned up to our first ever Walk for Water, despite the rain. Walkers took part in a 7 mile walk along the Thames - a distance much shorter than many women in India have to walk every day to fetch water. You have helped us raise a staggering £4500 to go towards Project Ooranie - that's more than double we were originally hoping for!
Indie Unsung
2nd August 2007
A massive thank you to Sophia Surjadi, Small Gang, The Ryes, Kizzy Black, Surveillance State Prisoners and everyone who helped make Indie Unsung such a success! We raised an incredible £1213.92. All the money raised will go to our HIV/Aids project, Project Mithra. To get a taste of the night, visit our website where a video will be available soon. Keep an eye out for emails about the next benefit gig in the New Year.
Jeevika Lecture 2007
19th November 2007
We are extremely grateful not only to Dr Shiva for her illuminating talk, but to the many people whose hard work and collaboration made the evening a success especially everyone at Amnesty International, John Rowley from the Gandhi Foundation and Ed Posey from the Gaia Foundation. A video and a text of the Lecture will shortly be available on our website.
Appeal
Project Mithra needs you! Working with an initial group of 127 families affected by HIV/AIDS, our partner organisation in Tamil Nadu, Mithra Foundation, is currently providing home care, crèche support, medication, transport to hospital treatments and kitchen garden development to support these families, over one-third of whom are children with HIV/AIDS. Six months ago Jeevika Trust gave them 50% of the project cost for one year, so that Mithra Foundation could provide these families with the training and chickens required to complete its Home Poultry Scheme. The produce from this project has benefited family nutrition as well as helped to generate income from the sale of eggs and chicks, but we urgently need to raise another £2,765 to help this project continue.
If you would like to help this worthy and life-sustaining project then please send your donation to: 'Jee-news Appeal', Jeevika Trust, Navigator House, 60 High Street, Hampton Wick, Surrey, KT1 4DB. Cheques should be made payable to 'Jeevika Trust' and please mark the back of your envelope with 'Project Mithra'. Thank you. We will let you know how it is going in the next edition of Jee-news.
