Bharathi Trust
Introduction
Bharathi Trust is a non-profit development organisation working for the
cause of upliftment and empowerment of Irula Tribal communities living
in the interior pockets of Thiruvallur district.
Since 1990, it has been working among the Irula communities in more
than 60 villages spreading over 5 Taluks of the District. It has been conducting
a number of development programmes such as Sangam formation, awareness
camps, liason work with government for obtaining development schemes, day
care services, motivation centres for eradication of child labour etc.
History Of the Bharathi Trust
Bharathi Trust was started by Siddamma, the director of the Trust. Siddamma
started her association with these people about six years back. This happened
when a group of villages from this community approached her to help them
out with their problems. At that time she was residing in Madras. In the
process of helping them out, when she visited the village, she realized
that a lot more needed to be done for these people. She had to develop
the villager's confidence in her if she had to do something for them. This
she did by staying with the villagers for almost two years during which
she learnt of their problems. She organized cultural programmes, school
for children, and other motivational programmes, which were oriented towards
getting the community together. She also acted as their voice against the
forces that were torturing the villagers. She also gave them a workable
knowledge of dealing with the local officials so that they could be better
equipped to take care of their own problems.
In the process of doing this she realized that there were many more
Irula villages which badly needed her support. This led to her activities
being spread over to sixty villages in these six years. This also led her
to the formation of the organization called Bharathi Trust through which
she could do her job more efficiently since managing many villages single
handedly would be an uphill task.
Projects Undertaken
Bharathi Trust had been running three model schools in different villages
over the last few years which was primarily done with the help of local
support and small funding that siddamma could draw from CRY. Now that she
wanted to set up more schools, she had to approach the whole idea differently.
She initially wanted to set up 10 schools for which she was seeking funds
to a tune of Rs.15 lakhs from CRY. Till last year, funds were being sanctioned
to Siddamma to a tune of Rs.4000 per month to manage her activities as
she was a `fellow' till then. Now that she wanted funds of a much higher
magnitude, CRY asked her to apply as a `project'. This means that she had
to make a thorough study about what exactly she wanted to do and how she
had planned to do it. Moreover CRY stated their constraints to the effects
that they would not be able to give funds for more than 5 schools, since
they felt that it would be difficult for the organization to manage ten
schools where they were managing 3 schools till now.
Since Irulas primarily ran the organization, surveying, selecting and
setting up the schools by themselves would have been a difficult task as
they lacked the know how to manage such a task. Even though Bharathi Trust
had been seeking and managing funds for the last few years, the fund she
expected from CRY was quite large to manage without a proper system in
place. Moreover Siddamma felt that she needed a professional touch to the
project, as this would help her in arriving at the exact way in which the
project could be planned and executed.
Also she was too busy with the fieldwork of visiting the villages and
helping the villagers with their day-to-day problems to devote much time
to the project planning exercise. so CRY wanted us to help Bharathi Trust
in going ahead with this project.
Organization Structure
Siddamma, the director, heads the organization. She is helped in all matters
by a facilitator called Mr.Krishnan, who is the cluster co-ordinator. The
entire organization's activities is divided into clusters headed by a cluster
in-charge. A cluster is a group of villages that lie in close vicinity
to each other. Each cluster represents a Taluka in the district. The cluster
in-charge of all the clusters report to the cluster coordinator. The Cluster
Co-ordinator gets informations and coordinates the activities amongest
all the cluster in-charges and presides over their meetings. All the problems
and the plan of action to be taken are discussed in these meetings .The
next on the rung, the cluster incharge is responsible in implementing these
plans in the villages with the help of the field workers. These field workers
are in turn responsible for the individual villages.
In each village a village head, a treasurer and a secretary are elected
who are a part of the village. They are the lowest but most important rung
in the ladder. They integrate the village and represent the people in any
decision making. This process has seen to it that the Irular tribal people
themselves are responsible for their own decisions, only faciliated by
the workers of Bharathi Trust.
Dinesh G Dutt
This document is culled from the Irula Project Proposal.
Last
modified: Fri Apr 21 05:28:06 PDT 2000