The moment of Youth

Gully goalee keeps kids in school



When Ashok Rathod was in Class V, he watched his friends drop out of school to work at Sasoon Docks, earn their first hundred rupees and spend it on cigarettes. “We sailed through the first four years of school because they couldn’t fail us according to government mandate even though we could barely write our names,” says Rathod, who who grew up in Ambedkar Nagar, a slum in Cuffe Parade, and attended a BMC-run school at Colaba.

“One could easily earn Rs200 per day. Then when we didn’t know how to spend it, we turned to alcohol and cigarettes. Soon parents would get concerned and get the kid married at 17 so that he took up some responsibility,” explains Rathod as he draws a circle in the mud with his finger.

He was the captain of his gully cricket team. But by the time he graduated, his friends had traded sports for gambling. At age 23, most of his batchmates have two children and they still work at the docks. In 2006, he started the Oscar Foundation that guides slum children in life lessons through football.

“I wanted to break that cycle and use sport as a way to keep slum children occupied after school hours. It teaches them team work, helps concentration and we even got a tutor to help them with their homework,” says Rathod who functions out of a tiny office space in the slum.

Today, he coaches 300 children in Mumbai aged between 7 and 22 years; 35 are girls. They practice daily, play at tournaments across the country and the only criterion to be on the team is that you must attend school.

In June, Rathod will travel to Brazil where he has been invited by the corporate social responsibility (CSR) wing of FIFA.

Tune in to Farmer TV



Rikin Gandhi studied aerospace engineering from MIT and then landed a job with Microsoft where he worked for two years. He now makes videos with farmers in Karnataka.

He is the CEO of Digital Green, a social initiative that spreads information about new farming techniques and government-initiated agricultural schemes through videos made by farmers that are screened in villages.

In 2009, Gandhi and his team of techies began their project by giving individuals in the community a crash course in filmmaking and editing.

His team shoots instructional videos with farmers and then screens the film in a school or temple before an audience of villagers. The screening is followed by a discussion about how the new methods can help increase productivity. “We get more questions about who the farmer in the video is and how they can get on TV,” laughs Gandhi.

Gandhi says the idea for the Digital Green initiative germinated when he realised that government schemes were falling short of meeting their target groups because they weren’t able to connect with the farmer. “The idea was to gain the trust of the people by having a video shot by one of their community members and featuring a real farmer they can identify with. That way the adoption rate of new practices is higher,” he says.

Digital Green has penetrated 2,000 villages and has a bank of 2,600 videos in 20 languages.

Almost 1.5lakh farmers are part of its network. A new video is screened every two weeks and 73 per cent of the video staff are rural women.

Lessons from the travelling museum



Dakshayini Gowda has visited many museums around the world where the history is diverse but the signs are all the same: ‘don’t touch the artefacts’.

Gowda was determined to change that. In 2007, the artist with a Masters in museology and archaeology travelled to Gownipalli, a village 125km from Bangalore, to teach children up to the age of 11 about history and culture.

She travels with a museum filled with replicas of historical artefacts such as the terracotta bullock carts from the Indus Valley civilisation and encourages children to touch and learn. Local craftsmen are also invited to speak about traditional art forms.

But can farmers afford such artistic after-school activities? Gowda has created a self-sustainable revenue model that provides women with a livelihood and gives children an education. Women in the village are trained to make jewellery with modern designs while using traditional embroidery.

The jewellery is then sold online to customers across France, USA, Austria, Australia, Germany
and India under the banner Sanchali, a Sanskrit word for movement. The profits are pumped back into the arts programme for kids in the village.

“I met many women who created beautiful embroidery but weren’t allowed to leave their houses. So I began making home visits. Slowly, as the women began contributing to the finances of the household, the men started warming up to the idea of letting children learn about the arts,” says Gowda.