Our day began at 3:15 in the morning. We started to the station at 4:30, luckily managed to get  the tickets easily (without having to wait for very long in the counter) to Borra Guhalu. Before  anything else what struck us most was the reality of the Indian railway stations. The train was  late by half an hour, we had to run with all our luggage to get a place to sit. But no one could get  in as people completely blocked the entrances. We just then noticed that …

For once the destination was more beautiful than the journey. This was the second day of the road trip and Susheela Ma’am came to pick us up at 9 sharp, almost to the second :). We were headed to visit the boarding school that Samata runs for the tribal kids under its program called Balamitra.
The two story rented building was in quite a scenic spot, and doubled as the Samata’s office in the area too.
“This is Ram. He’s another one of our backbones here. We have many backbones in Samata. …

The journey from Bengaluru to Vizag seemed eternal with the still not pacified andhra summer heat wave draining our body. Gulping in bottles (of what :P) one after the other, we reached Visakhapatnam just after two in the afternoon. With the contact Mr. Ravi gave us at Samata, we called up Mr.Krishna, who had to take care of our accomodation for that day. A short drive in a hired rickshaw, led to the NGO’s office in the city. The office had enough people to create a feeling that something’s ‘happening’ …

After a long wait:P we are finally mapped to the NGO which we will be visiting after our orientation in Bangalore. It is located in one of the most beautiful places in Andhra Pradesh, Araku. As Harshita says it almost looks like mini-Switzerland in pics. So some real good work with my camera after many days. Though the best thing definitely is the fact that we will stay in a forest(kind of) for almost 10 days with the local people (I am sure this will be a …

Went to the Bala Vikasa head office in Kazipet today… Luckily got to meet the head of the organization for operations in the state. I was directed to the incharge of their media and presentations division where I was given a ppt about the organization and then was answered some questions which I prepared before hand.
Bala Vikasa was founded by Mr.Andre Gingras and his wife Singareddy Bala Theresa in the year 1990. It is a sister organization of SOPAR an organization in Canada that was founded in 1977. Singareddy Bala …

I had gone past it a thousand times… and for once the thousand’s not an exaggeration, its an understatement if anything. The building’s right next to my school where I spent almost ten years, so yeah it was a place I knew. Or so I thought…I did know that it was a place where they fit Jaipur foot, and I did know that it was a prosthetic for the handicapped, but I didn’t know that they fit almost 60,000 of them a year, that it’s the largest organization that fits …

This road-trip is supposed to be a mode to learn with right amounts of fun and adventure.. but now I swear ..it is a loooooot more..the first discussion about the fellowship, then about our resumes, the overtensed interview day, those unanticipated calls from the alumni, regular blog checks like never before, interactions with some brilliant minds, being hooked to the internet for something proper, those long reading hours during periods of  hibernation, long mid night calls and conferences, those long long fights with Varsha to flip her ideas (:P)… this is …

As a part of my task two I met Mr. Subhash Chandra, director of CARPED (Center for Action Research and People’s Development) at his office in Rahmat Nagar. He shared some of his personal experiences with me. CARPED was started by his elder brother 20 years ago and since then has been doing brilliant work in its base Medak. At CARPED they run schools, provide tuitions, offer health services and take active part in betterment of irrigation facilities in tribal areas of Medak. Lately they actively started promoting environmental …

After piling up all the data we had with us for the presentation, I noticed that the first thing to do is to compress the data ( about 15 gigabytes ) to proceed further. One evening entirely went in the process and we noticed a need for some smart work in deciding the contents of the video to finish it before the deadline. So, we decided to meet in the insti that evening to discuss the script. I made a crude story line which eased the process as we needed …

We now consider those points which we think gave a positive momentum to the campaign.
1. Did not waste time in unnecessarily prolonging the process, but focused on what we wanted to get at by calling up the relevant people, time was saved a lot that ways. Next thought that we had was that, even though we were able to contact the contractor, Mr. Silvera for garbage collection, we weren’t sure if the people themselves understood the problem they faced and were aware about the responsibilities of the contractor. We …