As part of weekly sessions at all the community centres, one initiative was where community elders were invited to the centre to share the history of their communities with adolescents and youth.. How did they settle here? Where did they migrate from to this spot? How and who put up the first houses? What are the skills practiced by their people? When and for what do they move to different places through the year – this question relevant in Circus Ground NT-DNT tent community and Chon Adivasi pada.. and many more were prepared by the adolescent and youth groups. In all the villages, community elders were pleasantly surprised and very glad to talk about their and their peers’ journey through the years, and the youngsters were also as pleasantly surprised to see their elders – grandparents of some of the youth in some cases – as repositories of interesting knowledge, and to see their community, their family, themselves in a different light – as having a history with interesting backstories.
There were other sessions where either the youth went into the community to learn about the different resources and professionals there, or community stakeholders were brought to the centre. This is part of our efforts to help the youth realize their community as resourceful, to understand who they are, what work they do, and build more meaningful relationships with where they live. These visits included to the local fire brigade, PHC, government veterinary clinic, the Gram Panchayat to meet the Sarpanch and Gram Sevak, inviting the Anganwadi teacher to share about her work and experiences, and so on.
