It was yet another rainy day in a small, little known village in Meghalaya’s West Jaintia Hills District as a team of “social workers” tracked down the adventurous route to the village. A few of the rural folks were kind and excited enough to walk up to welcome them. The tedious path took nothing away either from the visitors or the settlers, one eager to explore and inhale the uniqueness and best practices of the area and the other impregnated with the zeal to be self sufficient and sharing.
The visiting team consisted of second semester post graduate students and faculty members of the Social Work department of St Edmund’s and coaches and support staff of the Shillong-based Royal Wahingdoh Football Club among others.
They were on a mission, not to preach, but to learn and in turn try and ignite the passion of the rural folks to add fillip to the already existing best practices.
It was in Amkoi village under Amlarem C&RD Block that a rural camp under the theme “Exchanging Knowledge Practices Developing Sustainable Traditions” (Ha Shlem Synrop Jingtip Ngin Bet Ban San Ban Mer Ka Lariti) was being held.
The objective of the camp was to identify the unique aspects of the village for its empowerment, to enhance consciousness towards the well being of the community and to embrace the knowledge and skills in gaining positive effective learning.
The village with a population of 600-700 has no road connectivity or access to electricity and these are perhaps among the most important reasons for its self reliant attitude. However, a little bit of exposure does no harm to any society especially when the exercise comes in the guise of football, a game which the people in every nook and corner of the State are extremely passionate about.
In a first of its kind initiative in the region, the camp, with the intervention of Royal Wahingdoh FC of I-League fame, witnessed an exercise which made football a tool for raising consciousness and social reform.
While grassroots programmes are compulsorily in the scheme of things of every professional football club in India, Royal Wahingdoh, in a conscious decision, seized the rural camp opportunity to induce the rural folks “to start thinking while they act”.
The “Football Agro-biodiversity Workshop”, as it was called was eagerly looked up to by the rural settlers for several reasons that came to fore during the exercise.Randolph Langstieh, a faculty member of Social Welfare department, St Edmund’s College, who accompanied the students and actively led the camp, said that RWFC’s involvement did wonders as far as participation of youngsters was concerned.
“Usually only the elderly and the middle aged took part in such camps but RWFC’s involvement mobilized the youths of the area,” he said.It was for the first time that football was being used as a tool to raise consciousness on the rich biodiversity in the village and how to preserve them and while there was some confusion and apprehension about how things will shape up, all doubts were put to rest pretty soon after the exercise began.
“The first task under the exercise was to get in place the seasonal chart… Which crops are grown in which season, which fruits are available at what time of the year, the dependency on the rivers etc.,” Langstieh, who joined hands with RWFC coaches and support staff in conducting the workshop, said.Youngsters were then divided into four groups– forests, agricultural produce, kitchen garden, rivers.
In one of the drills, each youngster was made to dribble the ball from one point to another in a straight line and vice versa and call out the name of a particular forest produce, fruit, fish etc., as per his group, which the other player from the row was not allowed to repeat. The process went on until only four winners, who knew the most, survived.“At the end of the entire process, the boys realized that they knew more about the biodiversity around. As many as 79 different produces were named by the end of the entire exercise. Many realized that the game had raised their level of consciousness,” Langstieh said.
However, later when the area was mapped as many as 195 species were discovered.And this was not all there were other exercises involved too. For instance when asked to a lot of 30, only four confirmed that they grew chilly, while all 30 admitted, that they ate it.
Thereafter four players were asked to keep the possession of the ball in a small area while the rest circled them vying for the ball. In due time, the four found it extremely difficult to retain possession. The ball here signified the plants. Later more players were involved in the process and the playing arena was increased in size and it was found that ball possession became easier and even effortless with the increased numbers. This signified that if more people are involved in the cultivation of an in demand item, the entire process becomes less tiresome while everybody gets decent share of the item too.
The same process was repeated in term of threats to crops.While five threats were named, five players were asked to take the centre and chase the ball while the others circling them were to keep the ball away from the reach of the five. The idea was to depict that if everyone works together natural threats can be kept at bay.Nelson Mandela had once said, “The challenge is to move from rhetoric to action.” It was this concept that prompted the Royals to try and take their grassroots programme to a different level.
“The aim was to use football as a developmental tool to trigger the minds of the youth, especially in the rural areas,” said an RWFC official.“RWFC has been in the football scene for a long time now. The Club started with the ethos of giving opportunities to the youth of the state to play professional football at the highest level. Though we were successful in taking the game to even the rural areas of the State, the MSW camp presented an opportunity to take our grassroots programme to the next level.
“No one has tried this before and we are proud to announce that this was an encouraging and successful start. At Wahingdoh we always “Dare to Dream” of the best that can be achieved. When we made our I-League debut not all would have expected us to finish third in the standings but there we were the first club from the North East ever to achieve the feat. This project is another feather to our cap and a significant one of trying to use football as a social tool,” the RWFC official said while thanking the Social Work department of St Edmund’s College for involving the club in the camp.
Rural camps are a part of the curriculum of masters students and the basic objective is to provide exposure to the students on rural life and getting a clear understanding of the rural livelihoods which depends primarily on agriculture Choosing the village is an important criteria in such camps as the ratio between the students and the number of people/households covered has to be taken into account.As against the common notion of going to the villages enlighten the rural folks the students of St Edmunds MSW believe in grasping the good and unique practices already followed by the village.“If we start with problems and tell them what to do and what not to do at the very beginning the entire process runs the risk of getting stuck,” Langstieh said.
We follow some rules like “Looking into the unique practices first, enhance consciousness on the richness already there etc.”Every camp should have a theme for its difficult to cover everything in a week’s time.“The camp at Amkoi was the most meaningful till now as in terms of participation it surpasses al others we have conducted. Participatory approach is very important in social work as without sound participation from the community nothing substantial can come out of the camp,” he said.
“Key approach of any participatory camp is facilitation. We don’t just go there and lecture, as such an approach gives rise to dependency. Our aim is to provoke and create a situation for the rural community to start thinking, to start questioning themselves, questioning everything so that the moment we leave a process which can be taken forward is left behind.”The end of any participatory camp is to mobilize the people for which there are several tools including theme songs, street plays, home visits, cultural meets etc. Tools are crucial to give visual representation to people.
Apart from the Football Agro biodiversity Workshop, a traditional music workshop by La Tynrai, eye camp by Bansara Eye Care, a workshop on education, sanitation and environment by the Social Work department were also a part of the rural camp.