What a privilege for us to enjoy a spot of variety and venue change as this trip to the GHNI Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. From there we all headed to Macon, France where we hosted over 250 delegates in “Poverty Challenges” and other venues for helping the poorest of the poor. Serving was all-inclusive for all us GHNI staff as we fed and provided all meeting arrangements for the delegates.
Serving meals and hosting meetings kept us all(GHNI staff) extremely busy …
Jatapara the GHNI adopted village in India near Dumka is now keenly focused on Education and Income Generation.
“Ownership” of these issues secure … their indigenous local committee chose these two as their top priority needs. Because of a lack of quality teachers in the government school, students learn little. Initially, parents were a good measure laissez faire about their children’s education. After TCD brought awareness about education and their children’s’ precious futures, parental priorities changed. The number of children now attending after-school has increase from 15 to 60. Along with education, they are also teaching music and dance. The children are naturally very excited about this!
Jatapara also formed an Income Generation committee of all ladies. Men from this village go to Dumka and other towns for work. It is very difficult to get them involved in the committee. Many of the women in this village make country liquor and sell it to earn some money. During our committee meeting they agreed that this is not good for their society. So they have decided to plant cash crop for additional income.
Good things are happening in this village! Thanks for your help in this!
Transformational Community Development (TCD) is all about the community leading their own change. In this story recently shared with us by GHNI-India, we were encouraged to see that age doesn’t matter when it comes to serving one’s community!
Jatapara Village, India
“We have been able to train the committee and they are able to see the importance of TCD.
“Det’ is a student in grade 12. She knows the importance of education. During our TCD training, she actively took part in learning about community development.
“In our last lesson with the community, we could identify problems that are preventing them from developing self-sustainabilities better. Lack of education was their top problem! So, as a community, they made two action steps.
“One: All women agreed to send their kids to school on time.
“Two: Det’ will teach all kids before they go to school. She has already started teaching those children who otherwise would do nothing after or before school time.”
GHNI India Staff Quotes
Thanks for your help in developing Jatapara, India and our work in GHNI!
Dan
Women are Thankful for Safe Water
“Lilmuni, along with other women, had to go to the river to bring drinking water as they did not have any source of drinking water in their village. Walking 1 km, A couple of times per day for water was one challenge, but the bigger challenge they faced was during rainy season when river was full of water. This kind of situation had forced them to drink unsafe water. This had caused health problems in the past.
“After GHNI has give bore well, the women don’t have to go to river for water. More than that, they get safe drinking water near their home. Lilmuni with other women is very much thankful for GHNI. We have taught all the women about safe drinking water.
Manu and Babujan
Villagers Excited About Transformational Development
“Manu has now formed TCD Committee in the village. All villagers are excited about this new concept of transformation. Though they may not have the full detail about how the future will look like, but their desire for a better life has given us wide opening in their village. Manu will be taking them through committee training this month.
“Manu and Babujan are going through additional training so that they will be able to train the committee members. One of the things that is slowing us down is the teaching material. Right now, most of the materials are available in English. Some have been translated in Hindi. We have to do the translation of all the materials in Santali.”
Daniel & Nora Emig's Journeys 