Chaitanya

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On Tuesday the 29th of September Sandhya, the coordinator of my program, came to take me to Chaitanya. I was unsure if Chaitanya was a town or the name of the organization I was going to work with and basically unsure of anything where I was going. We went by a car and drove through the most beautiful scenery. We kept rising in the mountains and went through a beautiful mountain pass. The sparse houses and green hills surrounding us in contrast to the buildings of Mumbai created so much excitement for what was to come. I arrived in Rajgurunagar or Khed (same town) mid-afternoon and went to Chaitanya, which turns out to be an organization. Rajgurunagar has two names because it was renamed after India’s independence from England for a famous freedom, Rajguru, who was from Khed (said like made but with a k). Rajguru is one of the three most famous freedom fighters in the independence movement and the town was so proud he was from here, they named the town after him (Rajguru) and nagar, which means town. Apparently about 100,000 people live here although I would say it is a smaller amount.

I quickly met the staff and immediately was invited to go to Pune and see a speaker. When I arrived I was greeted by Sudhadai (dai is an ending which connotes respect, meaning sister) Kothari, the founder and director of Chaitanya. She seems like a really amazing woman but is insanely busy so I haven’t had time to talk with her (I think brilliance and busyness go hand in hand). She asked the preliminary questions of what skills I had and what I wanted to accomplish while at Chaitanya. As I didn’t have a specific project, I didn’t have the most complete answers but I expressed my desire to learn more about Chaitanya.

From her description and other readings Chaitanya was started by Sudhadai during her study tour exploring community based organizations. She noticed that the people in the region weren’t using the organizations and there was kind of a lack of communication and information to them. She started Chaitanya for Self-Help Groups, a non-profit form of microfinance powered by the women themselves. They run the meetings, collect the money, elect their own leaders, etc. Now Chaitanya has become a training center for many issues such as health, legal procedures (this part works specifically with domestic violence), government structure, capacity building for non-profits, and financial literacy. They are such a cool organization and do so much work in different fields I had no idea what I wanted to do because I wanted to do everything.

Coming to Chaitanya, I had been told I would be the only intern working there from my organization; however, when I arrived I found out there are three other interns working at Chaitanya also. They came with an organization called Indicorp and are second generation Indians. They are from the US and Canada and working at Chaitanya for one year on a health insurance program. I am so thankful that they are here. I was totally ready to be alone working at Chaitanya again but worried that the loneliness I experienced in Mumbai would return. Two of the girls, Shriya and Hardeep, both speak broken Hindi but really have only learned it during the two months they’ve been here because they spoke different mother tongues at home. Bindu, the third girl, is learning Hindi too and the combination makes it a) easier to communicate with the people in the town when necessary and b) creates an appreciating between us girls that we aren’t natives to this area but we’re trying our best to learn. This sense of camaraderie is comforting to me but it’s also very helpful in meeting people in the town and getting around. Most people in Rajgurunagar don’t speak English and all of the signs are in Marathi (the mother tongue of the area) or Hindi.

From my first day I started meeting people within the village itself. There had been a festival right before I had come, Navratri festival, so Shriya, Bindu and Hardeep had met a lot of people in the town. The way to meet people it appears is through children. Most of them have been learning English in school so they will approach you and invite you to their house for tea. At their house you will meet their parents who although can’t speak much English, can communicate through the children or Hardeep and Shriya. The girls had already gone through this process during Navratri so had many connections with families in Rajgurunagar. I had chai at four different people’s houses within the first few days in the town, one of the many reasons I love life in Rajgurunagar.

Another reason I love it here is because of the work I’m doing. On my first real day of work and I realized quickly that I was in charge of my fate. The advising is very hands off as everyone is very busy so it is my responsibility to dig for the information about Chaitanya and what type of project I can do. I started in Chaitanya’s library which has really great resources to support the projects they have going on but not a lot of information about the organizational structure. I had no idea Chaitanya was involved with so many aspects beyond microfinance until I asked someone to explain it to me. After I learned about all the different branches of trainings I decided to meet with each branch head to hear about their projects and where I could help.

The first woman I talked to was Shradda, who is in charge of a program that helps NGOs with capacity building called Manthan. She expressed two studies they were currently doing in Vidarbha, a region nearby that is facing a large amount of farmer suicides. Because of crop failure and other reasons (reasons which organizations and the government have been researching for a few years) the number of farmer suicides is rising dramatically. Chaitanya is working on two research components now to compile information about why the suicides are occurring and study cash flow in the family to see if that might be a cause. The cash flow project sounded really interesting to me because I thought I could do a lot of field work in small villages with 200-300 people and learn about village life. As always though, the language barrier came up as the people doing the research don’t know much English and I wouldn’t be able to personally interact in the study.

Shradda also discussed research compiled by Portland University students in August on leadership development. This piqued my interest as she continued to explain the need for small training programs in leadership for Self Help Group (SHG) leaders. An SHG is made up of 15-20 women from a village. Each SHG takes care of their loans and savings and only can use the resources of the women in the group. 15-20 SHGs from the same or different villages can form a cluster so they have a larger amount of money to pool from and more accountability. These clusters are made up of SHG leaders who are elected by their SHG and have small technical trainings from Chaitanya on finances and the technicalities of leading a group. The biggest reason for group dissolution is lack of leadership so now I’m trying to identify, design and implement small leadership trainings. I don’t really know how to do this as I’ve had little leadership trainings but that’s what makes it so exciting! I know I can do this project but I’m not sure how I will do it.

The first week I mostly spent researching, learning more about SHG formation, Chaitanya and leadership ideas I could implement. Now I’m doing more field work to ask the women questions about leadership development to try and see if they think leadership trainings would be useful. I am working with a woman named Rashmi who is part of the Manthan program and does the translating. She speaks broken English so we have a hard time trying to communicate with one another sometimes but she is a joy to work with and never discouraged. I am still kind of worried this will interfere with the answers the women are giving in the interviews but we’re making it work through various checks and balances. I really enjoyed my projects at Hindusthan Microfinance as well but this project is challenging me to think beyond my experience and allows me to work with the women directly to help improve their involvement in SHGs. I'm quite happy and excited for the rest of the time to come!

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