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Youth Fellowship Graduation Event 2007-2008

The Youth Fellowship Graduation Event 2007-2008 was held on May 31, 2008 at the Andhra Mahasabha Hall, Dadar. The event marked the graduation of the Youth Fellowship Groups of the year 2007-2008 and the welcoming of the groups for the year 2008-2009.

That evening the Andhra Mahasabha Hall was brimming with enthusiasm, vitality, vigour and positive energy as 400 youth exhibited the fruit of their one year of hard work, their research conclusions! The colourful, innovative, thought provoking end products designed with the public dissemination in mind were attracting the visitors to various stalls. The research projects were grouped under broader themes like environment, sexuality, gender, education etc. at the exhibition.

The formal graduation ceremony started with a song about migrant workers in Mumbai sung by Kishan Mantri and his construction worker colleagues, all migrant labourers. The task of master of ceremony was handled with confidence and poise by two of the youth fellows, Sehanaaz Mallik and Raj Janagam. Seven Youth fellows, each representing different themes shared their experiences of the research process, their challenges and their opportunities with the audience and initiated the new cohort of 2008-2009 in the process.

Nandita Das, the well-known actor and social activist who was the Guest of Honour for the evening gave an inspiring and heat warming speech, sharing many of her personal experiences from the medium of cinema as well as from her various efforts in the field of social justice and peace. After her speech she conducted an open dialogue with the audience for an hour and answered many questions ranging from issues of identity and violence to love and life partners in a refreshingly candid and witty manner proving the point of education through entertainment.

The event also included the release of the Marathi book titled “Mumbaiche Anvani Sanshodhak” (The Barefoot Researchers of Mumbai); which is based on the Youth Fellowship project, its conception, experiences and various projects conducted by youth fellows in the past two years!

The evening concluded on a note of joy and celebrations!

Click here for a photo gallery of the event.

NEWS FROM THE GENDER & SPACE PROJECT

Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan of the Gender and Space Project have been invited by the International Symposium of Electronic Arts 2008 (ISEA2008) Committee to participate in the Artist-In-Residence programme hosted by the National University of Singapore. They will work on an installation art work ‘Gendered Strategies for Loitering’ towards the ISEA exhibition, which will be held at the National Museum of Singapore from 25 July to 3 August 2008.

For more information see: http://isea2008.org/page/54/

PUKAR LAUNCHES NEW PROJECTS

PUKAR is pleased to announce the launching of four new projects involving young citizens and their communities

Mythologies of Mumbai		Youth & Governance

	Action Research Project	Mapping the Small Towns

PUKAR aims to democratize research and broaden access to knowledge among disenfranchised or weakly institutionalized groups and to create a space from which their non traditional and non expert knowledge can contribute to local, national and global debates about their own futures. All PUKAR’s new initiatives are based upon the same fundamental principle of research as a tool.

Following is a brief overview of these projects:


Mythologies of Mumbai

Supported by the Ford Foundation, India Team: Ajit Abhimeshi, Anita Patil Deshmukh, Kiran Sawant, Shrutika Vasant Vaishali Shitole, Suhit Kelkar, Tejal Shitole, Triveni Mane This three year long project seeks to work with citizens of Mumbai – primarily students and teachers, but also others – as active agents of urban transformation through the process of research and knowledge building in two areas of the city – Dharavi and Girangaon. The project has vital concerns with regard to the city’s ongoing globalization, which, it feels, tends to be exclusive and reinforces traditional social and economic hierarchies. The project contends that this is reflected most sharply in the areas of Girangaon – the erstwhile industrial centre of the city and Dharavi – supposedly the largest slum neighbourhood of the city.
		archiving the living heritages of Girangaon

Thus PUKAR seeks to engage with these concerns by inviting its citizens to participate in the process of inquiry into these changes, produce documentation and new knowledge through research practices. The distinctive feature of this project is that the researchers involved in Dharavi and Girangaon are the residents of the areas themselves. They are witnessing a historical transformation in their locality and they will bring the local community's perspective to their findings, thus giving it a unique luster. The project Team plans to draw upon the expertise of two PUKAR associates, Shilpa Phadke and Rahul Srivastava as principle consultants, to guide the process.



Youth & Governance Supported by Sir Ratan Tata Trust Team: Ajit Abhimeshi, Anita Patil Deshmukh, Kiran Sawant, Shrutika Vasant Vaishali Shitole, Triveni Manee This project wishes to take larger issues like water resource, redevelopment and encourage the local youth to do community based, citizens oriented research on these subjects. This will help the local leaders and governance authorities to create a discourse within the community.
		advocate Mangesh Bansode, Corporator Ward 203

This will also create a substantial data base which could be used by the local governing bodies to further their policy making strategies. In addition, it will expose the youth to the governance structure, impacting their perceptions of citizenship and enhancing their own leadership skills. This project aims to give opportunities to the youth to participate in the decision making processes impacting their own future.



Action Research Project Supported by Sir Ratan Tata Trust Team: Anita Patil-Deshmukh, Ganesh Naik, Harshad Jadhav, Indrani Dasgupta, Prakash Pandagale, Santosh Takale, Santosh Thorat, Salil Kulkarni, Tejas Vaghmare, Varsha Talekar

This project design involves the graduates of PUKAR’s flagship project; the Youth Fellowship Project, and creates an upward mobility space for them. The main goal of this project is to assess the impact of the year long process of the Youth fellowship programme on its participants. PUKAR argues that the process of youth fellowship imparts many critical skills to the youth like analytic approach, leadership, communications, time management, negotiations, self confidence, and ability to make mistakes and learn from it. These become important assets for them in the globalized, porous world for their livelihood securities. PUKAR places a huge emphasis on the principles like democratization, participation and conscientization. PUKAR feels that these ideologies are very crucial for the development of the youth and transformation of their ideas about citizenship, both locally and globally.


Mapping the Small Towns Supported by Sir Ratan Tata Trust Team: Rahul Srivastava According to the estimates of the UNDP and the WB, the growth in the world from now till 2020 will take place in Asia, in the cities where the population will remain under a million.

The youth which is leading the population dividend now, will play the most crucial role in the leadership positions at various levels in these towns. Therefore the very process of research, which allows the youth to be the knowledge producer, stake holder needs to be spread. The knowledge thus produced by youth is anchored in their locality and in their livelihood, thus addressing many issues of justice, equity and rights.

PUKAR PROJECT UPDATE: MYTHOLOGIES OF MUMBAI

Visit by Ravina Aggarwal, Program Officer, Ford Foundation

In December, Ravina Aggarwal from the Ford Foundation met up with the Youth Fellows participating in the PUKAR research project on communities and habitats that focuses on Dharavi and Girangaon. The Dharavi trip included a walk through the Koliwada neighbourhood, (a fishing village that is part of Dharavi), conversations with residents and an in-depth understanding of the proposed methodology that the youth fellows - who live in Koliwada and Dharavi - plan to use.

The Girangaon trip started with a walk through the erstwhile mill areas of Mumbai and a visit to the chawls that are being transformed into mass-housing projects. The youth fellows leading this dimension of the project have been involved in studying their neighbourhood for several years now and answered many questions

In an email sent to PUKAR after the visit, this is what Ravina Aggarwal had to say about her experience:

“Very often, academic ideas for change remain abstract and unrealized but your team has really demonstrated how research can be unhinged from its elite and isolated status without losing the intensity of analysis.”

YOUTH EXPRESS - YOUTH FELLOWSHIP NEWSLETTER

Youth Fellowship team has launched a newsletter ‘Youth Express’. To view the editions of the newsletter click on the links below:

October 2007
January 2008 (Page 1)
January 2008 (Page 2)

PUKAR EZINE

A quarterly overview of PUKAR discussions and workshops

The PUKAR Ezine is an online newsletter published and circulated every quarterly via emails. It is a medium for us to connect to people regarding events, news, updates and announcements about PUKAR.

To view past editions of the Ezine click on the links below:

To subscribe for the Ezine please contact us or email us.

Past Events