Something new must happen! From New Year’s (01.01.24) we will collaborate with Ahead Initiatives and their CSO partners in India to create a so-called program. After 13-14 years in which we have completed several projects, each with their own grant, we start as of 1 January 2024 a major, combined activity with one (large) grant – called a programme. It runs over 4 years with the same total budget as we currently have for our 4 projects. And we use 2024 to finish our Education Project and Handicraft Projects.
As iiINTERest and Ahead Initiatives have gained more project activities over the last decade, a desire has arisen to be able to integrate the various project activities to a greater extent. As the experienced member of our small association will remember, we started in 2010 with ‘Food Safety’, then came ‘School and Education’, then ‘Handicrafts’ (silk in Tantipara) and finally ‘Afterschool/Evening School’ in 2020. We are in progress with the 4th phase of the Food Safety Project, 3rd phase of the Education Project and the Handicraft projects as well as (still) 1st phase of the Afterschool project. Or put another way: 11 projects in total since 2010.
We would like to show that it is possible to think of development more holistically; that you can simultaneously increase food security, create more (craft-related) income opportunities, improve (primary) school education and use the After/Evening School to bring the village together socially – culturally with singing, dancing, theater and more, in addition to being trained to be able to start your own small business (or at least to be able to produce various handicrafts or crops that you can earn a small amount of money from). For good enough, the poorest 10% of the village’s inhabitants have a special need for more food in their mouths, but in reality, the other villagers, apart from the most well-off, do not get enough to eat either. We would also like to show how you can establish a so-called ‘Country Council’, where all residents, or at least most, participate. The goal is to create a much higher degree of ‘direct democracy’ in the villages than currently exists, and for the villagers to increasingly have an influence on the development initiatives in their local area.
By focusing the (programme) activities in fewer areas, specifically four areas, we will also be able to reduce the employees’ transport time, which in turn can be used in the (programme) areas. Currently, Ahead and their local partners have 10 field offices in different parts of the three states (West Bengal, Odisha, and Jharkhand). Which will result in, that we, (Ahead and partners) are present in many places in the north-eastern part of India, with a lot of transport and thus hectic travel for many of the employees and those involved. At iiINTERest, we also get some benefit from the new way of doing activities in India. From now on, we only have to make one program account instead of the 4 project accounts in addition to our own small association account.
The application process has been long. It started in January this year (2023) and will be completed sometime in September when we (hopefully) get final approval of the application from CISU. But both we on the board and our partners in Ahead have learned a lot in the process and look forward to being able to create a more integrated development program for the benefit of the poorest rural areas in Northeast India.