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Dear Well-wisher,
Each year during the US Memorial Day weekend, volunteers across AID chapters have the chance to meet and share ideas and strategies for working effectively for the cause of sustainable and just development in India. For the first time in 14 years, the AID conference took place not in a university, but in a state park, where blue waters, green trees, brown mud and falling rain drowned out all signal and noise of the world outside. In an attempt to connect what we learn about social issues through our involvement with AID with what we do to sustain ourselves in our everyday lives, the Seattle volunteers planned for all participating volunteers and guests to stay on site, cook, wash, discuss and be together till the wee hours each day. Along with volunteers from across the US, partners from India and visitors from Canada participated in soul-searching conversations in the kitchen and dining areas and back in the cabins where they were lodged. If you missed the conference, here is your chance to read and view some highlights. Apart from the sessions on agriculture, anti-corruption, human rights in Chhattisgarh, debates on health and the workshop on development and democracy, volunteers learned by practice and experience about food issues from sourcing to distribution. The conference plays a vital role in energizing volunteers each year for setting higher standards in the quality of projects we support, and in maintaining the consistency with which we keep our commitments to our partners. Through chapter events and local community outreach, this energy touches every person in the wider support circle that makes Association for India's Development's work possible. People like you who are tuned in, help to carry the message and thus our circle grows stronger.
Warm regards,
Volunteers, Association for India's Development
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| | | Democracy and Development
 The 'Democracy and Development' workshop conducted by Biju Mathew and Sangeeta Kamat was specifically geared towards developing an understanding of structural injustices. Participants tried to come up with possible solutions to case studies of impoverishment and explored ways in which organizations like AID can work with the marginalized through a combination of Seva, Sangharh and Nirmaan. [Read more...] | | |
| | | When we decided to eat consciously
 It all began with a subconscious intention to be conscious and intentional about food. We wanted to reduce our reliance on our taste buds to tell us that we must have Bananas from Ecuador or Lal Masoor from Turkey. [Read more...] | | | | | | From Birds to Roots: A Holistic Future for Organic Farming.
 Lives and lands ravaged by poisoning from chemical fertilizers and pesticides. A growing disconnect between the producers and consumers of food, and hundreds of farmers committing suicide. Even as the tsunami wreaked havoc among an impoverished agricultural populace, AID Saathi Revathy, helped promote sustainable agriculture, employing earthworms and birds alike, in harmony with the larger eco-system. [Read more...] | | | | | | Our Money, Our Accounts
 The importance of tools like social audits, Jan Sunvais (public hearings) and RTIs, in ensuring the transparent functioning of a democracy was thus pointed out by Lal Singhji, a village leader: "हम सोचते हैं की सूचना का अधिकार नहीं मिले तो हम क्या रहेंगे या नहीं रहेंगे, आपलोग सोचते हैं की सूचना का अधिकार अगर मिल जाये तो आपकी कुर्सी रहेगी या नहीं रहेगी, लेकिन दोस्तों, हम सबको मिलके सोचना चाहिए की क्या ये देश रहेगा या नहीं रहेगा" "Without the right to information, we wonder if we will survive. What you worry about is, if we get the right to information will your seat in power survive. What all of us need to think about together is whether our country will survive." [Read more...] | | | | | | Chhattisgarh: Can our Democracy Rise to the Challenge?
 The Adivasi in Chhattisgarh has always been at the receiving end of an extreme form of violence. Structural violence, borne out of structural inequities, that is perpetrated by the ruling class. This is a violence that all of us are together inflicting upon the marginalized of our country. The authoritarian and military approach our policy makers have taken up, blindly following ideas of progress borrowed from Western philosophies, involve displacing large indigenous communities off their lands and resources. Himanshu's talk brought up fundamental questions on our understanding of development, progress, education, ownership of resources, and so on. [Read more...] | | |
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