Jan Samvardhan
Nothing in Jhabua was ever going to be fixed from outside it. This is the vertical that makes the people who fix it — village leaders drawn from the village, trained, and sent back to it.
This is the fundamental vertical of Shivganga, and its aim is to create community leaders. Drawing on Parmarth — working selflessly and passionately for society — and equipped with knowledge and skills, they lead their own community to take up its challenges and resolve its problems.
Water structures need someone to site them. Matavan needs someone to fence and tend them. Every other programme on this site is downstream of somebody in a village deciding it is theirs to do. That decision is what these camps are for.
‘Parmarth’ — the highest good of others, expecting nothing back.
Not a value Shivganga brought to Jhabua. The word, and the practice of Halma that carries it, were already there.
It begins with young people and ends with the traditional and spiritual leadership of the village saying the same thing.
Four days — where it starts
The curriculum covers the village’s problems, the reasons behind them and the ways out, alongside group activities and the stories of tribal leaders. What the camp is really for is self-esteem: it sends people away believing the distress is something they can be organised against.
Seeing how the system actually works
The training gives these future leaders exposure to different government systems and to alternative models of holistic rural development. It builds confidence, and it gives them something specific to want for their own village.
Four days — and a written plan for the village
Sessions on the techniques of water conservation and afforestation, based on a module Shivganga prepared with faculty of SGSITS, Indore. During the camp each village team draws up a water conservation action plan and lists the tasks to be done by collective effort. The Gram Engineers then lead the building of reservoirs and other structures, and the reviving of Matavan.
The traditional village head, at the table
A decade of community mobilisation taught Shivganga how much the intact traditional social system still carries. The Tadvi, the traditional head of a village, holds high social reverence and is central to every tribal tradition. At the Tadvi Baithak the Tadvis of many villages come together to reimagine that office as a role in holistic rural development.
The spiritual heads, saying the same thing
The community’s spiritual leaders carry the same weight in social awareness and change. At the Adhyatmik Satsang they come together and deliver a message of enriching the natural resources — jal, jangal, jameen, janwar, jan — through the community’s own traditions and values. They tell the stories of local deities and heroes, and ask people to set personal conflicts aside and serve the legacy instead.
Youth trained
Gram Engineers
Villages reached
More than 12,500 young people have been through these camps. Let us put the opportunity in front of a few more.
DonateThe distinction is the whole point. Everyone trained here goes back to their own village and works on it as their own.
