auroville village action group - 2011 newsletter #1

8/7/2019 Auroville Village Action Group - 2011 Newsletter #1

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Auroville Village Action Groupmbai & P.O. (Opp. To EB) / Villupuram Dist. 605 111 / Tamil Nadu, India

Newsletter 1/2011AVAG's quarterly newsletter

villageauroville

actiongroup


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Menstruation breaking the silence

Menstrual survey

Every women knows it. Once a month there arethese special days when emotions go crazy,cramps make her sick or shame prevents her fromgoing outside. Shame? In rural India: Yes!

Every women knows it, but menstruation is still ataboo issue in the rural Tamil society and girls andwomen are often left alone with problems,questions and fears related to this natural andspecial aspect of being female.

This is why Auroville Village Action Group took itsfirst steps to break this silence during the lastmonths.

But where to start? We found it the best approachto get an overview about the every-monthpractices, mindsets and problems that womenhave to face in Indian villages before starting anyprojects.

So our first step was to conduct a survey with 300women, which revealed certain surprises, as well

as shocks.To maintain their hygiene, about half of the womenuse normal disposable pads, while the other halfuses large pieces of old cloth that are foldedseveral times and are mostly washed and reused,like a cloth diaper.

We could not find any evidence that this traditionalpractice is physically harmful but it is a hugechallenge for the women to manage theirmenstruation in this way, since nearly all of themfollow some traditional or religious rules that can

make a healthy menstrual hygiene really difficult.

It s for example proble-matic to dry the menstrualcloth outside in the sunbecause many womenbelieve, that they won't beable to get children whenthe cloth is touched by a

lizard or when eagles flyover it.

Many other beliefs suggestthat women are impureduring their period, so theyshould for example nottouch plants, becauseotherwise the plants woulddie.

This concept of impurityoften creates shame in the

women and they don't talkto anybody about thiswomen's issue, even if91% connect their periodwith some physical oremotional problem.

Also, many women do notknow where theirmenstrual blood comesfrom. Most of them believe,that it is just the bad bloodcoming out. Because of all these issues, AVAGwants to create a unique educational programthat will not only concentrate on biologicalknowledge- there is plenty of them out therealready- but also on deep-rooted emotionalaspects.

Eco femme

And there is also some business going on! Indianwomen have so far the choice between an oldpiece of cloth and a disposable pad, which is

either difficult tohandle or createsenvironmentalpollution(remember: mostvillages haven't gota sufficient waste-infrastructure).

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It has beena long timesince our last news-letter

and there are many thingsthat happened during theprevious months.

We are preparing to launchsocial enterprises, we havecompleted a researchproject and found out moreabout the everyday-problems of village women.

Sharing AVAG's efforts andsuccesses with our friends

and supporters is thepurpose of this littlenewsletter. We hope you'llenjoy the snapshot of Indianvillage actions and stay intouch with us!

With love, Arina

editor

From the

Our Vision: to collaborate with the rural communities to reveal their innate wis-om and ability to collectively determine and manifest their dynamic potential


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But how lucky we are, to have Kathy on board!Since many years she is stitching colourful clothmenstrual pads that seem to be an interestingsolution to the challenge of menstrual hygiene inan Indian environment. Inspired by this activity,AVAG is planning to start a social enterprise andproduce this beautiful product named Eco

femme, which will be a symbol of womenempowerment, as well as environmentalawareness. Combined with an educationalpackage, we hope to improve the hygiene andself-conception of many women and also tobecome more self sustaining through themarketing of Eco femme in urban India andexport-markets.

Focus Groups

To find out evenmore aboutpractices andfeelings of Tamilwomen towardstheir menstruationand to start off adiscussion amongsome of them,AVAG is conduc-ting several focus

groups right now;meetings withabout 20 women ofthe same age orcaste group, inwhich we discussabout menstrualknowledge,problems andhygiene.

The last part of themeeting is always

most exciting,since it is thenwhen we confrontthe women withdifferent menstrualproducts like yes-even tampons!Most of them neversaw such a thing

before and we get very different reactions to thisshocking product. Some women seem very openand interested wow, what's that? Let me see! or

is it true that you can even spread your legs whenyou use this product?!. Others seem disgusted bythe idea of putting something inside their body anddon't even want to touch the tampon.

But whatever their reactions are, in AVAG wewant to offer a variety of products to the womento give them more freedom in choice rather thanimpose a product on them and help to makethese 3-7 days per month easier.

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We liked the focus group somuch, we are not able to

xpress it! AVAG showed usifferent products and we wereble to learn many things. And

we could also learn about theifferent ways of handling

menstruation that exist amongs. We will share thisnowledge with our friends andamily, with our daughters in

articular.

The ecofemme product is veryood. It doesn't create wastend it will last us for a longme. It is like purchasing aotton sari. It is an investmentut then it lasts for many years.

4 new volunteers

Pablo from Spain, Sayana from India and Ismael &Arina from Germany will support us with their skillsand motivation for one year each

Eco life is growingCatalog and fliers for our store of environmentallyfriendly products are ready and we are present on

Auroville's saturday-markets and an exhibit atVillipuram for 1 month.Our number of customers is growing steadily andwe are able to provide more and more villagers-with ecologically sustainable alternatives like solarlamps and CFL bulbs.

Offspring

Our lovely colleague Devane has got a little babyboy in perfect health

Enterprise creation

Supported by Indian government and Aurovilleenterprises, we hope to start our SEDAB projectsoon (Social Enterprise Development in Auroville'sBioregion) and thus give work to 530 clubmembers. The funds which are connected to thisscheme would be of great help in our actualfinancial crisis

Short-film about AVAG

Thanks to Brian from the American UniversityParis, we got a beautiful short-film ready for thenew year! Enjoy the film with the name EcoFemme: A Women's Empowerment Project inRural India onYoutube

Review resource mobilization

Over the last weeks, AVAG team have beenparticipating in valuable facilitated processes toreview organisational structures and generate newideas for resource mobilization

Updates

Please visit our website on www.villageaction.in tosee some recent updates including the Annualreport 2009/2010

What's new
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQoINE0YnbYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQoINE0YnbYhttp://www.villageaction.in/http://www.villageaction.in/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQoINE0YnbY


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After talking so much about this women's issue, let's

continue with a rather male problem: Alcoholism!Yes...this dangerous drogue continues to be one ofth biggest challenges even in the remotest villagesof Tamil Nadu and creates lots of problems forindividuals, families and communities. In both,women's and men's seminars, participants see thisas a major problem. And for sure, it is not only theaddicted who suffers, but also his family; his wife inparticular.Often, alcoholics spend nearly all of their money onalcohol and contribute very little to the household.They fight with family members, beat their women

and destroy their own health.But what can men and women do against thepowerful claws of addiction?To help these villagers finding it difficult to cope,AVAG is preparing a cooperation with Bhanu andSumati from the de-addiction clinic Concern inChennai. They offered to make a training in thevillages to rehabilitate alcoholics and bring healthand harmony back to the families in which drunkenviolence, craving and suffering are part of everyday-life.

When we think of medicine in Indian villages, weoften get images of ancient ayurvedic knowledgeand natural remedies. How far away from reality!

Actually, traditional healing methods and wisdom

about alternative medicine are nearly getting lost;one reason, why we started our herbal gardenprogram.

In Aurovilles botanical garden, AVAG staffmembers took part in a training and learned howto grow medicinal and kitchen herbs. Thisknowledge will then be passed on to Self helpgroup members in the villages which willempower them to take better care of their healthusing nature's gifts.

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Thank you for your support!

Unfortunately, none of our initiatives works without money. This is whywe want to express our gratitude to all of the people who help us withtheir engagement and financial support.

Further contributions are most welcome, especially now in a time whereAVAG is running very short of money and has had to reduce some ofits activities due to a financial crisis.

[email protected]

+91 (0413) 2678871/ 2628872

Addiction-We already conducted 2 women's seminars onthis topic of de-addiction and received anoverwhelming feedback to address this issue assoon as possible. Women told us had you donethis program before, my son in law would still bealive or just while I attended the seminar, mysister's husband died from alcohol.The possibility of curing the man's addiction in a

21-day base-camp brings hope to the women andfamilies, so we are all very excited aboutlaunching this program soon and making it widelyaccessible by keeping costs as low as possible.

a serious problem

Gardens

Botanical
http://c/Dokumente%20und%20Einstellungen/Arina/Eigene%20Dateien/AVAG/Reports/Newsletter/http://c/Dokumente%20und%20Einstellungen/Arina/Eigene%20Dateien/AVAG/Reports/Newsletter/

auroville village action group - 2011 newsletter #1

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