Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Recently, our friend Aaditeshwar Seth of Gram Vaani Community Radio (and a fellow Knight News Challenge winner) spent a few days visiting Apna Malak Ma, the all-Dalit CVU in rural Surendranagar district of Gujarat set up by Navsarjan along with VV.
We thought his field notes captured well the local area (highly feudal, with considerable caste violence and caste politics to contend with) the CVU (active young leaders making inroads on caste issues) and the technology challenges and possibilities. As winners of the Knight Collaboration Prize at the MIT Future Civic Media Conference 2010, we’re going to be working with Aadi to create a voice sms system to enable direct reporting by the villagers.
What follows was written by Aadi in email, and lightly edited by VV
July 23, 2010 -- I went down to Ahmedabad last week and spent some time with Mehul from Video Volunteers, buy lamisil cream from us. Then we went to Limbdi and I stayed back with the CVU for two days. It was indeed a humbling experience to see all the great work that everybody was doing.
Issues
The subjects that the CVU works on are mostly of grass root issues, buy lamisil cream without prescription. These include
Below Poverty Line (BPL) card (a government document certifying a person as poor and therefore can claim to different government poverty elimination schemes.),
domestic violence, Cheap lamisil cream no rx, female infanticide, stigma faced by single women, RTI, ration cards, water problems, health problems, lamisil cream in uk, corruption, HIV/AIDS awareness, education, migration, Lamisil cream sale, sanitation, employment and land rights.
The Producers
I stayed with the CVU folks. They are quite poor, parents and brothers are labourers, mostly eat rotis with little vegetables and once they gave it to me only with salt/onion, order lamisil cream. But all of them have studied to 12th standard, are fluent with reading and writing Gujarati and some English/Hindi, and very intelligent and aware. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Sad that such folks were just labourers earlier, lucky that they are now running the CVU, but what about so many other youth. Even if folks do get educated, Online pharmacy lamisil cream, there are just not enough jobs around. Entrepreneurship and manufacturing really need to pick up in India.
Most girls here complete class 12 and get into menial labour work, but Neeru, one of the women CVU producers, had been taking computer classes, buy lamisil cream cheap, language classes, and was very focused on self development. Navsarjan, the NGO that sponsors the CVU, Lamisil cream cheap price, presented the opportunity to join the CVU. Later Neeru married Jeetu, a fellow CVU producer, buy lamisil cream without prescription. Neeru is still studying part time, and recently passed the 1st year from Saurashtra University.
Jeetu, Neeru’s husband and a CVU producer, is a very intelligent guy, lamisil cream online. Has worked as a labourer, in diamond polishing, in a factory, when he eventually met Video Volunteers’ founding director Stalin and was selected for the CVU work. Discount lamisil cream without prescription, Everybody really looks up to Stalin. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Jeetu proudly says that he was selected by Stalin in the first round itself.
Girish Bhai, a distributor, can do other electrical work and earn more, but very committed to social work like the CVU coordinator Manji Bhai. Girish wants to go into politics after 10 years, buy cheapest lamisil cream online. Has a very good reputation in all the villages as a result of doing the screenings. Very hard working -- does NGO social service during the day, and screenings in the night.
Pushpa, another CVU woman worker also works on distribution with Girish, Purchase lamisil cream online, and is the first woman from the district to get a three wheeler driving license for going to screenings. Saurashtra has a lot of motorcycles retro-fitted into a three wheeler rickshaw for carrying people and goods, called a Charkha, and the CVU uses this for screenings, buy lamisil cream without prescription.
Manji Bhai, the CVU team leader, is a very interesting personality -- extremely committed to social work and activism, and also an excellent singer. Writes and sings to motivate people to rise, buy lamisil cream online cheap. Once a senior person had a heart attack and died when listening to Manji Bhai's call-to-action following a Dalit murder. On the go all the time, and on very good terms with all newspapers and all party representatives in the area. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Does not take sides. But a strategist -- will report success stories in BJP led areas to the pro-BJP newspaper, Buy lamisil cream online australia, same for Congress. Said that the amount of impact he has had in the last 3 years because of the CVU, is more than what he had in the last 15 years as an activist.
The CVU Area -- Surendranagar
-Upper caste Thakur women are not allowed to step outside their homes, but at the CVU screening, finally one lady did come out to speak on the mic, lamisil cream approved. Lots of crying and tears when they tell their stories.
- Lots of local caste-based politics, buy lamisil cream without prescription. BJP and Congress are the main parties, and the Thakurs are the most powerful. Only about 15, Cheap lamisil cream tablets, 000 thakurs out of 127,000 people, but all MLAs are Thakurs. Carefully split the Dalit vote and do not allow Dalit leaders to rise. The Thakurs will have two Dalits stand against each other from the same village, one for BJP and one for Congress, buy lamisil cream. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, BJP and Congress are friends at this point, come together to split the vote, hardly matters who comes to power and the understanding is each party will get five years in charge, then the other party will get five years. Many Dalit youth are in jail on rape and murder charges, ~350 accused out of a maximum prison strength of ~250. Upper castes use the Dalits as pawns, but people unfortunately cannot see through all this
- Recently a Dalit was murdered, Canada lamisil cream, after standing up against some thakur youth who would drive their bikes recklessly through a street where Dalit kids played. Strong community spirit, but the local MLAs manipulate -- take the body and we will have the 14 accused arrested, get the camera people out, we will get you compensation (apparently, if a Dalit is murdered allegedly as a result of caste-based violence, lamisil cream tablet, the family is entitled to 250,000 rupees in compensation.)
- Politics also hurts the CVU people. If they talk about the lack of water facilities in some village, the local BJP representative says that they are speaking against them and call Manji Bhai. He has to handle the situation, buy lamisil cream without prescription. Buy cheap lamisil cream, But often some Sarpanch do go against the CVU and bar them entry into their village. Once Manji Bhai called the local government official and told them that the film was on water/health and part of a project by the government to spread awareness, but they were not being allowed to screen the film in this particular village. So the government guy called the same village leader and told him to support the CVU, and the Sarpanch turned into their volunteer.
- Some villages are great, generic lamisil cream cheap, some are weird though. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, There is one village with a lot of alcohol shops, and the youth/men are always drunk towards the night. The CVU have screened multiple times there, but nobody comes forth to champion some issue. Navsarjan's approach is to support local champions, Order discount lamisil cream online, but not champion the cause itself. They did that once though by cracking down a 1 million rupee “National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme mis-reporting in the village, but still the villagers are indifferent. They just don't care about protesting or working towards a solution for their problems.
- If a woman stands up to raise her voice, that is the best, buy lamisil cream without prescription. Men are fickle. The CVU also puts together Women’s Committees in different villages, lamisil cream bangkok, to demand for better water facilities
- The CVU once found a village that nobody knew about. About 1500 people, who hadn't seen a government official or MLA or an NGO worked in the last 5 years. CVU screened films in the area and then took up issues to have a road built to the village, Buy generic lamisil cream, cut away the surrounding babool trees, etc
- Another interesting success story, not for the CVU per se, but for Navsarjan. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, A Dalit once beat up his wife, and the local BJP authorities tried to captialize on this. Just to show their support for women and to show-off their strength, the local police officer beat up the husband, no rx lamisil cream, paraded him around naked, had him dance in a female costume, shoved a pole up him, beat him up badly, Buying lamisil cream, then bathed him and took him to court to confess. Navsarjan took up the police brutality and eventually had the police officer (a thakur) suspended.
Impact
- The CVU producers have gained considerable recognition in the community. People call them for just about anything -- rape cases and murder are extremes, but even for things like getting BPL certificates, school admissions, lamisil cream without rx, housing loans, RTI applications
The CVU’s Production Process
- Select an issue. "Take events, and turn them into issues"
- Forming two work groups: Production (~5 people) and Distribution (~2 people)
- Screenings in neighboring 42 villages, target is ~18 screenings per month
- Screenings followed by "call to action" and feedback session
- People encouraged to question what's happening in their own village/community
- Give suggestions for more topics, identify specific events
- Screening attended by 250 people, buy lamisil cream without prescription.
Production process
Issue identification
Research: Find out what's happening in different areas in this regard -- whom to interview, what are the relevant government schemes, Cheap lamisil cream pharmacy, get information from specific NGOs in the area, parda faash/expose.
Put together a story line: Mehul and Manish from VV help
Shoot
Takes about 3-4 months per film. But had three films going in parallel, on corruption, on single women, lamisil cream pharmacy online, and on HIV
Sometime films also subtitled in Hindi
Also take regular footage of any events, even if they put together a film later about the issue.
Some Films They have Made
Education: Is migration a problem. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Migration card needed to get admission to a different school. In what villages do youth not go to school. Find lamisil cream on internet, Eventually, CVU helped to get children admitted.
Water: Standing water problems in different areas, flourine in ground water in some places. Who is the corporation head, what does he have to say, lamisil cream non prescription. Later put together women’s groups to follow on
Sanitation: Toilet facilities in different areas, buy lamisil cream without prescription. Later, helped get funds from the corporation to set up public toilets
Land: Most land owned by thakurs (Upper Castes). After the screenings, ending up filling over 800 forms on land claims
Feedback on the community screenings
- Finally got to see a screening the second night of their film on RTI. Best price for lamisil cream, - In a small village called Sudambada. About 100 people attended, mostly youth and old folks. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, More crowd probably did not show up because it had rained just a little while ago, and the roads were all wet. There were about 10 women, but sitting on the side. Shown on the main gathering point in the village, order lamisil cream without prescription. We had to continuously chase away cows that kept straying into the scene
- People listened attentively. Interaction was not heavy though. But 2 people did come forth to get RTI forms
Equipment 
- 2 computers, 2 video cameras, very low cost operations
- Projector for screenings in public spaces, buy lamisil cream without prescription. Face a problem with power though, if no power then no screenings. Cheap lamisil cream overnight delivery, Can probably make use of pico-projectors operated from a battery. Also face a problem with rains, no screenings if it rains. Also need help with recording feedback. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Video is hard in the night.
- Screening will get a lot of help from a pico-projector that runs from a battery. Otherwise, buy lamisil cream no prescription required, problem with trying to find a power source.
- Girish, a CVU producer says, "40K projector lasts about 1000 hours". Lamisil cream for order, But maybe lesser, about 500 or so, because they have changed the projector once but have not had 1000 hours of screenings as yet.
What’s captured in their Annual report
- Activities: Screenings, court, Navsarjan programs (attendance, shooting), Mahila panch meetings, government office, training
- Report on attendance at screenings, how many men, women, children, etc
- Impact and feedback from screenings
- Problems in screenings: Drunken youth, resistance from Sarpanch, rains, equipment failure
- All reporting in Gujarati, buy lamisil cream without prescription. Slow but maintain rigour of typing out reports in Gujarati on the computer
Future Technology Possibilities
Much of my effort was in trying to understand the context and test the validity of some of our ideas. Some things do seem to make sense. For example, order lamisil cream online, the voice-messaging application could be useful for people to report incidents, or give comments in response to a "topic of the month" feature that the CVU puts out. SMSes could also be used for the same purpose. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Much of this is already done through personal interactions and phone calls, so the system could help formalize it. But more than that, Tablet lamisil cream, I think the system will be very useful for human-rights groups in general. Gram Vaani’s already done this with one NGO, but there is much use in packaging the solution and offering it to other groups. I will continue to work on this with my students and Gram Vaani.
DVD distribution – a possible model for the CVU?
Most movie DVDs get written in Ahmedabad or elsewhere, and distributed to the main towns nearby, buy cheapest lamisil cream, from where local village shopkeepers get copies
Also very popular are wedding videos. Many people have cameras and shoot movies, but get them edited from a studio in Limbdi, buy lamisil cream without prescription. About 3000/= per recording.
Person also records public functions such as NGO events or school events.
Navsarjan with VV’s help in setting it up runs a wedding video production course. Purchase lamisil cream overnight delivery, Producers are very interested in photography, coming to Delhi for a photo-fair in January
In a Dalit home, I saw a Picassa photo slideshow of a road trip by some relatives, overlaid with Bollywood songs. Buy lamisil cream without prescription, Kids said that they were seeing it for the 10th time.
It may not be too difficult to set up a DVD distribution network, but see below for more questions
An interesting idea that did come up (from Jeetu) was to charge Re.1 for a lucky draw at all screenings, and distribute DVDs to the winners. This could help cover the screening costs. Could also show ads during the screenings for some minor advertising money
Open questions
Can social media be useful in itself, without some supporting human-rights group. There seem to be such strong power plays here. Media seems to help primarily to articulate issues and convey the possibilities of bringing change, buy lamisil cream without prescription. People of course already know about the issues, so this is like a prod to get them going, but the real push needs the NGO to get involved. But one thing is for sure, that we need to look around for good human-rights groups, or those that are closely meshed with the community, for good use of our solutions.
Will the possibility of selling social media videos directly to the people really work. Discussed a lot with Jeetu, ideas like supplementing the serious documentary style films with local music videos, or local news, or even creating a few fictional characters and tracing their work through the social system with a film a month (provided somebody volunteers to write the script)... Buy lamisil cream without prescription, but couldn't get a very good feel for whether it will work or not.
The distribution channel may not be very hard, and people can even be encouraged to watch the DVDs and then share it with their friends, and advertising too may work out, but the fundamental question comes down to the content. There is already lots of content out there -- Bollywood style, local movies, soaps on cable TV, etc -- will people really appreciate social media and pay for it. I think it will require a lot of ground work with some local NGOs. Social networks do exist, and people will appreciate local content, but there are open questions on the content quality, the mix, and the relevance.
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As a human rights activist, cheap benadryl online, Find benadryl, I have spent two decades campaigning for causes I care deeply about –gender equality, secularism, find cheap benadryl, Cheap benadryl pill, an end to caste discrimination. In this blog post I want to explore the curious occurrence of political apathy in the NGO sector in India, cost of benadryl. Benadryl price, Time and again, when working with colleagues in the field of social development, buy benadryl low price, Benadryl online without a prescription, I encounter a reticence to engage with politics; from the politics of gender to the politics of wealth distribution, the politics of education to the politics of caste, benadryl order. Benadryl canada, Let me share a short anecdote with you. A few years ago I was invited to evaluate the programs of a very large and very well respected microfinance NGO in India, buy benadryl without prescription. During the period of evaluation it was the NGOs annual meeting – an occasion which saw the coming together of over 5, cheap benadryl from usa, Benadryl pill, 000 women from the hundreds of savings groups promoted by the NGO. Around lunchtime I heard a commotion in the kitchen area, order generic benadryl. Overnight benadryl, I went over and found a group of 30 or so women having a heated discussion with some of the volunteer organizers. The women were refusing to eat the food that had been prepared, buy discount benadryl online. Buy benadryl without prescription, When I enquired as to why this was the case, they answered, ‘because you have already served the same food to a bunch of Dalits’. Online benadryl, The volunteer organizers were trying to pacify the women, ‘lets not disturb the event, buy benadryl online, Benadryl medication, we will seat you in separate lines for food’. So I went to the top layer of management at this large NGO, cost benadryl, Order benadryl cheap online, and I said ‘you have to call off this meeting right now. This has to be a non-negotiable, benadryl generic. Benadryl medicine, If your ‘empowered’ women are still saying we will not eat because of issues of caste, we have reached our tolerance threshold, buy benadryl lowest price. We have to communicate to them that this cannot, and will not, be tolerated, buy benadryl without prescription. Purchase benadryl without prescription, Everyone needs to be sent home and told that we will communicate about the future of the self help groups in due course’. Of course they did not disband the meeting but they realized how serious I was which resulted in a very interesting discussion with the NGO about the role that our sector plays, find benadryl no prescription required. Benadryl buy, When do we start intervening and in which situations. Do we really want economically empowered people who continue to be casteist and sexist, benadryl no prescription. Buy benadryl without prescription, This country has thousands of organizations working for the underprivileged. Order benadryl no prescription required, Under what circumstances is it fine for these organizations to work on economic empowerment but not be concerned with challenging the politics of power that give rise to the very poverty they are trying to combat. This tendency to avoid active political engagement is most apparent in those organizations that are concerned with ‘service delivery’, cheap benadryl in canada. Order benadryl in us, Their mandate is not political transformation or empowerment – their mandate is to reach water to X number of villages or to set up X number of micro credit units benefiting X number of women. These types of organizations do not want to engage in work to shift existing power paradigms – this is seen as too activist, approved benadryl pharmacy. They say ‘we are not jhandadhari (flag bearers) – we do not wear the badge of a political movement’, buy benadryl without prescription. Benadryl side effects, This aversion to ‘politics’ is dangerous because tomorrow we may have, as a result of all the effective NGO programs, buy benadryl on internet, Cheapest benadryl prices, a huge number articulate and economically strong people who continue to practice and perpetuate social inequities.
Video Volunteers is an international media organization empowering the voices of the world’s unheard communities. Its mission is to empower the world’s poorest citizens to right the wrongs they witness by becoming players in the global media revolution. Video Volunteers provides disadvantaged communities with journalistic, critical thinking and creative skills, teaching people to articulate and share their perspectives on the issues that matter to them – on a local and a global scale.
