India Weeks 3-4: Progress at each campus, and farewell to Julie!

It’s hard to believe a month has flow by already, and that volunteer Julie’s time at Samarthya has come to an end!  As we stated before, our goal is to further develop and strengthen the centers in the four following campuses:

The Early Intervention Center in Koppal is a well-oiled machine. The Senior CBR-worker Prabhakar is highly skilled with the children, and is focused on providing education for the families. He truly strives to empower the parents to be the driver of their own child’s healthcare, and tries to decrease their dependency on him. Julie had several discussions with him and suggested some time-saving strategies to make him even more efficient. She created an exercise sheet template to increase parent compliance and decrease his stick-men drawing time. She also discussed the possibility of implementing group sessions, as many of the children present at the same stage of development.

Prabhakar’s dream is to have multiple clinic spaces (currently only one treatment room) staffed by three assistants, and to hire a recruiter to visit villages, meet with doctors and other health care professionals, and provide simple education sessions to surrounding community members.

The Early Intervention Center in Deodurg needs quite a bit of help – it seems like operations are all over the map. Volunteers in December will be dedicating most of their time to analyzing the processes and suggesting some time-saving strategies to also appropriately increase the reach of the services in the area.

In Raichur, we are hoping to launch an Early Intervention Center!! Raichur is a town of 200,000 people and there are NO services for young children with disabilities. Currently there is a workshop there that is struggling for business. We’re trying to estimate the cost of this start-up which can then contribute to the workshop orders, and luckily we have two existing successful Early Intervention Centers to base our plans on.

Senior Workshop Technicians Basuraj (L), Ashok (R), and CBR-Worker Babumiya (middle) dream to have busy, smoothly running EICs in Raichur and Deodurg and an efficient workshop set up to allow them to serve more villages in these areas. They also wish for a mobile workshop (via a kitted-out van or autorickshaw?!) to bring services to those who can’t come to them. Imagine that!

Here are a couple of photos of the current workshop – we’re hoping to move the main manufacturing center to Deodurg, have only a satellite clinic in Raichur, and use the existing bright and colourful space for therapy for little kiddos!

The Spinal Cord Rehabilitation Center currently needs the most attention. There aren’t any fully-trained therapists working there and it’s currently running a major deficit due to low attendance. The main reason for the lack of patients is that most families cannot afford the Rs.4000/month cost ($80CAD) even though the patients would really benefit from the service. Also, a lack of an on-site medical professional make it even less attractive.

Physio volunteer Jen Tam has travelled along very bumpy village roads to do home visits for patients with spinal cord injuries and has been observing the current “short-stay camp” – a week-long camp for 7 old and new patients (see photos below) to get together and review exercises and gain support from their peers. Jen has come up with several great ideas:

• hiring a part-time nurse to care and educate staff and patients on wounds
• having a day of ‘stations’, where patients get to try various vocational and leisure activities (instead of just talking about the possibilities). Some ideas include caring for chickens to produce eggs for income, learning how to garden while being in a wheelchair, and learning to play wheelchair basketball
• holding short-stay camps several times per year versus trying to recruit patients for 3-month long stints

We’re choosing two staff members to send for a 10-month distance education training program through the Association for People with Disabilities (APD) based in Bangalore to really increase the quality of care that we provide for these vulnerable clients.

One more round of thank-yous to Julie Alexander, who’s creativity and problem-solving skills contributed highly to this project!

Next up – what factors do we need to consider when making human resource decisions in a rural Indian organization?? Hint: it’s verrrryyyy different than hiring and firing in Canada!

India Week 1-2 – Fundraising success, Shopping, Koppal, Frustrations

During our first couple weeks here in India, we have already experienced so many ups and downs!

Firstly – although the final count is nowhere near final, we have REACHED OUR GOAL and collected over $10,000 in contributions!! Many volunteers still have to pass along some donations, so THANK YOU to every single person who gave everso generously.

We gathered a few last minute supplies and snacks in Bangalore, then hauled all of our stuff to the train station, and were rocked to (not-so-deep) sleep on the 10-hour overnight train to Koppal, and were greeted by smiling familiar faces at the train station! From there, we took the most common form of transportation back to Samuha – motorbikes!

We spent the first few days getting ourselves sorted and ready for our time in Koppal. Big realization: nothing in India runs as smoothly as one would hope. We bought only one ready made outfit each in Bangalore, with the intention that we would custom order the rest of our clothing made locally in Koppal to support the economy.

One of the first evenings, we ventured into town with the cook (who can also sew), and two other female CBR workers. There are also three German volunteers here for the year, so they came for the trip into town as well. We packed 11 people into a 7 seater micro-van. So we took a selfie.

We went to three different fabric shops and became overwhelmed with the choices being thrown at us (literally, they were throwing stacks of dresses at us), then another shop to purchase lining fabric, then yet another shop to buy thread. The whole affair took us three hours. But, Ruksana (the cook) created beautiful suits for us to wear during our time here in only two days. Each set cost $22CAD, materials and labour all in.

The next example of how things don’t run as smoothly as you’d hope: when I say that my patience was tested these past weeks, that is an extreme understatement. Much of the reason that I haven’t updated this blog was because I was dealing with visa issues – when I applied for my employment/volunteer visa in Vancouver, I listed the Samuha Bangalore address on the application (as that is the official registered office). They granted my visa as above but when I went to register with the immigration office (which I had to do since I’m staying a longer period), they strictly told me that I was only allowed to live and work in Bangalore, and therefore not allowed to work in Koppal, where I need to be.

We tried everything – I stood in line after line, travelled back and forth to Bangalore, filled out forms, Samuha directors wrote me new sponsorship letters, I pleaded with several different officers, and Samuha even sent in one of their main contacts to speak with a higher level officer. At the end of it all, we had two options: a) IF the Vancouver office amended the visa to change the location from ‘Bangalore’ to ‘Koppal’, then I could stay; or b) I would have to leave the country, fly home to Vancouver, and re-apply for a new visa then fly back. I sent a few emails to request the change, but ultimately it was with the help of my dear friend and Kids Physio colleague Sharaya who physically went to the office, explained my situation, and was able to get a Consular officer there to grant the change. I CAN STAY!!

I cannot express my gratitude enough to each person who worked so hard to keep me in the country – from the drivers bringing me back and forth to the office, the staff for writing last minute letters, offering support and calling in help, and of course Sharaya for taking time out of her busy day to go to the visa office on my behalf.

SO – project-wise, what have we been up to? Well, after a few exciting sessions of brainstorming and planning, the ball is rolling on how to improve the programs of the Early Intervention Centre in Koppal (main town), the Early Intervention Centre in Deodurg (3 hours away from Koppal), and the Spinal Cord Rehabilitation Unit (45 minutes away from Koppal). Those details coming up next!!

Planes, Trains… and Auto-Rickshaws

January 16, 2014

There have been several opportunities for us to head into Koppal town, whether it’s to visit a client in their home or to buy some treasured fruit. We wanted to share some of the methods used to transport people, food, goats, wheat, and anything else you can possibly  think of.

On the way to Koppal, we took the overnight train with convertible sleeping bunks:

Another day, we were given the luxury of taking the Samuha jeep to go into town, cramming 11 people into a 7-seater. This was actually less than capacity as nobody was hanging out open doors nor sitting on the roof.

Here’s a bullock cart, one of the most common forms of transport. The two bullocks below are decorated with ribbons and paint in preparation for the upcoming Jathra (festival) tomorrow.

Taking up the majority of a narrow and crowded street barrels a modern city bus, complete with a scrolling route display:

Bikes are also common, seems like they like to teach the young’ns early here:

MINI HORSE!!!! 

It’s encouraging to see that adapted forms of mobility are becoming more readily available in rural India. Maegan snapped this photo of the clients at the Spinal Cord Rehabilitation Centre:

What better way to travel home from school than a tractor-towed trailer bed?

How many bodies can you squeeze onto a motorbike?

…or in the most popular form of Indian transportation, the auto-rickshaw!

As you’ve seen, Indian people are resourceful and creative with transportation methods, and have little to no personal bubble. And safety? Pfff.