CSII - Berwai Women’s Night School for the Kalbeliya Community

The Women’s Night School

The Women’s Night School is an initiative by Center for Social Innovation and Impact and Manthan Sanstha Kotri in Berwai village in Ajmer district in Rajasthan for the women of the Kalbeliya community, who were a migrant community who went from village to village performing their traditional Sarpera dance to their folk songs in exchange for flour to make their food. All their belongings belonged to a single camel cart, and once they exhausted one village, they would move on to the other. When a survey was done by Manthan in Berwai, where few families from the Kalbeliya tribe has settled, the number of families living in temporary shelters far outweigh the ones living in their permanent homes, which was mostly built by availing welfare schemes by the Prime Minister. The women, who mostly earn an income from MGNREGA, come home and then go about taking care of their home. They don’t have a space where they can build their skills, earn a better source of income or discuss different solutions to the paramount problems they are facing. It is this space for co creation to develop the community’s problem solving skills and personality development that the Women’s Night School aims to create.

The Village Education Committee

The demands of the Women’s Night School are put forward by the Village Education Committee members, who came forward by their own choice in the first meeting with the community to elect leaders to guide and be accountable for all the students in the school. The VEC Committee is the very pivot around which the Women’s Night School revolves. They communicate with the facilitators and put forward their requirements of what they need to study, and the syllabus of what should be taught is determined by keeping their pointers first and foremost in mind. They are given the decision-making power in shaping the elements of the schedule that they will study for one year, so that they can deal with the problems they are facing in a more efficient way- in a way that they can learn from a space different from that of their homes or their fields- in a space that they can call school. In this educational space, while going through different stages of experiential pedagogy, they can encounter a range of possibilities where they can find different pathways to be better versions of themselves. By exploring these pathways, they can build themselves up to be independent, and enhance their abilities to be a better leader who are open to learning new things and propose solid solutions to existing problems.

Theatre of the Oppressed and Syllabus Creation

In the Theatre of the Oppressed Workshop conducted with the Village Education Committee, for formulating the syllabus of the Night School that caters to their needs, 9 members participated. In the space provided by the methods of the Theatre, there is no holding back of your opinions because it is your thoughts that drive the momentum of the theatre. Through the artistic medium of the Theatre, the women were able to better express their problems by simply acting out their problems. The facilitators garnered a concrete idea on what are their issues that needed addressing, and formulated a syllabus that addresses the issues raised during the Theatre of Oppressed cum Syllabus Creation Session for the Women’s Night School. Ripples of Change