Week 3: Rebecca

JC, Analakshmi, and Rebecca (L to R)

SST employs a holistic approach through addressing economic, health, education, environment, agriculture and infrastructure development. Social workers are therefore responsible for a host of overlapping service areas. On Monday, Analakshmi took us to a busy intersection where she and other SST staff were vaccinating and selling chicks to SHG members (a micro-enterprise women’s cooperatives) and local farmers. Last week she helped complete anemia testing and awareness training in a nearby village. She also assists SHGs to better negotiate with creditors and collaborates with village panchayats (local governing body). She exemplifies what a social worker should be: advocate, organizer, leader and, most importantly, ally.

What I find the most remarkable about social work in this context is how much a part of the community social workers become. Social workers are members of the community. They live in the area, buy goods from the local economy and develop close friendships with individuals in the community. Analakshmi lives in Padavedu and returns to her home village once a week. There is very little separation of personal and professional, yet it does not seem to bother anyone. In fact, I think it eliminates many of the barriers between ‘outside helping professional’ and the community. This appears to create a deep relationship of trust and mutual commitment.

At first I could not understand why Analakshmi is not “burnt out.” She has been working in the field for 7 years, she works long hours, travels often, and barely has time to eat, let alone cook. She is clearly passionate about her work, but this is not enough to prevent burn out. I think what prevents internalizing the stress that can come with this profession is the feeling of shared commitment and collaboration. Analakshmi has a vested interest in empowering the people of these villages because she knows them personally as well as professionally. The rapport she has with individual villagers, especially animators, enables her to instigate change and elicit information in ways that an outsider could never breach.

Week 2: JC

SST Animator demonstrates honey collection

After saluting the government appointed guard at the gated entrance we begin our winding drive through the Jadhavu Hills. This is a designated “tribal area” and the landscape varies considerably from the “plains area.” Here millet replaces sugarcane, goats and sheep supplant cows, and thatched-roof houses are still the norm. Villages are so tucked away that standard staples of development such as roads, medical care, and educational facilities are relatively recent. Access to markets and hospitals located outside of the hills continues to be a problem for these communities.

We park our car on the hillside and pack up our provisions. It is still another 3km descent on foot into the hill valley where monkeys and wild elephants are known to live. Today we are accompanying Baskar, an MSW and SST community developer. Baskar has been partnering with “community animators” – village residents who act as liaisons between SST and targeted communities—to promote improved honey collection techniques through awareness and training. Yesterday Baskar explained the new method and today we have come to observe whether village residents can practically apply the information. The men put on the bee suits correctly, collect the comb, and extract a half-liter’s worth of pure honey. But still I question whether the community will continue practicing this new technique when the equipment isn’t new anymore and they no longer have an audience. The village took part in an agriculture training several months back but still the majority of millet fields are not spaced properly. Will something similar happen with this training?

SST staff tells me that progress in the plains communities is easier and faster than in the tribal areas. Why is this the case? As a student trained in ecosystems theory I am aware that the reasons are multiple and complex. Relationship-processes happening across generations and system levels have contributed to tribal communities’ structural and social isolation, suspicion of outsiders, and hesitancy when it comes to accepting development schemes. I spend my days here trying to understand these relationship-processes and how SST enters into them. Using a strengths-perspective I think about how farmers are not acting irrationally or stupidly by refusing to readily adopt new development schemes. Rather, they are exercising the highest prudence and risk-management. Why would a poor farmer, who has everything to lose, invest in something that he is not absolutely sure will be profitable? It is natural to want someone else to try it first.

The onus is not on the farmer but on the developing agency to find effective strategies to help communities discover for themselves whether technique X or scheme Y is worth doing, despite the risk. But what makes a strategy effective? Trust—in the message or the messenger—is a definite ingredient.  So I observe the animators, studying what makes them effective community organizers. Going back to social work basics I try to see if and how the three facilitative conditions of the therapeutic working relationship—empathy, authenticity, and positive regard—are employed in this context. Is there a way to improve the working relationship here so that change occurs faster?

Jadhavu Hills, Tamil Nadu