RCHSS

Each year since its inception in 1980, RCHSS has been building upon these original programs until our scope has reached all of the various issues, big and small, confronting the people of the entirety of the North Bengal region. Our current projects are numerous and reflective of this wide scope and can be categorized under the following broad areas: Livelihood Related Programs, Child Rights Programs, River Basin Focused Programs, Reproductive and Child Health Programs, Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH), Environmental Programs, and Research Programs.

 

i) Livelihood Related Programs

 

Our Livelihood Related Programs aim to strengthen existing community-based organizations and build more local institutions to enhance social mobilization. These programs mainly target those groups who have previously been excluded from ongoing governmental efforts focusing on livelihood security, such as farmers, women, people with disabilities, and local artisans.

 

Our ongoing Livelihood Related Programs span such areas as sustainable agriculture, natural resource management, and income security for local farmers through the increased value of their food production. We are currently focusing on convergent action with the local government (panchayat) to increase efforts to ensure the future of the availability of professional human resources.

 

An example of a program under the LRP division is our Farmers Field School (FFS). In this program, farmers are taught to utilize modern weather tracking systems to determine weather patterns for upcoming months and plan their agricultural methods accordingly. Another sector of the LRP focuses on attaining the income security of small-scale local artisans. For example, RCHSS observed the type of traditional mat-making in the region and took these artisans to observe people in other regions creating other products using similar techniques. Through these observations, the local artisans were able to produce different products that could then be sold to a broader consumer base. This is an ongoing program whereby the local artisans are constantly learning to produce new crafts to sell. We also have an animal husbandry program, providing cows and goats to the villagers. Participants in this program are given a young animal and have a six-month period to pay back the cost of the animal or trade it for other animals within the community. It is our goal that each family will have at least one animal in the future. Referrals to local veterinarians are provided to ensure the health of the animals. Also, the LRP has established relationships with local banks to allow villagers to obtain bank accounts in order to manage profits earned from these new sources of livelihood.

 

A focal point for the upcoming years of this program is to investigate the latest cultivation techniques available to prepare the agrarian community for future climate changes.

 

ii) Child Rights Programs

 

Our Child Rights Programs are mainly related to maintaining two legal provisions of our country: free education for all people under 14 years of age and child labor prohibition. Our programs, which focus on children from birth to age 18, thrive on the principle of education accessibility for all children who have traditionally been left out of this free education system. Our Child Rights Programs instill the idea in village parents that sending all of their children to school is compulsory, and we work together with families and schools to continually raise student retention rates.

 

A major initiative of RCHSS to end child labor in our region focused on the children of the brick kiln industry. The children of brick kiln workers begin working with their parents as brick carriers as early as 10 years of age. These boys and girls previously had no opportunity to obtain an education. Our programs have succeeded in bringing over 7,000 children out of brick kiln labor and into the mainstream education system. We are now working with a multitude of migrant child laborers, mainly from Bihar and Jharkhand, whose primary language is Hindi. We are supplying them with educational materials in their own language and continuing efforts to ensure their ongoing education after they return home.

 

A focal point for the future of our Child Rights Programs is to introduce vocational skills training for children over 14 years old who reach beyond the age of free schooling.

 

iii) River Basin Focused Programs

 

Our River Basin Focused Programs were preliminarily concerned with flood relief measures, but over time our strategies have evolved to include capacity building and disaster preparedness efforts as a preventative measure to combat the issues of river flooding and droughts. The changing environmental situation of the West Bengal region over the past decade has been so drastic that RCHSS has taken aggressive measures to devise solutions to the negative impacts these changes have on our local rivers. The rivers of our area are our only water source and, thereby, the lifeline of our region. The systematic large-scale flooding and extreme droughts of the local rivers mainly affect the farmers of the area, as well as the people living in the areas immediately surrounding the river. RCHSS volunteers alongside the community leaders of our local women's self-help groups are the main facilitators of these programs.

 

Our aim for the future of River Basin Focused Programs will cover the introduction of modern water resource management strategies to protect the river basin region against continued devastation due to the increasingly difficult drought-flood cycles and anthropogenic misconduct with the water source.

 

iv) Reproductive and Child Health Programs

 

The Reproductive and Child Health Programs focus on providing quality healthcare and raising awareness of major health-related issues affecting women, adolescent girls, and children from birth to age 5. These programs simply provide a model for replication which can then be passed on between villagers and aim to fill information and service gaps between the people and government facilities.

 

The Reproductive and Child Health-Related Programs include initiatives in child growth monitoring, child development and nutrition centers, and establishing relationships to connect mothers and children with local health centers. Through our Reproductive and Child Health Programs, families have learned to build nutrition gardens in their homes to ensure food security and nutritional diversity. Referral services are now available to local primary health centers. RCHSS has also mobilized more grassroots health activists to promote the well-being of the tribal women and children of the Malda region. Another RCHSS volunteer initiative focuses on providing training programs to adolescent girls on women's health-related topics since this is an area that is often overlooked in traditional systems.

 

The future of our Reproductive and Child Health Programs is focused on our dedication to ensuring that maternal and infant mortality rates continue to decline and that each child exhibits healthy growth and developmental patterns.

 

v) Water And Sanitation Hygiene (WASH)

 

The Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) program focuses on maintaining hygienic practices of water use, especially in regard to safe drinking water. Other measures include promoting proper sanitation by facilitating the installation of latrines into villages where they previously did not exist, to create open-defecation free habitats. Children, who generally have no practice of handwashing, are taught proper handwashing methods. The WASH initiative began in 1995 as a basic sanitation awareness program and has now expanded to include improved explanations and demonstrations of water sanitation through interactive events. The WASH program spans 11 blocks of Malda and Darjeeling and we are currently collaborating with the government to expand our efforts further.

 

The future of this program will be to promote open-defecation free villages and to continue to expand the program into new regions.

 

vi) Environmental Programs

 

Since the earliest days of RCHSS, programs promoting environmental awareness have been of utmost importance to us. In fact, RCHSS was born out of local efforts to protect the environment. One of our first programs in the 1980s was a re-greening initiative whereby villagers were encouraged to plant trees in their region. Today, over 1 million trees have been planted through RCHSS environmental programs. We are currently focusing on creating nurseries containing local food varieties, such as papaya, guava, mango, and ben fruit, to address the issue of nutrition deficiency prevalent in the villages.

 

Another problem that is currently being addressed by our Environmental Programs is human-animal conflict arising from confrontations with elephants entering villages in search of food. RCHSS has worked with some of the villages of the Darjeeling region that are located on the edge of vast forests, where the conflict between humans and elephants is unavoidable and has continued for over a century with no foreseeable end. RCHSS is in favor of peaceful coexistence, and our efforts aim to decrease tension among the villagers and provide the skills needed to effectively handle elephant emergencies in ways that ensure there will be no animal or human deaths.

 

The future of RCHSS environmental programs will concentrate on adapting to the severe impact of climate change through conservation-focused agricultural practices.

 

vii) Research Programs

 

RCHSS is a proponent of continual research advancements as a means of helping to shape a progressive future. Thus, we have always dedicated a portion of our efforts and resources toward supporting research and training programs. In addition to frequently hosting on-site training programs for various local groups, we have coordinated numerous research efforts since the foundation of our organization.

 

Our extensive history of research projects has spanned over three decades, and countless topics have been addressed at this time. Some examples of our work are as follows. After the 2002 monsoon, UNICEF supported RCHSS in completing a status report of the Ganges River in the Malda region. In 2006, RCHSS also took part in the preparation of our district’s Human Development Report and prepared action points for the local government. Another research project included collaborating with international volunteers to study the soil quality of Barind. We have also conducted two small studies to enhance the effectiveness of the WASH program within the 11 blocks of the Malda and Darjeeling districts. More recently, we have done a vast study under the Rural Development sector of the government of West Bengal regarding the implementation of MGNREGS within the Malda district. We have also collected data from PLA (Participatory Learning and Action) questionnaires administered via family interviews. Under NABCON, RCHSS prepared the RKVY report of our district. In conjunction with DFID and the Rural Development Department of Malda, RCHSS has assisted with facilitating village activities for a pro-poor governance study.

 

RCHSS has supported many local Indian and international students in the preparation of graduate-level thesis work. We have supervised Rural Management students in the composition of reports about the local villages. RCHSS has further supported student and volunteer research efforts by providing researchers with free food and accommodation for the duration of their stay with us.

 

We look forward to continuing our role in supporting research pioneers of all backgrounds.

 

 

This history adapted and written in May 2014 by Natalia L. Rivera from interviews with RCHSS staff and founder.