Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG)

Mission and values

AVAG collaborates with all sectors of society to bring about a holistic and participatory village transformation where the villagers are the main acting force. AVAG sees its main role as enabling the beneficiaries to become more self-empowered. It places relationships between human beings and their behaviours, traditions and prejudices at the foundation of its programs and work with villagers, following the central goal of gender and cast equality. Solidarity and cooperation are also important values to AVAG.

Structure

In July 2000, the Auroville Village Action Trust developed out of AVAG's diverse activities in order to them better. Since then, AVAG is a part of this trust. Five trustees from Auroville oversee the running of the organisation and ensure that it operates according to its statutes. They are made up out of three executives and the two directors Anbu and Moris – a wife and husband team of professional social workers, who have been responsible for AVAG activities and organisational development since 1988.

Field work is carried out by a team of 6 development workers who themselves come from Vanur block and are deeply familiar with the ground realities. They receive special training and are often the direct link between the trustees and direct beneficiaries. Additionally, 2 vocational trainers and a team of 8 support staff make up the rest of the AVAG team. AVAG regularly hosts students, interns and volunteers from abroad who assist in all aspects of programme delivery. The immediate beneficiaries are the members of the women and men self-help groups (SHGs), who usually meet twice a month to discuss loans and personal issues or to receive training. Every SHG elects an animator and two representatives each month.

Work

To combat gender inequity, poverty and limited access to resources for development, AVAG executes a multifaceted community development program, executed through a structure of nearly 300 SHGs and Federations, with around 4500 women and 600 men, which promote micro credit, community service, social enterprise development and education. Psychosocial support and capacity building are usually given by AVAG to the federation members and self-help group members in addition.

Community development

Activities that fall under this category are those that improve infrastructure, get access to resources and analyze and challenge long held assumptions on various social issues such as patriarchal and caste systems.

Exchange programs

Members of different villages and castes spend a day together to break down traditional barriers of gender, caste, social status, and geographic isolation.

Work camps and micro projects

AVAG partners with villagers to make small, one-time investments to support the self-help groups in planning and submitting solutions for minor physical infrastructure problems in their rural communities.

Government schemes

AVAG seeks to empower members by helping them understand and access resources provided by government schemes, including Life Insurance coverage, pension schemes and scholarships for students in grades 9th-12th.

Service and awareness camps

Camps are organised by the SHGs to improve access to healthcare services for poorest members, spread awareness about menstrual hygiene, oral and eye care.

Events and community celebrations

SHGs together with locally elected panchayats have started to arrange public meetings on important days relevant to them, for which both men and women organize events and give performances.

Eco-friendly products for villagers

A store is located on AVAG premises and provides access to affordable eco-friendly technologies suitable for rural communities, such as spirulina supplements, energy powder, CFL bulbs, activated EM, low-cost water filters, and solar-powered devices.

Housing for the poor

AVAG organizes projects to repair houses of those extremely impoverished families identified by SHGs who cannot afford repairs on their own. AVAG finances 75% of the project while the families themselves are responsible for the repairs.

Capacity building

This programme aims at expanding the vision and ability of each individual and providing the tools needed to participate in societal development.

Seminars

AVAG organizes a day-long seminar each month for SHG members, aimed at increasing awareness about topics such as government schemes, gender and caste issues, water, sanitation, waste management and global warming.

Meetings

One type of meeting AVAG has are the strengthening meetings. They support new SHGs as well as the clubs that need assistance with their activities. These meetings also help existing SHGs progress, and resolve internal problems by discussing the importance of unity and cooperation. Another type of meeting are the cluster meetings, which are held with representatives from SHGs to discuss common issues in the women's area and give clarity to the guidelines of the clubs, as well as create a platform for different clubs to interact, share ideas and foster solidarity.

Exposure and field trips

These trips are meant for the members to experience other parts of the surrounding areas and to get involved in new techniques like vermicomposting or gardening.

Trainings

One department getting trained are the federation members. They participate in mixed-gender exposure trips and workshops that cover subjects such as leadership, caste, domestic violence, environmental awareness and gender, and sometimes also psychosocial aspects. The elected animator and two representatives of each SHG also receive training in the form of exposure to social issues and educational programs to increase leadership capacities.

Economic development

Through revolving funds and a savings program, as well as by providing access to flexible, needs based, ethical financial institutions, income generation is created.

Financial inclusion program

Within the AVAG network, SHG members can take loans from several places, most importantly internally from the monthly savings of members of AVAG's SHGs. Externally, SHGs are helped to get loans from the banks, revolving funds of the Federation and AVAG.

AVAG Micro Finance Project

Based on a grant from the German Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ), a revolving fund was created to meet the demand for micro-credits for the purposes of businesses, agriculture, education, housing, social functions, as well as to pay back the very high interest loans from the moneylenders. The higher objective was to combat poverty by micro-credits to women self-help groups.

Social enterprise initiatives and livelihood training programs

AVAG offers a large number of trainings, and creates self-employment opportunities for members of women's SHGs. Together with the Sustainable Enterprise Development in the Auroville Bioregion (SEDAB) project, which is part of a wider Integral Rural Development vision for the bioregion, the goal is to provide sustainable livelihood options for women in villages in and around Auroville. Several different products are being produced and sold as part of the social enterprise initiative, such as clothes and accessories and crocheted life style products, like toys and lamps, and accessories (under AVAG's own brand Aval), herbal beauty products, spirulina capsules (under the brand Surya) and hammocks with support and teaching from outside of AVAG.

Marketing initiatives

SHGs products are now being sold in several shops around Auroville and Pondicherry, as well as in women self-help group exhibitions in Pondicherry and Chennai, organized by the Tamil Nadu Government.

Psychosocial support

This program aims to protect and support the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical health of all individuals.

Counseling and mediation

AVAG offers counseling services to individuals who have difficulty coping with some part of their lives. In addition to counseling, AVAG helps connect those in need with government services and other relevant organizations.

De-addiction services

Some SHG members are trained to spread awareness of the disease and treatment options and to identify cases and send them for rehabilitation services.

Funding

AVAG has varying supporters, also relying on individual donors. The BMZ gives AVAG a notable supporting sum each year under the Verein zur Förderung der Auroville-Region (VFAVR), affiliated with AVI Germany. They also supported the issue of the AVVAI scheme. Other funding partners are the Village Outreach Society of Canada and the United Kingdom, who have supported Eco Femme, AVAG's exchange programs and the solar lantern project of the EcoLife store. World Dignity, Inc.(WDI), an organization working internationally to build on the strength, resilience, culture and wisdom of all people, created the AVAG/WDI Education Revolving Fund to help financially poor club members pay for their children's higher education through loans or grants together with AVAG. Motherson Sumi Systems Limited has given a 1 Crore grant towards a project increasing access to education for poor girls in June 2015 as part of their Corporate social responsibility (CSR) program.

History

In 1983, AVAG was founded by Bhavana Dee Decew "to act as a bridge between [Auroville] and immediate neighbours." At that time, a few programs with children and women were started in the villages surrounding Auroville. Gradually, professional social workers joined and turned AVAG into an official developmental project. With OXFAM India's help starting 1991, AVAG expanded its scope in terms of working areas and adjointed activities and field staff could be recruited and trained. The Commonwealth Human Ecology Council (CHEC) of the Overseas Development Agency (ODA)-UK, later called the Department for International Development (DfID), also supported AVAG so that its work expanded further. Thanks to the DfID's funding, the Women's Federation and the men's groups could also be established in 1999. When the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami hit Tamil Nadu, AVAG experienced a major financial and labor crisis. Many activities had to be reduced or shut down but it was sustained with the help of the women and men SHGs and the leaders of the villages. ACDC also supported AVAG's work in the Tsunami hit areas. ACDC continued to support AVAG until 2009. In 2010, the social enterprise initiative got started with the assistance of the Sustainable Enterprise Development in the Auroville Bioregion (SEDAB), scheduled to run until the middle of 2016. The BMZ project set up a revolving fund with the German government's support, mainly for enabling the distribution of grants to poor girls for obtaining a better education. Currently, AVAG is working on setting up education programs for adolescent girls and boys and marketing its products more. Also, flood relief after the hundred-year 2015 South Indian floods in the Villupuram district is still going on.

Affiliations

AVAG is closely working together with people in Auroville, for certain events such as flood relief help and different entrepreneurial projects inside of Auroville. Some of AVAG's women stitch disposable cloth pads for EcoFemme, they have also recently started to assist in stitching scarves made by The Colours of Nature One different project which AVAG is working together with Auroville on right now is the Paalam project, Paalam meaning bridge in Tamil, which is a bioregional and Auroville youth leadership program and "aims to provide training in sustainable village development through a programme that would include exposure to Auroville and its ideals and to model village development throughout Tamil Nadu." Once a year, a student from the American University of Paris (AUP) joins AVAG for a few weeks to assist it in the communications sector. AVAG is associated with the National Australia Bank, the Indian Bank and the ICICI Bank for the microfinancing and SHG loans. They send a mobile bank to AVAG twice a week and issue the loans to the SHG women. The German BMZ is supporting one or two young volunteers coming to AVAG via Auroville International (AVI) Deutschland e.V., a non-profit organization which is amongst other things a volunteer sending agency via weltwärts, each year for a year's duration.