A month at MYKAPS

I’ve been chastised by a few of you for not posting any updates in the blog, so I am forthwith rectifying the situation. About two weeks ago I drafted some monstrously long entry about MYKAPS (the NGO I am working with) and what they do and what it means and what I think about it and blah blah blah.. On rereading it I bored myself silly. Not such a good sign. So I’ll write a shorter post about the work and I am doing here, and then backfill some of our exploits over the last month – GRS Fantasy Park (a waterslide park thing), Srirangapatna (temples), Chamundi Hill (more temples). A menu of delights.
I have now been working at MYKAPS (Myrada Kaveri Pradeshika Samsthe) for about a month. I tend to work Monday to Thursday and then spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday helping Hannah with the kids. The monsoons haven’t hit yet, but they are due any day now – maybe this week. Perhaps my commute will turn into a mudbath.

MYKAPS spun off from its parent organisation, MYRADA, in 2008. Originally the people working here (most people seem to have been here 15-20 years) worked with PLAN, a UK based charity focussing on the welfare of children. However Plan moved out of Southern India in 2008, leaving MYKAPS without its major sponsor. This prompted a significant directional change for MYKAPS, which now has a greater emphasis on domestic funding (ie from within India), and more farming and agricultural based projects. MYKAPS employs about 50 people in various different locations, with about 20 in the ‘head office’ where I work.
Their mission
Here is their mission statement:

• To build and strengthen livelihoods of farm and non farm rural house holds in such a way that all families are able to live in prosperity and with dignity.
• To spread the adoption of ecologically better practices so that soil, water and air are protected from further deterioration and nurtured back to healthy and optimally productive levels.
• To promote the development of agriculture as an enterprise, balancing productivity with environmental concerns and securing appropriate credit and market linkages
• To increase awareness and facilitate attitudinal and behavioral changes in the areas of health and sanitation so that health risks are reduced.
• To ensure that all the rights of children are respected at all times, and that children are groomed to contribute to the healthy growth of the community and the nation.
• To ensure that all the above are achieved with gender sensitivity and through building and strengthening local level people’s institutions, working with panchayats (local government), networking with other governmental and non governmental institutions and strategic partnerships with resource institutions.

Projects
They are involved in a number of projects, the main ones being:

• MSK (Mission Sunehra Kal) Project – helping farmers with watershed development, organic land use and sustainable farming
• CMRCs – Community Managed Resource Centres. 16 regional self help centres that help people do things like: understand what government schemes are available, fill in forms, submit forms, make links to banks, receive training (organisation forming, accounting,  computing etc.)
• Kabini Organics – a group of farmers who have got together to produce organic products (principally cotton). Getting certified as an organic producer takes at least two years (or three years for plantation crops) and requires strict adherence to a set of farming rules (you must not mix organic and non organic crops, you must write a log of everything you do each day, you must not use GM seed etc.)
• CIDOR - Centre for Institutional Development and Organizational Reforms. A training centre that teaches and facilitates in many areas, including a lot of ‘train the trainer’ work. Their courses include a range of organisational theory type courses (how to form and register a self help group, how to apply for funding, how to build good team dynamics), as well as training government officials, other NGOs etc.
• HIV /Aids prevention – supported by the CDC (US centre for disease control) helps in two areas: pre infection information (telling high risk groups about HIV) and helping people who already have it.

So what does it feel like?
The stuff I have just reeled off there sounds a bit like a promotional leaflet or a wordified powerpoint presentation. What does it all add up to? What does it feel like to be here?

The first thing to note is that it feels a lot like work. I don’t mean “OMG they are working me hard”, I mean that it is recognisably like other ‘commercial’ work I have done in my life. This may be violently obvious to anyone who has worked in a charity or an NGO before, but actually was quite surprising to me. I am not sure exactly what I expected. I think I thought it would feel fundamentally different somehow, more ‘holy’, more righteous. So the day is not shot through with beauty and radiance and ‘doing right’. It is shot  through with checking email, completing proposals, having meetings about progress on projects. I think I was incredibly naive about this and this is therefore perhaps a most important lesson.

Some people work here because they really believe in what they are doing. Some people  work here because they get paid. Some people play Solitaire when no-one is looking. There is the usual office stuff. Laughter, flirtations (although, this being India, somewhat muted), gossip (at least this is how I interpret it - humour me- my Kannada isn’t that hot). But all in all it feels like a place where things get done. Which is good.

 

 

 

This is all getting quite long, so I will tell you in another post what my primary project is. ….

 

One of the dogs who lives here. Apparently named after a terrorist. Some of this humour is a little lost on me.