William Kamkwamba, a Malawian secondary school student, saw a picture and explanation about a windmill in a book from the local library. From the book, Kamkwanba built his own windmill to provide electricity for his family.
Roopankan started with a similar belief in the power of books. Ashok Dubey (Ashok Ji), a university gold medalist in mathematics and a teacher for fifteen years, launched Roopakan as a library in 2002 with a group of like-minded people. From its humble beginning, the library has grown from a book repository to a space of deliberation and action.
In 2004, two girls from the library group started Koshish, a night school offering a non formal educationto children of a nomadic ironsmith migrant community. Soon after, other volunteers launched two more non-formal night schools, Dosti for child labourers and Neev for the children of construction workers. Neev focuses on children between the ages of 4 -13 who beg or do daily wage labor. The Neev school, now with 50 students, has shifted to the premises of the famous Khazarana Ganesh temple.
The Neev school has two teachers and one coordinator. Most of the children enrolled at Neev are first time learners or drop-outs. Neev is an activity-based non-formal school; children learn through games, sports, stories, acting, and hands-on experiments. Activities are designed in an innovative manner to assist in learning. For instance, to help children learn the alphabets, teachers create skits with student actors as alphabet letters. From time to time, Neev organizes workshops where artists, storytellers, and poets are invited to teach the children. Children later create their own stories, sculpture, and craft. Children also publish their stories and art in the 8-page quarterly Roopankan newsletter.
Volunteer-run activities are key to Roopankan’s culture of creative expression. Evenings at the Roopankan center buzz with volunteers discussing poetry, making crafts, and creating new activities for the school such as skits, sports events, and poetry classes. Roopankan invests in capacity building for its volunteers through computer trainings and regular workshops on creative writing, poetry, and theatre.
Roopankan has initiated other volunteer-run programs related to various social issues. In 2007, Roopankan convened a women’s self-help group called “Roshni,” which assists with income-generation activities (small craft businesses). In addition, Roshni invites counsellors to counsel women in domestic violence and harassment issues.
Since its inception, Roopankan created wall posters with social messages written in beautiful calligraphy. Roopankan sells these calligraphy posters to support Roopankan activities.
Need for Project:
Roopankan consists of four paid staff members and 20+ regular volunteers who help plan and implement various activities. The volunteers are primarily between ages of 18-30 and come from various schools, colleges, universities, and companies in the area. The current volunteers are available mostly on weekday evenings and on weekends.
Roopankan has no formal mechanisms to recruit and train volunteers. Youth generally volunteer based on: (1) contact at the library, (2) contact at Roopankan’s various programs in the city, or (3) as friends of other regular volunteers. Roopankan seeks to engage more volunteers from local companies, schools, and colleges.
As an August 2010 Indicorps Fellow, you will strengthen Roopankan’s effort to create a vibrant volunteer cadre.
First, you should familiarize yourself with the culture at Roopankan and determine what drives people to volunteer, both short and long term. You should understand the range of activities at Roopankan, and how the volunteers interconnect to meet the organizations overarching goals. Understanding the personal and professional motivations of these volunteers will enable you to create an outreach and recruitment program.
Mobilizing volunteers may include making presentations at local colleges, mahila mandals, and senior citizen groups. You can even use Roopankan events to bring people to the center and make a tasteful appeal for volunteers. You should engage current volunteers in the mobilization effort as their stories will be your most valuable marketing tool!
You should create an in-house volunteer orientation to help new volunteers understand their duties, the Roopankan culture, and ways to engage fully at Roopankan. You should encourage new volunteers to find their passions, apply them for a larger purpose, and build new programs or support existing ones. You will encourage volunteers to create programs that interest them, make the requisite commitment, and organize teams of volunteers with the appropriate skill sets to develop them.
You should also design advanced trainings with the volunteers to enhance their critical thinking ability and their understanding of relevant social issues. You will develop a package of tools that will enhance the volunteers’ core competencies and channel their energy into constructive action. To keep grounded, you too should volunteer at the Roopankan library as well and possibly launch a new initiative for the youth.
Throughout the process, you should document your observations, findings and outcomes, so that at regular intervals, you can share your learnings with Roopankan staff for future programming.
Target Community:
The target of program will be youth between the ages of 18 and 25 years. This includes youth from local schools, colleges and the corporate sector. The majority of the youth in the Indore city have commitments such as school or work during the day. Thus, they are usually available in the evening. For college students, certain months of the year are very busy due to exams and other deadline.
Objectives:
• To motivate people to volunteer and build the ethic of service
• To engage volunteers in community service programs
• To build the capacity of Roopankan volunteers to contribute to society effectively
Challenges:
• Enabling youth to find their passion and apply it for societal good
• Creating an environment of mutual trust and respect at Roopankan center
• Developing a training curriculum and organizing structure that accounts for the varied schedules, motivation levels, and interests of the potential volunteer base
Team-Based Model:
Each project is designed as a three-way partnership between you, Indicorps, and a partner organization. Each grassroots partner organization – in this case Roopankan – will be hosting 2-4 Fellows. Consequently, the August 2010 fellowship will have both an individual and a team component.
As a team of Indicorps Fellows, your focus is to strengthen the volunteer culture of Roopankan to support community development programs. Team members will focus on different area including capacity building of a non-formal school and forming a vibrant volunteer cadre at Roopankan.
You will be provided accommodation close to Roopankan office in Indore. Simple vegetarian food will be arranged by Roopankan. You will do your own laundry and chores. Indore is well connected to other cities in India through trains and buses. International dialing and internet facilities are available at the Roopankan office. Shared auto rickshaws and city buses are generally available for local transportation.
The language spoken at Roopankan is Hindi. For this project, a basic knowledge of Hindi is required. If you do not have basic knowledge of Hindi, you can still apply if you commit to learning the language before the start of your Fellowship year.
Top