A--D -- A School Built By the People, For The People

finalist 2021

Location:
Jorhat, India

Category:
education

Phase:
under construction

Updated:
4 December 2021

The tea-plantations of Assam are facing an unprecedented socio-economic crisis, fueled in large parts by disempowerment of its 1.2 million labourers with access to even the basic freedoms. A people’s school is the stepping-stone for our vision of community-action based empowerment.Therein, the process of community-architecture is a collective effort to inspire unprecedentedly newer levels of collaboration and trust required for the challenge.

Introduction

Assam has the highest school drop-out rates in India. This extreme lack of education is exacerbated by an unsustainable socio-economic crisis in the tea plantations that was seeded more than 150 years ago by top-down systems of an exploitative indentured/contract labour system created by the colonialists when they set up tea-plantations in Assam. Many feel that plantations, providing livelihoods to 1.2 million people, may not survive another 15-20 years if drastic course corrections are not taken. Our project of building a peoples’ school is a direct response to embark on such a drastic course correction path.

We have enabled an empowering agency of the people to address this 150-year old disempowering gap in school spaces by humanising and contextualising built environments in a way that makes learning non-alienating, joyful, and aspirational for children and their communities. The driving force of our core team, of which two members have their lives rooted in the tea-plantations and thus know the problems deeply, has been harnessing the potential of local wisdom and resources through community participation. This is a tested model where we have already built a classroom called Beli Ghar (Sun House). It has allowed not just the children, but teachers and parents to collaborate with freedom. The dynamic physical space also acts as a meeting centre for the community. The initiative is an ongoing process with dedicated efforts of our NGO, collaborating with two architects with a deep understanding of the region and expertise in facilitating community-driven architecture.

Impact

At the immediate level, it is expected that the school will, after 150 years, set a vitally needed precedent and baseline for quality education in the tea plantation context. This will be achieved through nurturing a conducive environment, like we have been doing with the school classroom (Beli Ghar), where architecture has become a proven means to improve learning outcomes by making education contextual, compassionate and joyful. The initiative will directly impact around 5000 people in the project area. The dynamic space is built on a vision centered around nurturing capacities of community participation, thereby instilling ownership of the people towards the empowering process of education. For the long-term, we are deeply aware of the crisis in the tea industry which stems from outdated colonial structures that cascades into a host of other issues like climate change, rising cost of production, and a highly vulnerable workforce who depend on the industry. As a response to this, the initiative can become a model for the industry as it adapts to its challenges. For instance, as the industry moves towards mechanisation, in line with the global trend, quality education for its workers would be vital to meet the required skills and expertise. The initiative would also create conditions for decent work for the highly vulnerable workforce, offering a much larger potential to impact the 1.2 million workers across 800 tea plantations of Assam.

Core team

Jayesh and Uday were introduced to Arjun through a common connection. Uday then visited Arjun in Assam to form a team with the community builders, and the work on Beli Ghar starts. Gaurav, a student at TISS at the time is becoming increasingly involved in some of the grassroots organizations where Uday and Jayesh have built, and slowly becomes a part of the team.

Dr. Arjun Trivedi (PhD, Physics)
Founder of Karunar Kheti Trust | Wipro Education Fellow
Educator | Grassroots Social Worker | Scientist
Arjun Trivedi Resume | LinkedIn Profile | List of Peer Reviewed Scientific Publications

Uday Goswami
• Co-Founder, Urban Community and Social (UCS) Architecture, Mumbai
• Design Head, Developer Spaces, Edifice Consultants Pvt. Ltd. (ECPL), Mumbai
• Honorary Advisor to the Board, Better Life Foundation (BLF), Longkhim, Nagaland
• Volunteer Expert, Architecture in Development (AiD), Amsterdam
Uday Goswami CV

Jayesh Ganesh
• Freelance Community & Grassroots Architect, Bengaluru
• Regional Head, Bengaluru, Edifice Consultants Pvt. Ltd. (ECPL)
• Honorary Advisor to the Board, Better Life Foundation (BLF), Longkhim, Nagaland
Jayesh Ganesh CV

Gaurav Sarma
- Project Officer, Ethical Tea Partnership (2018-20)
- Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (MA in Social Work)
Gaurav Sarma CV

Our work covered in the media:
“Assessing impact beyond Western models” (YouTube)
“Karunar Kheti Trust: Fostering Social Transformation in Assam”
Community Learning in the Tea Tribe Communities
আমেৰিকাৰ চাকৰি বাদ দি অসমৰ চাহ বাগান অঞ্চলৰ বাবে কাম কৰিছে অৰ্জুনে

Image gallery

Breaking ground for Beli Ghar

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Uday discussing the design of Beli Ghar with community builders

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Collaborative model building exercise between Uday and community builders

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Model building for Beli Ghar continues

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

The model is complete

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Construction begins - connecting bamboo with concrete

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Community builders learnt new technique to replace rope with nuts and bolts to put together bamboo structure

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

The model comes to life!

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Working with bamboo is a fine art

image: public domain

Our children continue to learn as the men work on Beli Ghar in the background

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Uday, Arjun, and community builders pose for a picture!

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Children playing in front of Beli Ghar during their break

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Parents attend a meeting in school to discuss our COVID school closures related adapted learning model

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Teachers and volunteers painting Beli Ghar classroom furniture

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Parents attending an adult literacy session combined with a discussion of our school' curriculum and pedagogy inside Beli Ghar

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Mixed activities inside Beli Ghar: tutoring, self-study, and community research related data analysis

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Class 1 students deeply immersed with their teachers

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Another view of Class 1 students attending class in Beli Ghar

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Beli Ghar hosts a meeting of our school teachers, staff, and volunteers with a senior official of the government's department of education

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Beli Ghar hosts a workshop for community farmers on mushroom cultivation

image: Arjun Trivedi | © all rights reserved

Technical drawings

Beli Ghar Elevation

image: Jayesh Ganesh | © all rights reserved

Beli Ghar Floor Plan

image: Jayesh Ganesh | © all rights reserved

Expansion to construct new classrooms beyond Beli Ghar

image: Jayesh Ganesh | © all rights reserved

Master Plan for the School

image: Jayesh Ganesh | © all rights reserved

4 December 2021

Progress on Construction of Tora Ghar (Star House)

2nd December 2021

The construction of Tora Ghar, the new classroom for our school began on 4th October, 2021, and this is what it looks like today.

As Tora Ghar begins to emerge next to Beli Ghar, which was our first experience in community-architecture, more than its architectural impact, what stirs most deeply in me is the emergence of little steps of a humanity, which I pray manifests in a giant leap, little by little, day by day, nourished above all by the wisdom of patience.

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17 November 2021

Launch of "Call to Action" for Selenghat Valley School

October 2021 has been the launchpad for a new wave of our community-architecture effort, which in addition to "Construction of Tora Ghar (Star House) Begins" and "Community Ownsership of Donated Land" (see posts below), also saw the launch of our "Call To Action" campaign to generate support from existing supporters and also to reachout to new ones.

This campaign included a series of 8 posts curated by Jayesh Goswami based on experiences captured in pictures and words over the last 2 years to share the journey of our community school thus far.

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17 November 2021

Another € 1,085 raised

17 November 2021

Construction of Tora Ghar (Star House) Begins

4th October 2021

Consruction of our 2nd new classroom, Tora Ghar (Star House) began next to Beli Ghar (Sun House).

The construction crew for this classroom are from a different sub-community of our larger community, and therefore, this experience is also a new learning and collaborative experience, which we hope is going to our imagined visioned of a dynamically coherent diversity of the poeple.

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15 November 2021

Community Ownsership of Donated Land

3rd October 2021 was a significant day in the history of our organization and also in the 175-year history of the tea-plantations of Assam.

After 2 years of establishing a precedent for a people's movement with promise of peace and harmony, the ownsership and management of Boisahabi Tea Estate confidentally, hopefully, and enthusiastically entrusted a large piece of land measuring 11.5 hectares (15000 square meters) to the Board of Trustees of Karunar Kheti Trust that comprises the tea estate's tea-pluckers, blue collar workers of the tea factory, office clerk, a student union leader, and the founder of the organization.

Such a step is unprecedented in the history of the tea-plantations of Assam and words cannot express the profound its significance.

To mark this day, a Shram Daan (volunteer donation of labour) was organized led by the Board of Trustees to clear the land of long-standing weedy growth and prepare it for the upcoming construction. This effort to clear the field was secondary to the symbolic intention of the poeple to step on the land as a collective and make known the intention to work hard to clear the air of conflict and disempowerment, and usher in an era of peace and empowerment.

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Where are we now

In an unprecedented community-action movement in the context of the tea-plantations of Assam, we have been successful at mobilizing and enabling our community to build the hard structures and soft processes of our school. Our community craftsmen and builders, in collaboration with our architects, built our first new class room (Beli Ghar) and renovated an old building to be used as temporary teaching spaces. We have currently 100 students studying in grades Nursery to Class 1. After having set such a groundbreaking precedent and observing the positive impact in the community, we are now confidently planning to scale up our school by adding a new grade each year till we reach Class 12.

An indication of our team’s capacity:

50% funding already raised

70% expertise already found

70% materials / equipment already found

70% builders already found

Finance: € 9,000

The funding will help us build a people’s school in one of the tea-plantations of Assam. The tea-industry of Assam is the 3rd largest employer of people in India and is facing an unprecedented socio-economic crisis that threatens the peace and stability of the region. A way out of this crisis must be an empowered participation of its people in the developmental process, from which they have been disempowered since the day tea plantations were set up in Assam more than 150 year ago by the British. Our school is also a process for creating a model for such a participatory process that has the potential to ease the crisis that affects 1.2 million tea-labourers across 800 tea-plantations.

Classroom for Class 2	4,500
Classroom for LKG	4,500

Skills: Technique, PR & Marketing, Financial advice

Technique: We need help with setting up green infrastructure, for example solar powered electricity and rain water harvesting systems.

PR & Marketing: We need help connecting with a wider ecosystem that support such community-drive architecture.

Financial advice: We can always use help with fundraising for our cause.

Stuff: Equipment & tools

Equipment & tools: Our most immediate and urgent need is for equipment needed to setup solar power on our school's campus, and also rainwater harvesting systems.

Hands

Volunteers that can help us with setting up green infrastrastructure, for example solar panels and rainwater harvesting sytems, will be very valuable.

In general we welcome volunteers because it brings a cheer, new energy, and a sense of validation and support for our community as it sets out to empower itself.