Our Activities
1. Youth Programme
The Ashram organise camps in villages, with discussions, community work, games, songs, prayers for all religions and cultural programmes. Those camps encourage participants to live their life in an gandhian way and teached how to use ahimsa for their struggle for justice.
It started small, but since 1981 those Youth Camps are on a national level, with acitivists form all over India. Since 1991 the Youth Camps are under the flag of Ekta Parishad.
2. Khadi and Village Industries
Over 700 families are now producing Khadi clothes in the traditional way. They work from their homes and bring the woven Khadi to the Ashram. It‘s a good way to gain an additional income for farmers. Often women, who work from home, do this as a part time job. Other economic activities of the Ashram are mustard oil and Chambal Honey production. All of these activities are growing larger each year.
3. Children Education
Within the Ashram in Joura there is a school from kindergarden to 10th class. Additionally they run a hostel for around 100 tribal girls. A second girls-hostel is in the Sheopur Ashram. Besides of that, there are a few open air schools for the tribal children of the Saharia tribe in the Sheopur Kalan area.
4. Advocacy and Awareness Programmes For The Tribals
The Saharia tribe are one of the lowest of all adivasis, most of them where bonded labours and treated as sub-humans. MGSA started to recover their strengh and their awareness of the situation and showed them Samuhik Kosh (People‘s treasury) and Anaj Kosh (Gran Banks) to stabilize their economy. Together they learned over the years how to express their anguish and how to reaise their voice as a non-violent unity against their exploitators. The effect is, that fewer Saharias migrate to bigger cities and they managed to regain some of their lost acres. The struggle isn‘t over, but they gained hope through the collaboration with other tribal communities and the Ashram.
5. Hygiene and Sanitation – Water Aid
Together with Water Aid UK, MGSA trains people in villages and urban slum areas to improve their hygiene and sanitation standards. Unpurified water sources, no toilets facilities and a low hygiene standard is the cause of many deseases.
6. Ekta Media – Center for Development Communication
The Ekta Media Center, situated in the Resource Center in Gwalior, gathers all the media productions about and distributed by Ekta Parishad. Kuldeep Tiwari, filmmaker, and Subash Goswami, assistant and photographer, have been running the center since 2007, short after the long march of Janadesh.
The objective of Ekta Media is, through photos, docummentary videos, blogs and websites to collect and distribute information about the struggle of landless people to a bigger audience. This could also highlight the use of the principles of non-violence and inspire other social organisations around the world.
7. Ekta Parishad Regional Coordination
As the MGSA is one of the fundamental institutions within the Ekta Parishad, it has a lead role in the coordination activities in the Chambal Region. One of it‘s main responsibilities is therefore to monitor and guide the operational progress in northern Madhya Pradesh.