AID was founded in 1991 with the vision: "Problems are interconnected, so must be the solution." The problems of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, disease, social inequalities, corruption and the dwindling of natural resources reinforce one another. One problem leads to the other and feeds on another. Therefore the solutions to these problems must be interconnected, just like the problems themselves. Thus solutions must involve initiatives in diverse areas like education, creation of livelihoods, health-care, demanding of accountability, environmental awareness, simple living, water-harvesting, alternate energy and conservation of forests. The interconnected nature of the problems neither starts nor stops with the people who are poor - it affects all of us. Our inability to tackle these problems, take the initiative, trust and work with others and overcome the fear to question authority or change life-styles is very much a part of this web of problems and has to be tackled. Approach: Cover both the breadth of the country and the depth of the problems in a holistic manner through: - Several short-term projects geographically distributed throughout India.
- A
deeper long-term involvement in selected efforts, the goal being to
reach every district or alternate district in India with one such focus
effort.
- Simultaneously measuring progress through the yard-sticks of self-reliance, people's involvement and volunteerism.
- Responding personally to people we meet as we undertake this challenge together.
- Tackling issues at micro and macro level such as ensuring governmental
policies like Right to Information at macro level are used at micro
level in villages across different parts of India and likewise
understanding micro-experience that leads to better macro-policies.
- Sangharsh, Seva, Nirman or Courage, Commitment and Change. Click for SSN.
Once we recognize that
solutions are interconnected, we take feedback loops or learning from
our efforts and that of others seriously, and action guided by such
learning bootstraps an exponentially growing solution to the problems.
Practice the Solutions:
Rather than only thinking of "solving problems" where the problems are implicitly someone elses and the solution something to be found, we actively think in terms of practicing the solutions, here and now. |
