Southwark Woodcraft Folk visit India
CYEC Grant Report


Background to our Youth Exchange
The Woodcraft Folk is a national charity and a progressive educational movement for children and young people – both girls and boys - designed to develop self-confidence and activity in society, with the aim of building a world based on equality, peace, social justice and co-operation. Woodcraft Folk have groups for children and young people all over the U.K. but we also have sister organisations throughout the world, through our membership of the Brussels-based federation of progressive youth organisations, the International Falcon Movement.

The Participants
Our group, Co-operative Youth is part of Southwark Woodcraft Folk and is a self-run youth empowerment group for 16–25 year olds. We are open any young people interested in the aims and principles of the Woodcraft Folk children's charity. Our group is currently includes; leaders from our younger groups, students, youth workers, Co-op members, community activists and trainee-teachers. As a 2-year project it has involved not just our 16-25s, but also our 5 other younger youth and children’s groups, as well as parents and the wider Woodcraft movement.
The group that went to India were a group of 8 dedicated young leaders and helpers that volunteer every week of the school term and also during school holidays and half-terms, to run and support our community groups, made up of more than 100 children and teenagers from a wide range of backgrounds. Some lead their own weekly Woodcraft groups in schools and community centres, others co-lead and help, and a number of others have been taking fundraising roles and Treasurer and Secretary responsibilities. The group was lead by Karl, a 22 year-old who runs a number of Woodcraft projects and groups for teenagers from Dulwich, Peckham and West Norwood.

The Hosts
For our Youth Exchange we partnered a network of 16-25 year old volunteers from our sister youth organisations in India, Rashtra Seva Dal and Anthar Bharati. Their work is based in Pune in India, just south of Mumbai. Being part of the same federation of youth organisations, we have similar aims and principles. Together we chose the theme of youth leadership skill, with particular emphasis on Environmental Sustainability and Co-operative Living. Having already successfully completed the hosting phase of our partner organisation, our project had a strong identity and both the Indian and British young people put a lot of work into being well prepared for our visit to India.

The Theme
We decided early on that our trip would involve exploring each groups’ cultures and would aim to develop leadership skills in co-operative and social education for our dedicated young leaders. The project’s themes of Co-operative Living and Environmental Sustainability were chosen by the young people of both organisations.

Our Visit

Day 1

We met local youth worker in the city of Pune and visited Osho Park, a project that turned a former polluted wasteland into an ecological park, covering 12 acres of land, with herb and rare flower gardens. Some young people from our partner youth organisation and their leader, a Professor at the Pune University, guided us round and talked us through the educational projects that they run there.

Day 2

The following day we took a train a few hours out of the city and we visited one of the projects that our partner group run youth camps at. It was called the Home of the National Association of the Blind, Lonavala. It provides shelter to 100 blind people and offers some employment to “make them feel, self-reliant”. Our partner organisation takes teenagers and students there in the holidays to volunteer so we visited some of them and they took us on a beautiful hike through the valley, in the afternoon.




Day 3


On 30th Dec. the group visited “Surya Shibir” an environmental project dedicated to effective use of solar energy and environmental protection. After touring the grounds and having a game of cricket with some students the group got the chance to meet the founder and owner of the project. We heard about how the project originated and pioneered sustainable methods of home building and use of recycled materials. The group were very inspired and interviewed the founder and other staff with a video camera.


Day 4
On 31st Dec. we spent the day with some of the Indian young leaders that we had hosted in 2006. They introduced us to their families and showed us round their communities. We were taken to a local food and textile markets and visited a couple of parks. It was a great chance to for all of us from Britain and India to bond and learn about each other’s cultures.

In the afternoon we went to the University of Pune to see the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCCA). A professor gave our group an interactive talk and demonstration on his educational outreach programme that helps to “popularise science among under privileged children”. By using child-centred methods and interactive and co-operative learning techniques the project aims to make the basic principles of science more appealing and accessible. The programme is famous across India and is seen as a champion of nurturing scientific outlook among the less privileged and primary school children.


We spent New Years Eve with a group of young leaders from our partner organisation and their families. They taught us songs and dances and took us to a street parade and fireworks show.


Day 5

After a late New Years we had to get up at 6.30am to start the 11hour long journey from Pune to Solapur and to Aurad-Shahajani, a town where our partner organisation run a teacher-training and cultural-education college for rural women-teachers. After the long journey the group was received in magnificent and traditional way (AARATI) by the students and were treated to a large dinner with the principle and her staff.


Day 6

At the college we were invited to engage with the students in their showcase of cultural arts and dances. The rural students are taught national Indian dances, arts and crafts to a very high standard and they were keen to share their skills with us. In the evening we showcased some English and Scottish folk dancing and sang at a campfire. We also got shown round a number of local primary schools and did Woodcraft games with the children.


Day 7

On 3rd Jan the group returned back to Pune, stopping off an orphanage in Naldurg that the organisation run, called Aaple-Ghar. The school/orphanage is home to 300 happy and healthy children and teenagers, many of whose parents died in an Earthquake in the late 1990s. We were shown round the projects many environmentally sustainable features, included a farm where the children are taught valuable animal-rearing and agricultural skills, as well as solar-cookers and solar water-heating panels. After meeting with the principle and a couple of staff we were able to make some plans as to how we could support the project in the future.

Day 8, 9 and 10

We spent the last three days in Mumbai with a group of young volunteers from our partner organisation. Our group chose to see a range of museums and to learn about Ghandi and the independence movement. We had a chance to see lots of famous Indian cultural sites and learn about Ghandi, the pacifist independence movement and modern day peace and anti-nuclear weapons movements.


Conclusion
Overall it was an incredibly successful trip. We achieved all our goals of visiting all the projects our partners wanted to see and achieving a range of learning outcomes for the participants. It certainly was not a holiday by any means. Instead it was an adventure and a unique experience for all the young people involved. As a co-operative group of 16-25 year-olds, all of our projects whether they are community-based, training, camping or international, are youth-run. As a result, this exchange visit was a valuable learning experience for all the young leaders and participants. The group were able to share aspects of their different cultural backgrounds (Anglo-Jamaican, Londoner, Scottish, Cumbrian, Bermudian etc) with the young people of our partner organisation and they learnt a great deal about different Indian cultures, which will help with the work with children from Asian backgrounds in South London. Lots of organisational and youth work skills were learned, cultural and environmental knowledge was exchanged and lots of fun was had. The whole group now feel a lot more confident about taking children and teenagers from our younger groups away for camps and international trips.

We wish to thank the CYEC for supporting our young leaders and our two-year youth exchange project.