Narayanpur Workshop – Day Two

To engage the people that need it most, CGNet holds workshops all over Central India. CGNet can often be difficult to understand, so it is important to train people who can act as ambassadors and correspondents into the future. This series of blog posts will follow three workshops held in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh to give you an insight into how we work.

CGNet worker Mohan Yadav helps a workshop participant in a confidence-building exercise

Twenty more people from the surrounding region arrived today to bring our total up to a healthy seventy participants. People have come here to the Gondwana Bhavan in Narayanpur from all over the District.

These Gond men came from seventy kilometers away to learn more about CGNet. The man third from the left is the village headman.

This morning was concentrated on confidence building activities: using CGNet for the first time can be daunting so everyone took turns standing up in front of the group and introducing themselves (which can be very embarrassing for anyone!). The form of the introductions (name, village, block, district, state) also mirrors the way CGNet callers identify themselves in reports. 

 

After that, everyone split up and had to introduce themselves to each other one on one. By the time this activity had finish, the ice was well and truly broken and now everybody is relaxed and laughing and enjoying the opportunity to meet new people and enjoy a few days away from the regular routines of everyday life.

Participants introduce themselves

When the introductions were over the workshop returned to their groups and began to talk about the problems they might have in their own lives and communities that CGNet could help address. When the handpump is broken or government wages have not been paid or a Forest Official asks for a bribe, these are things that can be difficult to report to the police: CGNet provides an alternative channel. Our workers back in Bhopal and across central India will try to publicize the issue as much as possible and push it through to the responsible government agency.

Activist Jaya Dhruv(back, left) leads a group discussion