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Vijay Sai Pratap and Varsha Yeshwant Kumar join forces to empower rural communities with access to information.

Uniting for rural empowerment: Vijay and Varsha's collaborative efforts to increase access to information in rural communities.
March 31st, 2023
Varsha and Vijay Blog

Photo provided by Vijay Sai Pratap

Photo provided by Vijay Sai Pratap

In India, Scheduled Tribes (indigenous tribes, also called adivasis) constitute 8.61% of the total population (2011 Census). The Nilgiris district has the highest percentage of adivasis in Tamil Nadu (4.5%). Out of 36 Tribal communities in Tamil Nadu, 6 have been identified as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. 4 of these particularly vulnerable tribes - the Paniyas, Kattunayakans, Bettakurumbas and Mullukurumbas live in over 320 villages scattered across the Gudalur Valley of the Nilgiri hills. 

Varsha, the founder of OneALL works in this Gudalur Valley, to empower the youth specifically from the adivasi communities and bridge the gender gap that exists, through their focused capacity-building programs on sports-for-development. Vijay, the co-founder of Gram Vaani, along with Varsha, have been part of the 2020 Acumen Fellows Program. Vijay focuses on creating accessible information systems for marginalized communities. Vijay recognizes the language barriers often preventing the marginalized communities from accessing important information, and he was committed to leveraging technology to address this issue. 

In the midst of the COVID19 pandemic, Varsha was facing the challenge of creating health awareness campaigns for communities that spoke different tribal languages. This is when, Varsha and Vijay came together to quickly disburse a platform, which will soon give power to the adivasi communities in Gudalur, enabling them with access to important health information and local news in their regional languages, with a missed-call from their simple feature-phone. 

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Photo shared by Vijay Sai Pratap along with the community

Varsha and a set of organizations in Gudalur along with a group of community-members worked to create content in four tribal languages of their communities, in addition to Tamil and Malayalam. The community members took on various roles, including collating information, creating bite-size audio recordings, monitoring content, creating call-to-action messages, and building awareness campaigns for public health. The platform, Adivasi Kural (meaning indigenous voice), was instrumental in raising awareness and promoting knowledge exchange between the community and local leaders. Anyone who gives a missed-call to this dedicated helpline, would get a call back with bite-sized audio recordings curated by the Adivasi Kural team. 

Adivasi Kural - the intelligent Interactive Voice Response (IVR) based participatory media platform operates through simple mobile handsets, providing feasible and wider options to reach communities, especially those living in rural areas with low internet access. 

Soon, the purpose of the platform was reimagined post-the-pandemic towards preservation of culture, languages and hyper-local news. Synergies were explored, and the platform became a community-engagement tool that allowed the voices from the grassroots to be heard. The youth champions trained by Varsha took opinions and queries from the community and informed local leaders and authorities, who were able to provide clarity, create behavior change programs, and set-up grievance redressal programs.

The possibilities of use for this platform are endless and the community with local NGOs are exploring other use-cases. With the numerous challenges in introducing newer methods to reach the voices-unheard, especially in a region far away from the modern bustle of technology, the Adivasi Kural team believe that change, although slow, will be instrumental for their community. 

Vijay and Varsha's partnership is a prime demonstration of what can be achieved when people from different sectors of work come together, to work towards a common goal. Their work was not just about technology or social impact, but about changing lives, providing hope, and giving people the tools they needed to create a better future. Together, they proved that even in the face of immense challenges, a simple missed call and a dedicated team could make a real difference in the lives of those who needed it most.

Through a series of spotlights, we will highlight some of the inspiring projects and collaborations that have emerged from the Acumen Foundry. These stories will demonstrate the power of partnerships and the impact that can be achieved when individuals come together to challenge the status quo and create a better world for all.