THEODORI RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
AN INSTITUTION OF METHODIST CHURCH IN INDIA ESTABLISHED IN 1956
WITH EXPRESSED IDEOLOGY TO HELP THEM TO HELP THEMSELVES
ACHIVEMENTS
The rural people are most vulnerable in any given situation.They lack basic necessity of life and are deprived of most amenities. Thus they continue to live in the state of apathy,hopelessness, socio-economic exploitation,various type of injustices and are forced to the margine and heavily suffer from deep rooted taboos.Consequently they take life for granted.
The inception of Theodori Rural Development project is based on to alleviate the vicious circle of the above situation with expressed participation of the rural community concerned. As it is always true that main stay of the rural community is agriculture. However food production is very low,live stock do not yield sufficient milk or meat .Fermer are unskillful thus not able to combat the requirement of the family need.Resulting in wide spread poverty.
OUR VISION
“Help them to help themselves” through the stewardship of land, livestock, knowledge, skill and other resources available to the community. Land must produce optimum amount of food grain, cow must produce sufficient amount of milk. The farmers must be skillful and strong enough to work efficiently in the farm and must produce sufficient amount of food for the family and able to share it with others. and deep rooted taboos in the society.
OUR MISSION
Empower people to break the vicious circle of abject poverty, powerlessness, helplessness, injustice socio-economic exploitation, release them from deep rooted taboos and help raise the value of life for “the glory of God”.
Thus logical beginning for TRDP was to focus attention to the food production intervention..During later part of sixties,green revolution was in ite height.However this revolution had not reached Santal Parganas and for that matter Pakur area. In 1967 Mr E. S. Marandi then a village worker, brought HYV of wheat seed from Haryana state. Incampus demonstration was conducted.It was a great success.Rural farmers.though did not know much about growing wheat were appreciative.It provided motivation and some training for those farmers who came in contact with in-campus demonstrations. Then these demonstrations were spread over in the farmers field. It was a great success and became source of motivation and inspiration.Within two years.Where ever they had source of some irrigation water, farmers started adopting growing HYV of wheat as a second crop of wheat in the same field where paddy(rice) was grown during kharif season,thereby increasing farm income to a degree. Adoption of growing wheat as second crop,somewhat becoming motivation point to adopt high yielding but short duration paddy crop.That suited very well with the cropping season of kharif and rabi. That enabled farmers to grow paddy as well as wheat in the same plot.
Within four or five years time visible impact was evident among the farmers.In one hand,for those farmers who had opted for cultivation of wheat as second crop,income increased,food habit also beginning to change and household kitchen utensils improved.A need for developing irrigation facilities became acute among the farmers.That is to say pioneering work of growing wheat as second crop- otherwise predominately rice growing area- done by TRDP. Therefore,credit for bringing green revolution in Pakur area is attributed to TRDP.
Foregoing food intervention programme gave rise to formulation of water resource programme. To combat drinking water problems in the rural area.A partnership ideology was offered to the community.In that the community will dig the open well and TRDP will provide cement and other building materials to complete the dug well. After initial reluctance,,community understood the ownership of the achievement. At the end 500 communities provided themselves sanitary drinking water dug wells.
Secondly,enthusiasm created for raising second crop of wheat and irrigated mustard necessitated for exploring irrigation potentials.
Consequently,large number of water harvesting tanks were constructed in the land of the farmers.series of weirs were also constructed to harvest monsoon water in the monsoon streams.
As always one programme give rise to another,thus forgoing programmes necessitated to organise communiy. Each village was organise into effective gram Sabhas and Mahila Mandals where they will be able to discuss development amtter besides doing usual village treatise.The above organisations in turn organised adult centres in each village to conduct non formal education process, about 300 adult centers operated producing literate adults.Some of them like Lakha Kisku went up to High Schools.These centers also laid foundation for establishment of Primary schools in many villages.
Activities for community organisation was extended to Paharia tribe also.They live mostly in the hills or its slopes It is a different ethnic group,need special care to gain their confidence. TRDP had a brak through and were able to bring them to main stream So much so number of Pahara youth like Kamla Paharia and Surji Paharin were inducted to the TRDP staff to work with others side by side.
While working in the community one come across various situations and people in various state of life.One such state is children aflicted with polio and irts resulting sate of physical being among children.This needed to be tacled and dsabled children needed to helped for rehabilitation.With the help of experts and orthopedic surgeons ,physiotherapist the rehabilitation programme was initiated. Disbaled children were taken to Kolkata for treatment o for corrective surgery and brought back for physiotherapy etc.This program covered,Pakur and Sahebgunj district A small workshop was established in Pakur for making calipers, and shoes for disabled children. Program continues to cover disabled children.