Monday Tusday...

But first the Music school. I’ve been so busy I forgot to tell you about the Brotherhood school of music. Originally set up by Farther Monodeep it was aimed at giving the street boys a practical skill which they could find employment with, at first it was a success with a good number turning up but after a while the boys stopped coming and now only one of the street kids comes with the main attendees being paying students. But there are plans to completely rebuild the centre and have accommodation for the street boys so they can be give continuous teaching and encouragement.

Mahila Panchayats

Monday was fit as many projects into a day as possible day, which I did fairly well in visiting 4 sights. First to be visited was Mahila Panchayat, not a basket ball team but a woman’s support group. These groups have been set up all over Delhi and in total there are around 2 to 3 thousand woman associated with them but this particular one had 25 members and was located in a particularly deprived part of north east Delhi. The groups offer legal advice and support as well as emotional support mainly for women who have been abused or mistreated. Through out the week cases will be mentioned and on Wednesday they have a big get together and discuss weather or not legal action should be taken or other routes should be pursued. From what I could gather other routes are getting as many members for across Delhi top stand outside there abusers house and cause a commotion. As well as this throughout the year they offer classes in how to kick men in the Johnsons, I think they call it self defence classes. So after been shown the certificate issued by the police on how to violate men we were off to another sight. This one was a more relaxed place the ‘Stuart Sadan recreation centre for elderly’ here the people of a certain age could come from 08.00 to 13.00 for a singsong, read of the paper nice chat over a cuppa chia and until recently watch the T.V (the T.V was stolen so it’s a bit tricky to watch now) When I arrived I was treaded to a song or two with some pretty groovy drumming. About the recreation centre is what I think to be a new project that has not yet got going. It was textiles project which taught young women the basically of sowing and so on. They appeared to just be sowing newspapers together when I arrived but I guess you’ve got to start somewhere also Monodeep explained how they were waiting for more sowing machines to arrive before the project could really get going. After this spree it was back to the brotherhood to catch my breath for a bit before going out to see Farther Solomon’s printing press. I should mention that Solomon has his own paper which reports on most major issues, like any other paper but this one has a particular emphasis on the need for social justice and equality. I didn’t catch the name of the paper and it was all in Hindi but apparently it has around 5000 reader, which I though was fairly good. The printing press itself was about an hours drive from the brotherhood and when we arrived the power was down (again). So I met the men in charge of the progress as well as the guard dogs, who were meant to be rather ferocious but they seemed a pair who just wanted a bit of attention. After a few hours of waiting for the power to come back on we called it a day and went back home. Although I didn’t get to see the press in action I was show round the machinery and managed to take a pretty cool photo so it wasn’t all bad and Solomon informed me the next morning that the power had come on around 01.00. Tusday was spent packing my bags, teaching Imran (for those that dont know Imrans the man that makes it all happen, working in tho office all day) about the blog, encouraging the Brothers to use their blog, signing the visiting book then saying my goodbyes and leaving. My two weeks have completely flown by but at the same time I felt as if I had been at the brotherhoods for much longer and was rather sad to be leaving all my friends but the show must go on. 

old people

Printing press