Polite requests were made by slum women’s groups to garbage cleaning functionaries of the municipal corporations of Indore and Agra in India. Linkages were also built with the garbage cleaning functionaries since cleaning of garbage is a regular requirement. These efforts resulted in slum lanes, streets, corners being cleaner than before.

Only in slums where such in-person requests did not succeed, the submission of slum-specific community petitions to senior officers of the Municipal Corporations of the city or Zonal office is done with support of Urban Health Resource Centre’s Social Facilitators.

Over 170,000 slum population received garbage cleaning services in Indore and Agra through the approaches described.

• Creative & artistically fulfilling activities give a sense of freedom, purposefulness of action, stimulate psycho-emotional & right brain energies.
• These help slum populations gather more strength, resilience, motivation and hope to better deal with the vagaries of life.
• From the understanding of neuro-physiology and from medical training and practice, it emerges that emotional energy is a component of healing while trying to help people stay or become healthy. Emotional energy then manifests in more zealous efforts for improving health, nutrition, well-being.
• Urban Health Resource Centre utilises inherent human creative energies to motivate slum women to experience a sense of well-being and gather more energy for slum improvement efforts.

Links:

• Visitors, interns at UHRC share observations
• UHRC team posts updates on facebook

Slum families usually have very small houses. Therefore, they find it nearly impossible to grow enough vegetables to yield ample fresh produce to use for nutritious meals. Along with nutrition, growing plants provides confidence and a sense for making their immediate world more beautiful and natural. Caring for plants gives a sense of well being in a place where it is most desperately needed

With soft and attentive motivation and gentle perseverance, UHRC’s social facilitators encouraged slum families to grow vegetables that would thrive in their respective houses. Seeds and manure were provided, and after 4 years of stimulation (during 2016-2017), over 350 families gained the happiness and confidence that comes from growing one’s own beans, bottle gourds, round gourds, ribbed gourds, tomatoes, and brinjals (eggplant or aubergines) on small plants. 

They used small spaces in the front and behind their houses, in waste buckets of paints and other broken containers. Seeds were sown in July 2016, and plants were carefully tended as they grew. During Sept. 2016 to Feb 2017, over 350 families grew about 5250 Kg of vegetables. The magnificent results totaled to about 35 kg tomatoes, 45 kg beans, 100 kg bottle gourds and round gourds, 65 kg brinjals(eggplant), 65 kg ribbed gourds, 20 kg small green peppers, and 20 kg pumpkin.

Links:

• Articles by IBM officer, students of Indian & Foreign Univs.
• See pictures,videos, updates of activities, results