After the arduous journey back from the Garwal we enjoyed a
lazy Saturday reading outside the Grassroots office, occasionally changing
position to keep up with the sun moving across the neighbouring field (The
office is perched on a north facing hillside at 1700m, so the temperature
difference between sun and shade is quite significant).
We also met Kalyan and Anita Paul, the founders of
Grassroots and Umang. They were very welcoming and made us feel at home and
invited us for Sunday dinner. The food was great and the best part was that
there was meat on the menu in the form of stewed goat, which was
delicious.
Kalyan and Anita were keen for us to relax and spend the
first few weeks getting to know the structure of the charity, the people and
how things work. We had various days out to see some of the good work that they
were doing amongst the surrounding villages. This included going to see rain
water tanks being constructed and attending a huge grassroots initiated
meeting, with representatives from two to three hundred villages. All though we
could not understand much, it made us appreciate the scale of the impact that
Grassroots and Umang is having on the lives of so many locals.
Towards the end of the week we started to get involved with
some of the projects that Kalyan and Anita were keen for us to be involved in.
These included:
- A Cold Store – Umang use locally grown fruits
and vegetables to produce an assortment of jams, pickles and chutney’s. One of
the issues they have is when a particular fruit is in season, there is so much
produce that they struggle keeping it fresh before it can be used. We have therefore been asked to look into the
feasibility and design of a cold store for keeping the produce fresh for
longer. Electricity is erratic over here, so it is essential that it makes use
of passive ventilation as much as possible. We are currently thinking about
possibly looking into an underground solution to make use of the cooler earth
temperature .
- Knitwear Catalogue and Itemising – Knitwear is
made by some 800 women located across the river basin. This is sold in the
local Umang shop and also across the country in shops as far reaching as
Bangalore. One of the current issues is there is limited structure and
organisation with the product range and also hundreds of different types,
patterns and designs. We have been tasked with categorising and simplifying the
range with the intension of eventually producing a catalogue that can be listed
online and used to simplify the sales across the country. This will hopefully lead to a dramatic increase
in sales and also help to allow the women to be more organised and be able to
work more efficiently.
- A spice crusher – The Grassroots women currently
crush dried chillies using large pestle and mortar’s with a pounding motion
(not grinding as this creates heat and reduces the quality and flavour of the
powder). There is significant physical work involved and also the process is
not particularly quick. We have had an idea of replicating this motion with a cam
and follower design. A local carpenter was drafted in to knock up a prototype
and with a few alterations we kind of got it to work. Though it does need some
refinement (watch this space!). No cowboy builder comments please.
Kalyan and Anita also have many other possibilities for
projects we can get involved with, including the design of an eco cottage,
which sounds particularly interesting. We are thus very happy with the way
things are going at Grassroots and feel that we can really make a difference
here.
For the first week we had been living in an outbuilding next
to the Grassroots office (below the cherry blossom tree in the photo). This was
more than adequate, though very basic (cold bucket showers and freezing at
night). After the first week here the Pauls asked if we would prefer to stay in
their spare room and we thus jumped at the chance. It is a lot more comfortable,
warmer, with hot showers and fresh bread. There is also a very old fluffy dog,
called Nappie, who is an absolute rascal and keeping us entertained with his
antics.
This afternoon we took a shared taxi to the top of the woods above Ranikhet and walked back down a lovely old path.
