und such Issues.
The remaining part of this article will be devoted to the nuances and other details of the consultations and workshops.
Kutch: An OverviewLocated in the heart of the Kutch district of Gujarat in North-Western India, the desert city of Bhuj and its nearby villages are known for its rich culture demonstrated through the craftsmanship and local Gujarati cuisine. Many communities, specifically the women, rely on craftwork like bandhani (a local tie-dye technique), mirror and embroidery work and batik printing for sustenance. While the official language of Kutch is Gujarati, the indigenous population prefer to interact in the local Kutchchi dialect of Gujarati. In the earthquake of 2001 that left thousands dead and hundreds of buildings demolished, the city of Bhuj was shaken to its roots. Despite the disastrous calamity however, through communal participation, a complete city rehabilitation took place where its people managed to overcome and move ahead towards progress together. Communal harmony and participation has been one of the defining traits of the entire Kutch district – not just Bhuj but even the neighbouring city of Gandhidham which was established in the 1950s after the partition of India (formation of Pakistan) for the Sindh refugees and named after the ‘father of the nation’, Mahatma Gandhi.
With this spirit of an active and united community, the project to implement the issue-identification pilot project to track and monitor community-centred issues within and beyond the framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and most importantly, community learning around such issues using technology for social change was Initiated with the youth of Kutch.
The underlying premise of the project is to provide a technological tool to monitor community action and learning around community-centred issues. Though the current focus is education (Goal 4, 4.7 in UN lexicon), the tool should be able to aide community monitoring on any issue. In order to ensure that all community members gain the necessary knowledge and education to live in a sustainable manner, it is pertinent to create communal engagement and participation by all citizens. Therefore, the project primarily focuses on testing and establishing an active role of the youth for social change. The overarching goal would be to provide the community members with a new form of social learning – a transformational and transgressive learning — for overall community growth and development. The emphasis of transformational learning is on a comprehensive and all-encompassing education where knowledge on gender equality, human rights, global citizenship, and sustainability is given focus through “co-learning, cognitive justice, and the formation and development of individual and systemic agency” (Lotz-Sisitka, Wals, Kronlid & McGarry, 2015).
This message is further reiterated through the crowd-sourcing data collection methodology wherein young agents of change take an active role (rather than relying on the passivity that comes as part of a survey or interview method) in the study. Since our sample is the youth population comprising of students in higher secondary school and college, the pilot study focuses primarily on education and issues that directly affect the youth.
In July, the team visited schools and colleges and undertook workshop sessions and interactions with the youth and leadership stakeholders of Bhuj and Gandhidham talukas. During the workshops, descriptive sessions were given about the project scope, goals and the application setup and procedure. Further, the study team also conducted activities with the students using participatory tools to gauge their level of understanding and engagement in social issues in their respective regions. In the interactions that ensued, students, as well as community stakeholders, voiced their diverse opinions of their communities.: “I believe there is a water problem in Kutch. Every week there is one day when there is no water available”, answered a student of R. R. Lalan College when asked to reflect on th