Our Beginning: A Realization in 2012
Mridas founder, Priya Nadkarni was working with a program that helped youth in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, which was run by PRADAN. What she saw during this time was that the regular school system was not really helping the people from rural areas who did not have a lot of money.
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The school system was not letting them use their ability to observe things think for themselves and be aware of what was happening around them and also what was going on inside their own minds and bodies.
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At the time a lot of kids and young people in this area were not getting the food they needed to be healthy. When Priya Nadkarni was working closely with girls from areas in this program she saw how bad the problem of not having enough food was. About 90% of the girls in the program were anemic
Priya Nadkarni was also teaching skills to than 1,000 young people. She noticed that many of them got jobs in cities. They came back home after just a few months. They were having a time adjusting to city life and they were not learning new things on the job. Many of them did not want to keep living in the city.
These things made Priya Nadkarni think about what was causing all these problems. She realized that these young people were not ready to deal with the challenges of city life because of the way they were taught in school and the things they experienced in their lives. This changed the way she thought about things. She understood that to make a real difference they had to think about education in a new way starting from when children, from poor areas were very young and this is what Mridas founder Priya Nadkarni wanted to do with Mrida..
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Priya had some powerful experiences working with people at the grassroots level. These experiences completely changed the way she thought about things. She started to think that the regular school system, where they focus on book learning and not on what people have experienced is not really helping people. In her opinion people can only really. Become excellent if they understand themselves really well. Priya believed that Indias spiritual traditions held a lot of the answers she was looking for. So she decided to explore a path. This is how Mrida Education and Welfare Society was started in 2016. The goal of Mrida Education and Welfare Society is to help people become well-rounded and aware of themselves.
Why We Chose the Mahakaushal Region
The Mahakaushal region of Madhya Pradesh has some areas that're very hard to reach and have a lot of tribal communities. Kids here face problems that affect their education and health.
These problems include many people moving to places during certain seasons, which causes kids to miss school often and sometimes drop out for good. Many kids are also very malnourished. A health survey from 2010-11 showed that in Mandla 56.5% of kids weigh less than they should 47.3% are not growing tall as they should and 29.6% are very thin.
The economic situation in these areas also makes things worse. Most families have farms that do not produce much because they do not have enough water and only grow one crop. There are not other jobs available so many tribal families are very poor.
All these problems are connected so the Mahakaushal region is an important place to focus on helping people. We can make a difference here if we help in a complete and caring way. The Mahakaushal region needs help and kids, in Mahakaushal region face problems.
Cultural Context of the Tribal Communities
The Gond and Baiga tribes of the Mahakaushal region have always lived active lives. They do a lot of work and are very close to nature. Football is a sport that the Gond and Baiga tribes have been playing for a time. They play football even though they do not have coaches to teach them or formal training. The British soldiers first introduced football to the Mahakaushal region. This is similar to how football became popular in West Bengal in the century. In West Bengal people started to recognize the talent of football players and they got support from clubs like Mohun Bagan Athletic Club. This shows that if people get the support they can become very good at something.
The Gond and Baiga tribes have always been very strong and brave. They have leaders who're very powerful and they were able to resist the Mughal and British armies. This shows that the Gond and Baiga tribes are very independent and can take care of themselves.
The Gond and Baiga tribes are also very good at solving problems. Children in these tribes learn about geometry and problem-solving by doing things like building houses and farming. They use things that they find around them to come up with solutions to problems.
Mrida is an organization that has been working in the Mahakaushal region for a time. They know about the strengths of the Gond and Baiga tribes. So they designed their sports and technology programs to fit with these strengths. Mrida wants to help the Gond and Baiga tribes become even stronger. They want to help children and young people do well in school and, in sports. They also want to help families who farm to have lives and to not be poor anymore.