The Great “Men’s Day”
Celebration
January 11th was a particularly peculiar
day for the people associated with the activities of AVAG.
The reason being that AVAG had decided to celebrate a
“Men’s Day Festival” on that date. Many
of us have heard of Mother’s Day, Valentine’s
Day and Women’s Day -- but Men’s Day really
sounds different. In India all the above mentioned days
have been adopted with the idea to show how much love
we have for them. The case seems entirely different when
we hear about the Men’s celebration -- we would
really think “What? Celebrate Men !” If this
seems strange to you, it will surely provide you with
good insight into the need of such celebration.
Why a Men’s Club in a village?
In our modern villages, day-by-day the
participation of the young men in the life of the village
and their relation to women is degrading. The main reasons
are lack of proper guidance by parents, illusions that
cinemas have created in their minds, and the experience
of political violence during their studenthood. So, it
becomes necessary that these youths are motivated to develop
themselves and also to concentrate on what they can do
for the society. A club is formed with the guidance of
AVAG senior staff, which help them to train themselves
and involve in activities that benefit the society. The
main activity of the 30 AVAG Men’s Clubs is working
for development of their villages. All the Men’s
Clubs of AVAG together form the Udhayam Men’s Federation.
The Story behind the Celebration:
AVAG has been primarily focused in the
empowerment of the women. In 76 villages women’s
clubs are taking action to repair schools, level streets,
deepen wells, contact the local authorities – and
have become a strong voice in the villages due to this.
Seeing the outcome of the women’s club in the village
many young men came forward to work with AVAG. This helped
us to start Youth Clubs in many villages. The joint effort
by both the youth and women’s clubs bore fruits
and much work was accomplished. But then, as time went
on, the Youth clubs’ strength started deteriorating.
On analyzing the situation, it was found that as members
got married and they didn’t want to be called “youth”
any more, and dropped out of the Youth Club. Last year,
unwilling to lose those precious gems, we changed the
Youth clubs into Men’s clubs. And the semi-annual
Youth Day celebration was changed into the Men’s
Day Festival.
Planning the Day:
The planning of the activities started
a month before, and it was decided to organize various
inter-club competitions in sports and personal development
activities leading up to the actual Festival.. Marks were
allotted for the clubs participating and these marks also
were to be used in judging the best club on the year.
In sports it was decided to conduct Long jump, 100 Meter
dash, 1000 Meter dash, Shot put, Slow cycling and Volley
ball. In personal development activities it was decided
to conduct competitions in Elocution, Singing, Dancing
and Drawing. All these competitions were conducted during
the month and stirred the club members to participate
in the competition and gain a few points for their club.
Men’s Day Festival report:
The programme started with Prayer. The
Coordinator of AVAG, Mr. Jerald Moris, gave the welcome
speech. He emphasized the importance of celebrating the
Men’s day and pounded on the need for the formation
of clubs and motivating the youth toward serving the development
of the society. Mr. Suresh, the Secretary of Udhayam Men’s
Federation, read the Annual Report of the clubs.
We were honored that the Chairperson of
the Vallalar Bank, Mr. S.Srinivasan, made time to come
and explain the various bank programs that could benefit
the public. He also invited the gathered villagers to
get benefited by the programs available through the clubs.
Mr. S.R. Sharma, I.A.S., Secretary of Auroville Foundation, gave
the keynote address. He started out with, “Gone
are the days reserving Men for field work and Women for
house Work,.” and went on to encourage everyone
to think in the broader sense of looking for what we can
do for the society. He ended with the assurance that Auroville
Foundation will always be ready to provide a helping hand
in the activities of AVAG. Mrs. Anbu, another Coordinator
of AVAG, gave the concluding speech. She described the
gist of club formation, club activities and the importance
of Men’s Day Celebration
Celebration Begins...
The day grew brighter as the celebration
started. The opener of the Grand Gala Ceremony was the
stage performance of the students of New Creation School
a perfect blend of classical and western music. A bit
of patriotic essence to their music added meaning to their
performance. Mr. Vijay of Morattandy-Nanbargal Club danced
-- his astonishing movements made the people look at him
with their mouths wide open. Morattandy-Marumalarchi Club
members enacted a farce focusing on the superstitious
beliefs that prevail in the village and succeeded in its
goal of making people laugh. Next the dance program by
the crèche children gained the attention of the
gathering -- those 3 years old children dancing with amazing
coordination. Mr.Velmurugan from Morattandy-Nanbargal
Club gave yoga performance that made everyone feel that
he was made of rubber (but they were sure that he will
not bounce if he was dropped.) With the contribution collected
from the Federation members AVAG made arrangement for
the lunch. The development workers started packing the
snacks and the food by early morning thus enabling to
serve the people quickly. This work really saved a lot
of time and energy and enabled the large gathering to
finish their lunch within half an hour.
After the lunch people reassembled for the
afternoon session that featured the performance of the
“Navajothi Cultural Group” which was waiting
to entertain the audience. They move around in Tamil Nadu
working to create social awareness among the public. The
song staged by them under the title “Billionaire”
depicted the situation that prevails in a poor family.
Many felt their cheeks wet as the song penetrated deep
to the heart and also tried to squeeze it. This year the
people gathered maintained discipline inside the hall,
this can be considered as one of the achievements of AVAG
in re-patterning the life of the illiterate.
Arrival of the most expected:
Followed by that program was a Drama organised
by AVAG. It emphasized that youth should not blindly follow
the actors and politicians. They have to put their strength
behind building the society. Finally the program came
to a conclusion with the distribution of prizes to the
winners in the competitions that had been conducted in
the month leading up to the men’s day celebration.
As the grand finale, the MLA of Vanur
village gave prizes to the best club that had been selected
on the basis of their performance of village development
activities
Evaluation...
Every activity that AVAG undertakes is not
only planned and executed, it is also evaluated by the
implementing team. This is essential, because it is the
opportunity for the organization to reflect on itself,
to know itself, and become a self-conscious entity. In
this case, the AVAG staff including coordinators and Development
Workers sat together with the leaders of the various clubs/federation
and reviewed the whole process -- what had gone well,
what could be improved.
The first and foremost thing noted was that
the program was scheduled to start at 9.30 am, and while
all the AVAG staffs were present in the hall by 9 am and
also the chief invitees arrived on time, still the club
members didn’t start turning up till 10 am. The
program started only by 10.15 am, with just who were there.
During the evaluation meeting the staff were asked to
stress the importance of punctuality in the Club meetings.
On the bright side, even though the Club members were
late, after their arrival they part took in the activities
with real zeal and vigor.
The celebration provided an opportunity
for many Club members to bring their talents to the stage.
It also created motivation, as the Clubs are encouraged
to do more and better social activities so that they can
bag the “best club award” for the forth-coming
year.
As known by many of us, women have always
shown great enthusiasm for the activities of AVAG. Even
in the Men’s Day Celebration Women’s Club
members accounted for 40-45% of the gathering. This also
shows that the gender bias that once predominated the
village is decreasing with the intervention of AVAG.
Meet you soon with the next issue focusing
on “Adolescent Training for Women’s Empowerment”.
Note: This article has been written by new
staff member, Vimalan, a recent graduate from Pondicherry,
who is replacing Satyajit and Mary Ellen who’ve
gone to Australia. Thanks to all.
