Quality education and health for children from marginalized families: Vidyodaya & Thulir – Tamil Nadu

Vidyodaya School, located near Gudalur in the Nilgiris, TN, teaches mostly tribal children. […] Vidyodaya is more than just a school. It is a major education programme to ensure that over 3500 tribal children in the Gudalur Block of the Nilgiris district of Tamilnadu can pursue their studies. These tribes are the only ones in Tamilnadu categorized by the Govt of India under Primitive Tribal Group. Almost all these children are first generation learners.

Learn more: https://www.vidyodaya.org/vbvt >>

Source: VISWA BHARATI VIDYODAYA
URL: https://ashanet.org/project/?pid=668
Date Visited: 18 January 2022

“National development and the development of tribal communities are linked to each other” – Droupadi Murmu | More by the President of India on women’s empowerment >>

“Tribal communities are a standing example of how women play a major role in preservation of eco historic cultural heritage in India.” – Mari Marcel Thekaekara (writer and Co-Founder of ACCORD-Nilgiris) | Learn more >>

“There is no social bias against women in tribal communities such as there exists among the middle castes, especially landed ones. Women can ask for a divorce, and in many communities, money is paid to the girl’s family at the time of marriage.” – Abhay Bang, the award-winning doctor and social activist from Gadchiroli in Maharashtra | Learn more >>

Thulir is an alternative school (formerly an Education Resource Center for children and young adults) for children at Sittilingi which is a tribal village in Dharmapuri District, Tamil Nadu. It is a Tamil word meaning, “tender shoot”, also “to sprout”.

Learn more: https://www.thulir.org/wp/blog >>

Source: THULIR TRUST – EDUCATION RESOURCE CENTER, DHARMAPURI
URL: https://ashanet.org/project/?pid=967
Date Visited: 18 January 2022

Watch a video titled Empowering through Education in Tamil Nadu by the Association for India’s Development >>

The group was named Asha to represent the hope that had brought these individuals together and the hope that they aimed to bring into the lives of children in India. In that summer of 1991, Asha was born at the University of California in Berkeley. Read The Beginnings by V.J.P.Srivatsavoy: A write-up about Asha’s history.

Source: ASHA: THE STORY
URL: https://ashanet.org/about/
Date Visited: 18 January 2022

Adivasi communities traditionally depended on the forest for all their nutritional needs. They subsisted mainly on fruits, vegetables, tubers, fish, small game as well as the occasional crop they grew, predominantly coarse grains. However, as time passed and the nature of, as well as their access to, forests changed, their diet started becoming deficient. […]

This deficiency started manifesting in the form of rampant malnutrition, among adults and children alike, underweight babies as well as high maternal mortality [and] increased susceptibility to Tuberculosis among the Adivasis.

Blog post “Gardening their way to Good Health” by ACCORD – Action for Community Organisation, Rehabilitation and Development (Accordweb, 14 March 2017) | Backup file:

“The educational establishment has entrenched interests within it for whom the improvement of Adivasi education is not a priority and who may even look down upon them as second-class citizens.” – Amman Madan, Rama Sastry and B Ramdas in “Social Movements and Educational Change: A Case Study of the Adivasi Munnetra Sangam” | Learn more >>

“The goal is to prepare some model students in our villages, so that others will be inspired to follow them.” – Boro Baski in Long-term success of non-formal Adivasi school in West Bengal

Find up-to-date information provided by, for and about Indian authors, researchers, officials, and educators | More search options >>
Search tips: in the search field seen below, combine the name of any particular state, language or region with that of any tribal (Adivasi) community; add keywords of special interest (health, nutrition endangered language, illegal mining, sacred grove); learn about the rights of Scheduled Tribes such as the Forest Rights Act (FRA); and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, women’s rights, and children’s right to education; specify any other issue or news item you want to learn more about (biodiversity, climate change, ecology, economic development, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, global warming, effective measures to prevent rural poverty, bonded labour, and human trafficking).

For a list of websites included in a single search, click here. To search Indian periodicals, magazines, web portals and other sources safely, click here. To find publishing details for Shodhganga’s PhD search results, click here >>

“It was assumed that tribal people have same health problems, similar needs and hence the uniform national pattern of rural health care would be applicable to them as well, albeit with some alteration in population: provider ratio. The different terrain and environment in which they live, different social systems, different culture and hence different health care needs were not addressed.” –Abhay Bang (Report of the Expert Committee on Tribal Health).” – Abhay Bang, Chairman, Expert Committee on Tribal health | Learn more >>

Tip: click on any red marker for details on endangered languages in a particular region of India.
Please note: the facts and figures cited (via hyperlinks) links call for updates and fact checking >>
Learn more: Endangered languages: Peoples’ Linguistic Survey of India >> 

Explore India’s tribal cultural heritage with the help of another interactive map >>