Archive for the ‘Urban Block’ Category

Art Therapy Students in Seva Mandir

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

In June a group of 15 students from Foundation for Sustainable Development organized many trainings with Children’s Corner, Women Short Stay home, Youth resource Centre, Learning Camp. One of the trainings was organized with youth and children of Urban Block where Seva Mandir is operational with slums of the city. The 20 day training was focused on the theme as how the art can help express feelings. In the workshop, with the help of painting, clay art and making cloth dolls the trainees were taught to express their feelings.Later on the 26th June, the material produced was put up in an exhibition in “Suchna and Prasaran Kendra” (Radio office).

These students are pursuing studies in Art. The students emphasize on using Art Therapy as Psychological problem solving therapy to address variety of issues. Some people are comfortable talking about their problems, others aren’t.  Some aren’t really sure how to fully express themselves. Art Therapy is for some a more comfortable means of communicating about their issues, and can also become a recreational activity that people can use to relieve stress and continue to work through issues in the long term.  The purpose is not just to create art, or even to teach art skills for the sake of doing art.  The art skill training is done with the goal of allowing these people to use them to make the most of the therapeutic benefits of the art activities. It’s also like learning from surroundings. The purpose of Art Therapy is to give people a mode of expressing themselves, their emotions towards a variety of issues through art.

 

The Business plan

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Seva Mandir has been preparing Comprehensive Plans since 1990 as a way to systematically review and evolve its near-term strategic priorities across all programmatic areas.  The process of putting together the Comprehensive Plan also serves as an opportunity for Seva Mandir to reflect upon the work we have done, examine the environment we work in and evolve our strategies accordingly, within the context of past lessons learnt and the overall long-term vision of the organization.

The process for creating the 7th Comprehensive Plan began in late 2010 and includes all levels of Seva Mandir’s tiers viz. – from the villages where we work all the way up to the Chief Executive Officer.  The Comprehensive Plan process is consistent with Seva Mandir’s bottom-up approach, with the kick-off meetings taking place at the village level with the Chief Executive present.  After these initial meetings, the staff members at the zone and block offices had an opportunity to share their thoughts, observations and information.  Using the information gathered from the field, the Programs devised their strategies for the upcoming years.  These were presented to the organization as a whole, where debate, discussion, criticism and suggestions took place.

We are now headed into the final stages of this exciting process.  Programs are incorporating the comments and suggestions into their reports, and putting the final touches in to the operating frameworks. This is an exciting time at Seva Mandir and we are really looking forward to the next few years when we can put these strategies into effect and watch the change they make. The integrated approach allows all our partners, friends, donors and well wishers to contribute to the holistic development of our communities. Any project/program that you support for Seva Mandir is a part of this comprehensive plan.