Darpana for Development

Darpana launches its first model village project
Model village

Darpana has worked as a development communications agency for over two decades with NGOs and government agencies wishing to transmit particular messages to particular audiences. In November 2004, for the first time, Darpana for Development took up the village of Fatehpura to try its hand at implementing change rather than only initiating it. This very poor and totally backward village in Gandhinagar, has been working with D-D activists and today stands reinvigorated by these efforts at education, empowerment, formation of groups for savings, cleanliness and nutrition drives and employment training for women. As a celebration of reaching a six month target, and for having walled a path together there is an event on May 25th at Natarani. Children will sing and dance, women will show and take orders for the products they have begun to manufacture and other women will cater rural food at the cafe.

Darpana announces new projects with UNICEF

In continuation of its three year project with UNICEF to train local itinerant tribal performers in performing shows that deal with issues of infant and maternal mortality in the hinterlands of the Dangs and Valsad, D-D now launches a unique project with UNICEF’s Anadshala schools. For a year, D-D actor activists and local actors from Valsad already trained and oriented by D-D, will instigate activities and projects in 10 schools to make the children information bearers on issues of HIV, breast feeding and hygiene. Simultaneously, four teams trained by D-D will take performances on the same issues into 200 villages in Valsad.

Darpana looking for funding for development projects

Darpana has a variety of projects it is involved in. Many of these need funding, either to extend the duration or to take them and their success to other areas and villages. The Fatehpura project requires Rs. 15 lakhs to build 150 toilets, with each family putting in Rs. 2000 worth of labour as their share. 100 tribal villages in the Dungarpur area have approached Darpana to run Parivartan (the tribal women’s project earlier run in Sabarkantha and Banaskantha and funded by Mac Arthur Foundation, USA) in their villages as the treatment of women is leading to high murder and suicide rates and to huge unchecked population growth. We wish to train street children into becoming activists and using the arts to reach their communities, and many more. If you are interested in more details, and wish to contribute please e-mail us at development@darpana.com

About Darpana For Development

Darpan for development
Since 1980 Darpana for Development has been creating innovative grass roots projects using performances as entry points in dealing with issues of development and social change, with varied end audiences. Some of these have necessitated working with and retraining traditional itinerant folk performers in becoming change agents; others have required putting together groups of people from tribal areas and training them as actor-activists to go back into their own villages with new ideas of change; some have meant creating performance pieces that can reach the policy maker or the politician; yet others have taken Darpana’s own performers on the trail of potential HIV carriers. Some projects have grown out of our own initiatives; others have been created for the government or funding agencies or for other NGOs.
Services
Service Offered
Darpana for Development works as a development communications unit and accepts projects which encompass developing training modules; giving training to organizations on the use of arts as a language for societal chance; accepting commissions to undertake a development project from conceptualizing to delivering; setting up groups and training them to undertake grass root projects while supervising them; creating performance pieces for specific messages and offering unique solutions for the delivery of messages to a varied target audience.