Action for Welfare and Awakening in Rural Environment (AWARE) is an organization exclusively serving the tribals and socio-economically depressed groups in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh in India. AWARE is associated with 1,750 villages with a total population of 975,000. It seeks to create self sustaining rural and tribal communities through a process of their socio-economic and psychological invigoration. AWARE works with the following objectives:

• Increase the equity of the tribals and harijans in the business of development.
• Socio- economic intervention to reduce poverty creating organizations or associates of people at various levels (village cluster of villages, and talukas or block levels) to represent their own interests and causes:
• Supporting such organizations and their members to have access to development resources, and services available through government
• Phasing out one of the organized population has reached a level of articulation and autonomy.

Awareness is generated through various means such as informal discussion, non formal education, group meetings consisting of gram sabhas , maha sabhas (mass meeting) audio visual shows and radio talks. The focus is on subjects of topical relevance such as agriculture, animal husbandry, community health, rural marketing, rural organization, and practical difficulties in getting the larger rural community to accept those entitlement as legitimate.

Another forum for training is the Community Education Centre. Each of these is managed by the community organizer, trained by AWARE, who works in a selected village and sensitizes the community to its own problem. The centre also focus on capacity building among the people for perceiving and solving problems, generate interest in adult literacy, and assists schools drop outs children who labour on farms and elsewhere with reinforcement coaching. There are currently 844 villages in which such centers and operating with daily attendance of 34000.

AWARE supports an irrigation programme through which wells are dug, deepened and improved; minor irrigation works such as tanks and check dams are undertaken. Soil conservation and land leveling are promoted and suitable agricultural implements are provided for better farming. These are collectively owned by farmers and village association better seeds and fertilizers are also supplied. A very modest beginning is being made in animal husbandry with which neither the tribal nor the harijans is conventionally familiar. AWARE therefore encourages its target communities to set up co-operative marketing systems through which farmers can buy and sell their produce and also familarise themselves with marketing procedures and financial management.

This programme focuses on the essentials of living. It compasses community health, women and child welfare, and community development. AWARE has taken on two additional activities (1) disaster and cyclone relief and legal assistance for the weaker sections, including the rehabilitation of bonded labours. Bonded labour which is a modern euphemism for slavery, is as integral a part of the Telangana scene as nature’s rave rages. AWARE restores unlawfully occupied land to the people, and people to their freedom So far, over 60,000 acres of land which has been lost through unfair transactions have been regained and some 5000 bonded labour have been released and rehabilitated. AWARE’S team of rescue work at Bhadrachalam mounted relief operations as the river water starting to swell. The impact of such assistance is tremendous by way of confidence building. AWARE also recognizes the unmistakable value of environmental nurturing and protection very early. One segment of its activity therefore focuses on social forestry and promoting an understanding of the need to preserve and plant trees. Other supportive activities include horticulture and sericulture.
A major focus of AWARE’S community development programme are women and children. Among the tribal and harijan women, the additional disadvantage of belonging to socio-economic depressed class reinforces the intrinsic handicap. AWARE has fought to counter their handicaps through gram sabhas, mass mahila sabhas, and setting up of exclusive societies serving the interest of women. Aware encourages an informal concept of social security that is financed and managed by the community for its weaker sections. Other welfare interventions entail community cooperation and participation in helping the aged, destitute, orphan and neglected children and widowed women.

Mr. P.K.S. Madhavan
Chairman
Action for Welfare and Awakening in Rural Environment (AWARE)
5-9-24/78 . Lake Hill Road
Hydrabad 500463