Nazara – The Community Photography Project

A community photography project entitled Nazara was initiated. Nazara (which means vista, view, sight) is a collaborative project of the Centre  and Sahyog, an organisation that works with young people and has a School Without Walls programme in two ’slums’ (Jari Mari and Dindoshi)  in Mumbai. Most of the students of Sahyog are Muslim girls/young women who have dropped out of school. As a part of this project, Nazara,the Centre held photography workshops in both locations for two small groups of girls and male youth, along with the MA second year students of Media and Cultural Studies.

http://nazzara.wordpress.com


National Platform to Promote Decentralisation

The Centre is actively involved in a Field Action Project ‘National Platform to Promote Decentralisation’ (NPPD). A group of civil society organisations, including CARE India, MRA, the Hunger Project and research institutes along with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, are involved in the Project. It is envisaged that this project would facilitate to bring together stakeholders, consolidate past and current learning, share experiences and insights about decentralisation and create a mechanism through which existing expertise can be used towards systemic reforms that strengthen the voice of the poor within governance. NPPD attempts to create systems for promoting the inclusion of grassroots leaders, particularly who are women and from marginalised communities, within state and national policy advocacy and systems reforms. NPPD will organise a multi- stakeholder meeting on local governance in November, 2008. Dr. Manjula is a member of the Advisory Committee of the NPPD.

Urban Typhoon Workshop 2008

Students participated in the Urban Typhoon Workshop in Koliwada, Mumbai: March 16-22, 2009, a Participatory Urban Design & the Future of Alternative Communities. Urban Typhoon brought together artists, architects, activists and academics from all over the world with the residents of Koliwada, Dharavi to collectively generate ideas, visions and plans, and archive biographies and histories.