Promoting Centres

Avehi is committed to promoting the decentralization of media resources and their active use by local communities.

To this end in 1996 Avehi collaborated with SNDT Women’s University to set up Mahiti, a rural resource centre in Udwada, South Gujarat. Avehi trained 14 women community workers from 6 villages in media facilitation of various issues, handling of equipment and management of the centre and also in production of low cost aids like posters, puppets and street plays, in 40 training programmes over two year period. They manage Mahiti on their own ever since, and use the media resources to reach out to communities in the 30 villages and also to schools, teacher’s training college and other NGOs in the region. They have also trained teachers in puppetry.

Given its long experience in creating and managing an audio visual resources centre and disseminating media resources, Avehi is in a position to share this expertise with other groups. We have made a beginning, through offering training and consultation to other groups. In 1999 A three day residential training programme on ‘Setting Up of Local Resource Centre’ was conducted by Avehi in which 17 participants from eight NGOs and educational institutions from Gujarat, Delhi, Bihar and Maharashtra participated. In 2002 a four day residential workshop on the same theme was conducted for 10 participants from Maharashtra and Gujarat.  Besides this we help groups in identifying audio visual material which they need for their local resources and guide them how they could acquire these from Avehi and from other sources.