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Please stay on topic/s–in this case tonight’s film Revolutionary Optimists, Nicole Newnham and Maren Maren Grainger-Monsen, India, child labor, the realities of cheap labor and expanding economies, Map Your World… If you’d like to discuss today’s newsworthy matters, please find a post elsewhere on FDL to do so.

Thank you. And yeah, I tpye badly…

Welcome to Firedoglake Movie Night, Nicole,and thank you for being here tonight!

Great to be here!Thank you for having me.

Nicole, how you did you and Maren Grainger-Monsen learn about Prayasam and Amlan Ganguly?

Nicole, Welcome to the Lake. Thank you for a great film.

We were looking for visionary change agents.. people who were making change in Global Health, especially in areas that people don’t usually think can be changed.. challenging fatalistic attitudes. We read about Ganguly on the Ashoka website – he was an Ashoka fellow. Then we called him and got a dose of his revolutionary spirit on the phone! We were hooked.

I’m really glad it resonated with you.

You shot over a period several years–how did you decide what kids to focus on? Did you shoot other children’s stories aside from those that you used?

Had you been to India before? Kolkata?

We met Kajal, who works in the brick kiln, right away. We were taken by her intelligence and grit, and her receptivity to the organizing that Amlan was trying to do. Salim & Sikha – the young activists trying to bring water to their community – they were very young (10 when we met) – so they emerged later as the forces of nature that they are, and we added a whole story line to accomomdate them. And Priyanka, who is the girl trying to resist child marriage – we saw her in a photo before we even landed and became intrigued with her.

No, when we went on our initial scout, neither Maren nor I had ever been to India. We felt that Amlan’s model for change – organizing, educating, and empowering young people to create “slow change for the future” was something that could happen anywhere. But of course the story is so much about the Indian context.

Have you staye din touch with the kids since the film was completed? What are they doing now?

We do stay in touch. Salim and Shikha are doing really well and just finished a significant pre-high school exam (they are 14). They have made significant strides towards bringing water to their community and we are hopeful that we may have good news to announce very soon. Kajal moved to a different brick field but continues to take advantage of the education program that Amlan started in that brick field in order to keep her enrolled in his program. And Priyanka is a mother.

Priyanka made an interesting contract to Salim and Sikha, real life decisions. Have you spoken to Priyanka since her marriage?

No, we haven’t spoken with her directly,as she is pretty much ensconced in the role of housewife in her mother-in-law’s house… but Prayasam in still in touch with her.. they are working on a plan to keep her engaged, and some of the girls in the dance troupe have started a dance studio where they can teach lessons for a fee… they are working on making it an option for Priyanka to teach there too.

The Revolutionary Optimists – website

I struck by how the rapid growth of India’s economy and the development of a significant middle class has increased the need for continually cheap bricks–the brickfields need workers, and people need to work. If the cost of manufacturing bricks went up, then the economy would stall in certain sectors, allegedly (one rational for cheap labor). Yet the low costs of bricks contribute to slum life, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty. yet I can hear the brick field higher ups saying “But we need cheap labor”…

How large are the families there – marriage at a very young age, how many children are typical. (and no birth control?)

The film will be playing at Cinema Village in NYC starting on March 29th… and Amlan, Sikha & Salim are actually coming to the opening night q&a – they will be here for some other special events and educational opportunities… so anyone in the New York area should come and say hi to them – they are really incredibly young people.

In the kinds of squatter’s colonies and slum communities we filmed in, people did not have very large numbers of children, and there was fairly good access to birth control in the neighborhoods, but it was cheap birth control with bad side effects. It was the access to gynecological information that was really lacking – since most women are not educated and doctors are expensive and rarely visited. Prayasam would have meetings where they would bring gynecologists into the schools and centers and invite the mothers so they could ask questions.

Yes this is exactly the conundrum we were hoping to portray. Amlan feels the answer is organized labor and education. And his approach, as you see in the film, is to introduce it sort of slowly and sneakily to the workers.

That is so cool. Their first trip to America, anywhere?

The brick field industry is extremely lucrative for the owners in the current scenario. And the brickfields are incredibly ubiquitous in India. I’m sure people who have traveled there have seen them off the sides of the road, wherever you are. And the one we filmed in is actually one of the better ones.. imagine how progressive the owner was to actually allow a school in her kiln!!

Their first trip to America. They went to Oxford last year, at the invitation of the Skoll Foundation, to speak at the Skoll World Forum with other youth activists from around the world. It was an amazing exchange. They’ll be meeting with students here who are working with our “Map Your World” tool to address problems they see in their own neighborhoods…

Can you describe some of the programs, clubs that Amlan Ganguly’s Prayasam have started?

What is your “Map Your World” tool? – and why did the children want to do that?

“The Daredevils” are teenagers who advocate for change in their slum – they have a tiny little club house that is otherwise used by men who run the slum as a gym, and they make paper megaphones, meet to decide what they want to change, and run a grassroots organization that has brought electricity to their slum, turned trash dumps into soccer fields, and helped to raise the consciousness of the community over the 15 years that Amlan has been there.

I was fascinated by the Program in Bioethics and Film at Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics–could you tell us about that?

Map Your World is a platform that allows youth to Map, Track, Change, and share data that they have collected via mobile device about issues in their community. We actually developed it in partnership with Prayasam and the children – they were making the big beautiful analog map you see in the film and collecting data about water to lobby their local authority – so we thought by adding technology to that equation and enabling them to produce verified data that could bring clean water to their slum, we might help empower them and other youth around the world… the platform will be launched this spring, but it is being built on top of an open source platform called Formhub (www.formhub.org) that Matt Berg and the Modi lab at Columbia University’s Earth Institute developed it, and anyone can use it, anywhere.

yes, I am Curious 2

Yes, the program was started by Maren Grainger-Monsen, my co-director and a physician and filmmaker, who started the program at Stanford in order to leverage the power of film and story to move policy change and individual change in issues impacting health. She had a really amazing project, called “Worlds Apart,” that dealt with issues of cultural conflict in medicine, and it’s being used in most Medical Schools in the country. It brings issues down to the level of individual, emotional stories.

I was surprised how the children play soccer, boys and girls together, and have a Community Coming Together Cup tournament. Civic pride and changing the girl’s status at the same time.

It seems are more impacted than boys, who have access to schools and are not married off at an early age..

Yes, that is such a great story, how the kids gather together and decide that by holding a soccer tournament in their neighborhood, they can help convince the adults there that it is really ok for girls to play outside. What was incredible was to see that it really worked! The guy driving our cab that day was someone who had lived in the slum 10 years before, and left because he feared for his life (it is a very violent place) — but now it is so much cleaner, and so much less violent – he stood there enjoying the soccer tournament, watching girls play, and said he couldn’t believe the transformation of the community in 10 years’ time. Of course, it is still an extremely difficult place to be a girl. But small change matters.

That is absolutely true. Many girls also go to school, but drop out before high school. To really succeed in school you need to pay for tutors, and that is more than many families can afford. At the government school the teachers often just don’t show up at all. If the families have to make a choice, they usually choose to educate the boys. It’s pretty heartbreaking to watch it happen, when the girls are so talented and bright and have so much potential.

Are there more tournaments in other cities, areas now? has this success story been adopted by other communities / clubs?

Is Prayasam a faith-based NGO? I noticed both Muslim and Hindu observances in the various households.

No, that exact co-ed soccer tournament strategy has not been adopted by other communities – I hope that it will be though, with the film coming out! Amlan’s model of schools in side brick kilns – where the families live really in indentured servitude – has been adopted though, by other states in India.

Considering that India has government mandated compulsory education for children ages 6-14, how do the brickyards get away with NOT having schools for the kids in their workers’ slums? And how do they dodge the child labor laws?

Prayasam is most emphatically NOT a faith based NGO. They do incorporate Hindu cultural traditions into their work – the children all celebrate holidays together – but in a secular way, reflecting the diverse backgrounds of the people in the slum, who are mostly migrant workers who have come from differing parts of the area and have different backgrounds. Amlan wants to make the mainstream Indian culture feel like the children’s culture, and so he teaches them about Tagore and the richness of Indian tradition. So they can own it, and also take advantage of festivals and tradition to educate people and promote their vision of change and equality.

As you say in the film, slow change – Kajal wanted to go from brinkyard physical labor (moving 1500 bricks a day) to sewing, and wanted a sewing machine. That is an incremental improvement.

Really good question. If you ask the owner she’d say “I’m not keeping the children from school They are free to attend the local school if they wish.” But the kids can’t go, because their families don’t have the capacity to help them, pay for books & tutors, and usually, they need them to work. Much younger children than Kajal, who is pictured working in the kiln in the film, work in the kilns – we saw kids as young as 5-6. The families are forced to do it to survive.

As to child labor – same thing. She’d say “I’m not paying that child… she’s helping her mother do her work…” Obviously the laws are not enforced as they should be. There is a movement in India to change that. Right now children under 14 are prohibited from certain dangerous jobs by law but not all jobs. I hope that will change.

Yes – even to know enough math that you know you are being cheated is an improvement! To read street signs and be able to negotiate in the world, so that you are not afraid to leave the safety of the kiln where you have some livelihood…That is a step towards organized labor.

That is a huge step. Jeffrey Sach points out that moving women from heavy labor to textile work is the first step in empowering them–by earning money for their families and then themselves they don’t have to be married off,and are able to postpone having children.

The Revolutionary Optimists – Blog

The Revolutionary Optimists – News

Yes – one of the most amazing things was to see Kajal’s mother, and Kajal’s grandmother living and working inside brick kilns. Just to get that sense of the neverending cycle of that kind of exploitation. There’s an image in the film of Kajal handing bricks to a very old, bent over man – he looks to be eighty – choking in the brick dust – and it just haunts me.

Shikha is really getting some chops as a filmmaker now – she made her own film about the feelings of young women in the slums and brickfields in Kolkata and it’s great! You can watch it by looking for the headline about it (It’s called “The River of Life” in the blog link above.

The Revolutionary Optimists – Sparkwise Dashboard

Sikha’s film/blog “River of Life”

Is Amlan the director of all these activities or is there staff that run the organization? He can’t be everywhere all the time.

Are the brickfields drawing in workers from rural areas who can no longer find work? The slum colonies spring up next to the brickfields–do the brickyards own the land and charge the workers to live there?

There’s great staff but it’s really small. It’s like a family. I think they might have about 8 people on staff now. They are expanding their work into an increasing number of slums. But the children are on the board of Prayasam – half the board is made up of child advisors, and they really do run the show in cooperation with the grownups. The children are encouraged to critique everyone’s performance – even Amlan – they set the direction of the organization. They’ve had NGOs propose funding Prayasam about doing activities about certain issues and the children say no.. that’s not important here… that’s not where we think energy should be focused.

One of the things that made Amlan want to start Prayasam was watching the ineffectiveness of some large organizations, who would, for example, bring toilets to the slum, but then leave them there without getting the city to hook up the water. So the toilets sat unused. He found this enraging, but the adults in the community simply expected it from groups working in the area. So he decided to try to mobilize the community to expect something better. And he decided to stay there and be a constant – not come in and go out without realizing change.

Yes, the brickfield we filmed in for example drew laborers from neighboring Bihar, which is very poor. Many of the workers would go home to their villages during the Monsoon when the kiln was closed. The brickfield owner owns the land and the workers often owe a debt to cover food/housing when they start that is difficult to ever repay.

Are there micro-loans used there to help improve the conditions?

He is really about staying positive and making changes, not accepting one’s lot in life,a nd finding solutions.

There are programs offering micro-loans but not through Prayasam. It would be fantastic to target women in that community for micro-loans because there are a lot of cottage industries in the slum (sewing in the home, etc.) but the women don’t control them.

Yes, even in extremely dire situations. One of the biggest obstacles is the discrimination that exists against children from these backgrounds. He has to constantly fight people who say “they were born in this, they’ll die in this” – so why do you bother? That’s why the concept of fate, and the need to resist the idea of it, became a central theme in the film.

What is next for you and for Maren?

And willyou be in Los Angeles for the opening of Revolutionary Optimists in April?

We are working really hard on “Map Your World,” and engaging different communities of youth with it to tackle problems ranging from gang graffiti in Oakland to polio vaccination in India. We hope to use the film’s release to help to populate and expand that effort, and maybe then we will start to figure out what’s next after that! We’ve been working on this project for 5 years, so the gear shift will be hard…

Yes, we will be in LA in April, and so will Amlan, Sikha, and Salim! April 19th at the Laemmle Santa Monica.

That is SO wonderful and exciting!

What will they being doing while in LA?

Will they get some “play time” in their travels too?

They will be screening the film at UCLA, meeting with medical students, coming to the theater q&a’s, and bit of sightseeing with our children!

SOunds great! You’ll be so close to the wonderful santa monica pier and the ocean!

Yes — we all need it and deserve it. I only wish that more Prayasam children could come – there are so many who are not featured in the film who are doing extraordinary work. One thing we really wanted to get across was the idea that it is a group effort… not about just one or two extraordinary children (although they are)! We have found the story very meaningful and inspirational to children here, who, although they have more materially, are often not as empowered – don’t have as much agency or social awareness -as these young Daredevils.

Thank you Nicole for making a movie that shows with vision and action there is hope.

And I hope this model will spread, even into our cities’ slums here in the US.

Thank you both so much!

We do, too.

Our thanks to you and Maren–and the participants–for Revolutionary Optimists!