Day 9 - Hunnarshala

Today we visited Hunnarshala, an organisation with several objectives of understanding traditional knowledge and validating them through research initiatives, promoting eco-friendliness through local empowerment, working towards environmental sustainability and responding appropriately to disasters by providing guidance. With 3 main programmes (community empowerment, artisanal empowerment and karigarshala), we were given the opportunity to interact with their direct stakeholders and see the work that had been done. We first visited Karigarshala , the Artisan School, where a presentation was held by Mr Prajesh Jethwa. He gave us the entire overview of the work of Hunnarshala. Among us, the Karigarshala students sat and paid close attention, even if they were not able to fully understand the presentation which was held in English. When the floor was open to us as well as them to ask questions, they were not afraid to feed their curiosity of this group of foreigners before them. After, we were given a tour of the place where we saw their work as well as residential area.

When we went back to Hunnarshala after saying our last goodbyes to the students, we met Mr Aditya Singh who is an architect. He gave us greater insights on the reasons behind the structural forms of the buildings around the office, which we found really interesting! He also shared about the ways in which disaster relief was done - mainly by engaging the locals to understand how they build their houses as well as sharing some expertise with them so that they would be able to make informed decisions when rebuilding their homes. He ended with a background on the Slum Redevelopment Project before we took a break for lunch.

We then travelled to one out of the 73 slums in Kuchchh which had been redeveloped under the project and were given a walk-through of the area. Honestly, what we witnessed when we first set foot on the site was a sight we were not ready to behold. Litter-strewn streets and malnourished animals lined the streets. We were greeted with smiles from the locals, children half-naked and staring with curiosity. We went to one of the local's house, a clean and wide structure unlike her previous one. Kankana mentioned how she thought the owner had such a precious smile when she proudly showed us around her new house and the underground water tank which was used for drinking.

An eye-opening and humbling experience, we left the slum with silent reflections about what we witnessed and the great privilege we have been bestowed for having grown up in Singapore with proper housing and sanitation. It had been a meaningful day and we are astounded yet extremely grateful for the work Hunnarshala did for the community and look forward to the greater things they will do in the future!