Background

Birmingham and the surrounding towns is a multi-cultural region with high concentrations of Asian communities.  For several years now we have been working with these communities in encouraging their support for the work of education and relief in India,  as well as working with many other agencies.  In contrast, we are also very actively engaged in developing international networks involved in similar activities and developments.

Throughout this period we have been effective in progressively obtaining support and developing projects from the grassroots upwards, into well run community based (professionally assisted) operations.

This was an extensive period of consolidation during which the charity had become mature in the way in which it conducted itself.   The project came to and end on 31 March 2004.

Though there is no funding available, the project supported the community forums to continue it through their resources. AID provided the technical and information support to them to continue the momentum created by the project.

Activities

The project activities continued for the purposes stated below.

• The principle objective is to gain the interest and support of Asian people in the United Kingdom in the India projects whilst at the same time creating public awareness about the needs of work in other under developed countries.

To arrange for volunteers from India to work in the UK communities creating awareness of the project developments in India.

The key achievements in this year were :

• The project conducted an awareness event in collaboration with Birmingham University. The project personnel displayed all its awareness materials on the issues of child labour, fair trade, value of aid and volunteering opportunities. The project was able to identify five volunteers through the campaign.

• The project continued its networking with PANOS and AFFORD and other development education groups and has continued to play a key role in promoting Southern perspective of development education on a voluntary basis.

• The project engaged 5 volunteers for supplying development education work with the Asian community. It also continued its support of sending volunteers to India to learn the real issues of poverty and the role of AID in supporting the poor persons to find solution to their problems.

The focus of the campaign and development events were :

• Child poverty and child perspective of poverty reduction

• Local and global issues of forest and the people

• Value of aid and Southern perspective of AID and development education

• Value of links in raising awareness on issues of starvation and hunger

• Starvation and food security

• Child labour and fair trade

Objectives

The goal of the project is to raise awareness among the Asian community (through their organisations in UK) of local and global issues of development linking South Asia and Europe.  The objective of the project is to create an understanding of the personal, family and community  links existing on local and global issues and to increase their contribution in influencing the development trends and promotion of local global action.