People's Craft Training Centre, Kondam, Tiruvannamali, Tamil Nadu, India

Holly and I spent the first ten days of our trip at this truely inspiring project, which was set up by Xavier Mariadoss in his home village of Kondam (some 20km outside Tiruvannamali) 20 years ago. With a background of working with children with disabilities, he has established an organisation that erally bridges the gap between these children, and the communities they live in. The moto of the Pctc, 'Collective Self-Reliance' really encompasses everything the project strives to achieve, but also dictates the way it is run. It really is the most self sufficient organisation immaginable!

Starting out as a centre for children with disabilities in the community, enough staff were trained to alow the opening of a second centre further away. Since young people can only remain in the centre until the age of 18, a vocational training programme was then established on the same campus, teaching tailoring and other trade skills. Xavier has also been able to purchase land with the help of donations and fundraising, and start a farm - this is a longer term project which he hopes to develop into another branch of vocational training.

A further role of the staff is to go out on field visits to families in incredibly remote communities around the area, and do check ups on new borns who could be prone to developing a disability from birth ( the most common cause of this, we were told, is due to members of the same family reproducing). The staff are also trained to run sessions for parents of very young children, in basic physio and speech therapy, in their early years intervention centre. Mothers and other women are also invited to join one of the many female empowerment groups set up by the pctc.

The most recent project development is that of the Thuli Student Movement - afterschool clubs which currently run in 8 of the planned for 47 communities. This programme provides children with two hours an evening (6 days a week!) of alternative moduels in health, hygine, education about children with disabilities, politics, english laguage, as well as providing an oppertunity for help with homework etc. The real motivation behind this stems from the idea that, unless the community is catered for and supported, selecting individuals for help in the centre is meaningless - the whole community needs support to then be able to support and care for young people with disabilities.

As we were only able to spend 10 days at this amazing place, we spent our time visiting all of the different parts of the project: which involved chasing cows and picking guavas at the farm, riding all over the countryside on teh back of staff motorbikes to do home visits,singing and (for holly) some communication and speech therapy in both centres and at teh Thuli programme, and hours of fascinating conversation with many people involved with the project.

If anyone is planing a trip to India, and looking for a long term volunteer oppertunity, this one is really worth checking out!

www.pctcability.org/