Resource Centre

This section will provide you with the latest news and events in the field of immersion. Materials and documents are organised according to their nature (articles, references, personal accounts, etc.).

The richness of the material provided here can only be enhanced by voluntary contribution. If you have experiences, news, learning that you wish to share with others, please do submit them online. We will be more than glad to post them here.

POLICY DOCUMENTS

The Conservative Party in UK is for “Poverty Immersions”, “The present government has been criticised by the National Audit Office for failing to ensure that DFID staff spend time in rural areas, where many poor people live. We will introduce ‘poverty immersions’, similar to those of the World Bank and the Swedish development agency SIDA. DFID staff in poor countries will spend a week living with a poor family, sharing their experiences, listening to their views and learning from their insights. Senior London-based members of DFID will also be expected to undertake such immersions. We are working with the world’s poorest; we must understand their lives in order to serve them well.” (from the Conservative Agenda for the International Development). The entire document is available on the following link http://www.conservatives.com/oneworld

ARTICLES

Most Valuable 24 hours in my life, DFID website news
On her recent trip to Nigeria, DFID Minister Gillian Merron spent a humbling 24 hours immersed in the life of Angwan Doshe, a remote village in the north of the country.


Project Africa: Tories send MPs to Africa by Melissa Kite, Deputy Political Editor, Telegraph
Up to 50 Tory MPs will visit Rwanda in July as part of a "social responsibility" initiative during which they will sleep in mud huts and carry out manual labour.


Middle men dominate the pro-poor schemes
25 June 2007, Hindustan newspaper, Darbhanga, Bihar, India
After a stay of three days amongst the people of the Kiratpur block the members of the international NGO PRAXIS spoke to journalists on their return to Darbhanga on Sunday.


Musahars living between the embankments of Kosi and Kamla rivers are still living in the Middle Age
25 June 2007, AAJ Newspaper, Darbhanga, Bihar, India

INTERVIEWS

British MP Gillian Merron’s BBC interview
British MP Gillian Merron talks on the BBC of her immersion experience in a remote village in Africa (audio only)

PERSONAL ACCOUNTS

Staying with Shyambati
By Sharmistha Sarkar, Praxis Programme Officer (based in New Delhi)
The personal experience here narrated by Sharmistha is part of the Immersion Learning Programme on Social Inclusion that Praxis organised for some UNICEF India staff members in Chhattisgarh, last November 2008.

Report on my immersion experience in Northern Nigerian by Fionnuala Murphy, AA International HIV and AIDS Campaigne
On July 9, I caught a night flight to Abuja, Nigeria’s humid administrative capital. The flight was packed with well-healed Nigerians; women with Mulberry bags and diamante flip-flops, men in expensive suits.

Family experiments with living on $200 a month by Ruth and Dave, December 2007
The authors of this article are members of Servants (www.servantsasia.org), which is an International network of Christian communities living and working in the slums of Asia and the West, participating with the poor to bring hope and justice through Jesus Christ. The experience here described is part of a bigger commitment they made, which is living amongst the urban poor in Phnom Penh (Cambodia).

Praxis Internal Immersions At Praxis we encourage our staff to undergo immersions to give their work a people’s perspective. Given below are immersions accounts of Praxians from different branches. Pied Pipers without Pay by Roma Dey Notes from Kiratpur by Anindo Banerjee Immersion with tribal communities affected by police abuses and torture by Praxis Chennai Team City lights off by Mary George Immersion, an experience in first person to engage with people by Raffaella Catani

REFERENCES (MATERIALS AND ORGANISATIONS)

Material

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) 57, Immersions: learning about poverty face-to-face by Izzy Birch, Raffaella Catani, with Robert Chambers PLA is a development journal published three times a year (April, August and December) by the UK based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). This is a special issue, entirely focused on immersions and its variety of uses and modalities. Here below are some extracts. If you would like to avail of the full copy, please visit http://www.planotes.org/index.html. Table of contents Editorial Contributors Overview Immersions: something is happening by Robert Chambers Immersions and face-to-face learning: reflections of practice by Izzy Birch and Raffaella Catani

Organisations offering Immersions (partially sourced from PLA, 57 – In Touch)

• ActionAid International (AA)
• World Bank, Pakistan
• Self-help Women’s Association (SEWA)
• PRAXIS - Institute for Participatory Practices
• Exposure and Dialogue Programme Association (EDP)

REPORTS

“Tribal Reality”, report of the National Live-in-exposure Programme by Tom Thomas, Former Gen. Secretary of AICUF and current CEO Praxis, June 1985
The concept of immersion is not new at all. In 1980s, student movements in India were already organising immersions for other students as part of their so-called “Live-in-Exposure Programme”. This is what this article accounts for. The programme here described was held at Kunkuri, Raigarh District, Madhya Pradesh, India, from 16 -24 June 1985