29th August 2025 — A Rainy Day of Reflection in Dakshin Gouripur

[Sayan Mondal]

The rains came down hard in South 24-Parganas that morning, but the people of Dakshin Gouripur still gathered. What was meant to be just another community meeting slowly grew into something deeper—a space where people began to see their own lives reflected, and their own strength emerging.

The dissemination program, organised by Jeevika Development Society under the ARC initiative, was designed to share the baseline survey findings in Cluster 1 across Dakshin Gouripur and Deuli villages. Yet, beyond the numbers and charts, what truly unfolded was a sense of recognition and belonging.

It began with music. A group of women lifted their voices in Tagore’s “Amra Sobai Raja.” The song was more than melody—it was an invocation. It reminded everyone present that dignity and equality are not distant ideals; they are truths carried within each of us. I could feel the room soften, as though the song opened a doorway for honesty and hope to enter.

Despite the weather, people arrived in numbers. When I welcomed them, and when our Director, Ms. Dalia Roy, shared Jeevika’s vision of community-led change, there was a quiet strength in the room. With the Panchayat Pradhan, members, and ASHA workers present, it felt as if the community’s different voices were beginning to align.

Then came the moment of recognition. As Momota and I presented the baseline findings, heads began to nod. Some faces grew serious; others leaned forward. The data was no longer abstract—it was their own lives mirrored back at them. And then came the questions: not complaints, not despair, but questions filled with a searching curiosity—“What can we do? How do we change this?” It was in those questions that the first seeds of transformation appeared.

The children’s drama deepened this reflection. On a small stage, they portrayed drug abuse, school dropouts, and the lack of streetlights—not as distant issues, but as lived truths. Their performance carried a raw honesty that touched everyone. In their voices and gestures, one could see both the weight of struggle and the spark of dreams yet to come. They reminded the adults that the future is watching, waiting, urging them to act.

This is when the heart of the program revealed itself. We introduced the SALT approach and the Community Life Competence Process—not as solutions from outside, but as ways of nurturing what already exists within the community: the capacity to listen, to support, to take small steps together. The message was simple, but powerful: the answers are here, among you, and change is possible when you walk as one.That rainy day in Dakshin Gouripur, what began as data-sharing turned into something else entirely. It became a mirror, a chorus, a beginning.