As I adjust in to the new life of no office, no 9-5 office hour, no sundays to wait for, there has been very little opportunity to reflect on this dramatic transition from that of a volunteer to a full-timer, let alone write the experience down. When I relocated suddenly back to Bhubaneswar, to re-occupy my parents's home leaving my job at JITM, Paralakhemundi behind, my parents as well as Babita's parents were perplexed with a tinge of concern as to what I was up to. I was not sure how to put it to them, other than saying that I am on a sabattical and will be working on social issues full-time. This was not very convincing for most of my family and well wishers and I had to make up some story like I am still working for JITM on their Bhubaneswar campus etc. Which turned out to be partially true later on any way!

These three months have been undoubtedly one of the most exciting time of my life so far in many different ways. Whether it was the confrontational exit from JITM after the encounter with the sarpanches enraged about the NREGA advocacy work or the engagement with the RTI activists of Orissa and setting up of the Orissa RTI Watch group or the interaction with people like Madhav Chavan and Usha Rane of Pratham and involvement in the Read Orissa campaign or the continued growth of AID Rural Technology Resource Center (ARTRC), its been a period of intense activity and great excitement about the future possibilities of these initiatives. Some of things have gone to my plan and some things have panned out differently, but every day has brought new challenges, new opportunities and new satisfaction of being in service of the society.

As I joined the ranks of some very special individuals as a Saathi, I had thought I would mainly be working in the three areas of NREGA, RTI and our Rural Technology Resource Center. While I continue to work in these three key areas, Pratham's Read Orissa campaign in which we have integrated the entire AID Orissa team and resources has become my main preoccupation. This has been more by default than design. Although I was and continued to be very excited about the campaign, I had visualised my role in the Read Orissa campaign to be very limited and of advisory nature. This was because Pratham had strong support from the Orissa Primary Education Program Authority (OPEPA – the official implementing agency of Sarba Shiksha Abhiyan in Orissa). As per the understanding between Pratham and OPEPA, the Learning to Read (L2R) program of Pratham to accelerate the reading ability of primary school children would have been implemented through the school system by training school teachers, generating local specific Teaching-learning material and getting them to teach the children in school. In this scheme of things Pratham's role would have been that of providing training in the L2R method, assist in the design of Teaching-Learning maerial, monitoring etc. How ever it so happened that a change in the top leadership at OPEPA meant that the new State Project Director was not so enthusiastic about Pratham and its Read Orissa campaign. Hence we were constrained to change the strategy and go to the community independent of the government and launch the campaign. This meant that we had to work with more limited resources than that was planned and it also meant that we had to mobilise volunteers in every one of about 25000 villages in 180 blocks of 24 districts in order to train them and get them to teach the children with out remuneration. This was a much more difficult yet exciting prospect. This also meant that we had to mobilise all our contacts, friends, NGOs, organisations, PRI members, SHG groups to be part of the campaign, so that it can take the form of a people's campaign.

With the change in strategy, we launched the campaign at a state level function attended by over 60 NGOs from almost all districts of Orissa, who not only pledged their support to the campaign, but were very keen to be part of it. The importance of reading in early-primary level was underlined by experts and all acknowledged the importance of the Pratham campaign. For example, one of the main objectives of the campaign is to design, print and distribute high quality story based teaching- learning material. For many children in the remote rural villages, this will be the first and hopefully not the only occasion such material would be in their hands. As supplementary reading material,these well illustrated multi-colour story cards would stand out in sharp contrast to the low cost, low quality text book distributed free by the government. This is in itself a very exciting opportunity for all of us passionate about education at the grassroots level.

Since the launch of the campaign, over 8000 volunteers have been moilised and trained and classes have started in many villages. The campaign also gives special focus on 5 districts around Gajapati district in South Orissa where AID Orissa has its base. These backward, tribal districts are to be taken up for interventions beyond L2R. These additional interventions would include Reading to Learn (R2L) for older children, Spoken English, skilling training for youth etc. Each of these hold lot of promise for the future in which AID Orissa can play an important role. The campaign in its first 2-3 months, has taken me to many parts of the state, given me the opportunity to interact with many organisations, NGOs, personalities to bring them in to our fold, face issues of inter-personal nature and various other small and big crises. While one day news comes of one of our block coordinators being robbed, the next day the report comes from another part of the state about how a sarpanch played host to our volunteers facilitating their work with unexpected cooperation. With 180 block coordinators, 540 block volunteers, 40 district coordinators and 5 zonal coordinators and over 50 NGO partners and not to speak of 8000+ volunteers and counting, not a day pass without both pleasant and not so pleasant surprises and with it continuous learning.

As I got more engaged in the Read Orissa campaign, there was less opportunity to act on my original agenda of NREGA, which was the reason for my resignation from JITM in the first place. As I discussed with others engaged in the NREGA issue at the state level on our experience in Gajapati about minimum wage, rate of earth work and payment by daily wage, I realised that many others have already highlighted these and other major issues of largescale corruption in the NREGA across the state. Therefore it was natural to join hands with groups like OREGS Watch while continuing with our campaign at the grassroots level in Gajapati through street theatre. The effort for formation of a landless workers union through the mobilisation we have done to sign up for NREGA work is still underway and in a way is helped by our access to all villages of Gajapati and adjoining districts because of Read Orissa campaign. As part of our state level role, we have participated in consultation meeting with government on initiating a AP style social audit proces facilitated by MKSS, met with top government officials with our report on the NREGS experience in Gajapati. AID Orissa has been recognised both at district level and state level as an agency working for the better implementation of NREGA at the grass-roots level.

Finally, ARTRC in Paralakhemundi has grown in the last few months, particualrly thanks to the Read Orissa campaign. It has become the de facto center of action for southern Orissa districts and as such hosts the coordinators, training of volunteers, review meetings etc. Along side the thriving khadi workshop, the pottery unit, organic agriculture activity, the Center has added a pre-primary school to be groomed in to 'Shaala' – our proposed school based on Gandhian principles of Basic Education. The school has naturally become a testing ground for L2R, Sishuvachan and spoken english programs of Pratham besides many other interesting activities. The center now has a small guest house, proper water supply, an open well for irrigation, a cow shed among other facilities and we are planning to host this year's AID India conference in December.

Finally we have had the one off events such as the candle light vigil we organised in Bhubaneswar and Paralakhemundi in support of our Farmers and highlighted the crisis in Agriculture. It was amazing to see more than 300 people congregate in a small town like Paralakhemundi to express their feelings.

Hope this gives a brief idea about what your Saathi has been up to. Its been a most exiciting experience so far and I am gratefull for all your support and I look forward to meet some of you at the AID India conference in December or otherwise if you choose to visit us in near future.