New Era Development Institute

In India, a new approach to vocational education

This article appeared in the October-December 1997 issue of One Country. (Note: In 2007, the name of the insitute was legally changed to New Era Teaching Training Centre.)

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The New Era Development Institute seeks to provide students with skills to earn a living and impart a new vision of community service. "Our product is basically a transformed individual."

In India's now burgeoning economy, the building trades are flourishing, and learning how to install electrical wiring in homes is an important and potentially profitable skill.

But for Rahul Mahamumi, 16, and his friend Shivaji Shinde, 20, among the most significant benefits so far gleaned from a two-and-a-half month house wiring course at the Bahá'í Center here are an increased sense of self-confidence and a newly manifest desire to serve the community.

Shivaji Shinde, left, and Rahul Mahamumi at a house wiring course at the Satara Regional Bahá'í Development Institute

The course is different from similar programs because it includes instruction in "personal development" - a general term here for classes that help students improve their social skills and self image. And in this case, the instruction includes elements of spiritual and moral education designed to give students a new vision of themselves and society.

"Basically all the courses in house wiring offer the same technical knowledge," said Mr. Mahamumi. However, he said, the students at the Bahá'í Center are taught to share their skills freely and to use them to help others when they can, even without the prospect of profit. "When we are done, we hope to do service for the community," said Mr. Mahamumi, "not just for making money."

Located on some 28 acres in the hill station town of Panchgani, India, the New Era Development Institute celebrated its 10th anniversary in October. It now has some nine main buildings. Shown above is the administration building.

Adds Mr. Shinde, who comes from a farming village some 6 kilometers away: "The [personal development training] inspired us to think that we can do things for ourselves and our community."

The attitudes of these two young students, who are not Bahá'ís, reflect the new directions in social and economic development being pioneered by the New Era Development Institute (NEDI), a Bahá'í-sponsored research and training center located in Panchgani, a small hill station town about 30 kilometers away.

Over the last ten years, the Institute has developed an approach to rural development that combines hardheaded vocational training for rural areas with a specialized curriculum in spiritual and moral principles. The effort is aimed at producing a group of capable and energized individuals who can return to their villages and, while supporting themselves, undertake and encourage local and sustainable development efforts.

In the village of Biblewadi, NEDI, in collaboration with the State Bahá'í Council of Maharashtra, has sponsored a series of courses on literacy, personal development and women's advancement. The graduates from one course were honored in a village ceremony in November, during which some women spoke in public for the first time, displaying a new self-confidence.

"Our product is basically a transformed individual," said Sherif Rushdy, director of NEDI. "Our aim is to give people a new vision, a new heart, a desire to give service, an increased self-confidence, and an understanding of the connection between service and their own growth. And, further, that they have gained a trade by which they can earn an income and a few skills that can be helpful to their community."

The payoff to this new approach is just now emerging in places like Satara, in other villages near the Institute, and, indeed, throughout India. Drawing on and working closely with the grassroots network provided by the two million-member Bahá'í community of India, NEDI has established outreach projects in the states of Gujarat, Manipur, Sikkim and Madhya Pradesh, as well as here in Maharashtra.

So far, more than 600 individuals have undergone training at the NEDI main campus in Panchgani, and at least several thousand more have participated in one of its outreach programs. In all of aspects, NEDI, its outreach programs, and its graduates are involved in a wide range of development-oriented activities, from the provision of classes on literacy and basic hygiene to schemes for tree-planting and environmental conservation; from the creation of small-scale income generating projects and rural businesses to efforts that promote the advancement of women.

In this regard, the New Era Development Institute currently stands as one of the largest and most fully realized Bahá'í-sponsored development efforts in the world. It is a leader in conceptualizing how to apply the principles of the Bahá'í Faith to development. Indeed, perhaps the most interesting facet of the Institute's work has been the creation of a curriculum that achieves an integration of the practical with the spiritual quite successfully. NEDI administrators see such an integration as the key to inspiring individuals to take action to develop themselves and their communities.

Vocational Education with a Twist

NEDI was founded officially some 10 years ago, but its beginnings can be traced to outreach service projects undertaken by the New Era High School in the early 1970s [see page 12]. Over time, NEDI has become known primarily as a center for rural vocational education, defining its mission in terms of providing both vocational and development training to village-level men and women.

At NEDI's Panchgani campus, students in the motorcycle repair program work on a scooter

And in terms of providing quality vocational education, NEDI's success is remarkable. The Institute currently provides training in nine vocational areas: diesel mechanics, motorcycle repair, data processing, dressmaking, refrigeration and air conditioning repair, radio and television servicing, agriculture and animal husbandry, and primary and pre-primary teacher training. According to surveys by the Institute, more than 70 percent of graduates are working in the field for which they were trained, a relatively high rate in a developing country like India.

The 28-acre campus features nine main buildings: two classroom blocks, four dormitories (two for women and two for men), a workshop, a staff housing unit, and an administrative building. The two classroom blocks and two of the dormitories were completed in 1997, thanks to development assistance grants from the governments of Canada and Norway. The Institute's total staff numbers about 85, with some 30 involved directly in training and administration.

Current on-campus enrollment is about 175 students. Most are young, in their early 20s, and they come from all parts of India and a handful of foreign countries. (Currently, the school has students from Bangladesh, Tanzania and the Congo.) Most are Bahá'ís, but at least 35 percent are Hindus, Muslims, or another religion.

The tuition is low. NEDI's true cost of educating, housing and feeding each student runs about $1,300 a year. However, students are charged from $150 to $475, with women receiving a 25 percent discount. Funding for this subsidy, and the work of the Institute in general, comes principally from the Bahá'í community of India, from the Bahá'í International Community, and from long-running development assistance grants of the Canadian and Norwegian governments.

As noted, the Institute also sponsors and/or coordinates regional training courses as part of its outreach program. In 1997, according to Mr. Rushdy, some 1,300 individuals were involved in such outreach courses, which run from two weeks to three months.

In addition to providing students with vocational training, the Institute has also directly undertaken a number of small-scale development projects in the villages around Panchgani. These projects have ranged from poultry and pig raising to literacy training to the promotion of bio-gas energy systems.

A "Technology of Training"

Among the course offerings at NEDI is a year-long program in computer science. Like all courses, it includes a core curriculum of moral education which focuses on equipping students with the tools to do community development once they return home. Shown in the photograph is Surita Kushwah of Gwalior, center, helping Vyayananda Sharma of Manipur, right, with a programming problem.

According to Mr. Rushdy, the local projects have served in part as a proving ground for the elaboration of a development curriculum, an elaboration that is one of the Institute's most significant accomplishments so far.

"What we have achieved is really a technology of training that gives a balanced development to the individual, releasing their potential as community developers," said Mr. Rushdy.

"Every course of study has four tracks: a service track, a spiritual track, a vocational track and a cultural track. In this way, our aim is that each student should leave with some service skill - how to promote health, hygiene, literacy, the education of children and the like; some spiritual skills - so they know why they are doing these things; some vocational skills - so they can get some money to support themselves; and some cultural skills, meaning training in tolerance and diversity and the arts - so they have the confidence and the capacity to be leaders and they are able to convey development messages though the arts," said Mr. Rushdy.

At the heart of this training technology is what is known on campus as the "core curriculum." Regardless of whether students come to NEDI to learn to be diesel mechanics or pre-primary teachers, they all study the core curriculum, which is taught for the first two hours of each day and extends into an innovative campus community life and requirement for off-campus service.

The heart of the core curriculum is an attempt to teach respect for universal spiritual principles and how to apply them to contemporary issues, said Dr. Radha Rost, the Institute's training coordinator.

"We teach the basic principles of religion, principles that are common to all the world's religions - we don't teach the Bahá'í Faith per se," said Dr. Rost. "At the same time, however, most of the main elements of the curriculum are drawn from the Bahá'í teachings."

Curriculum elements include not only such progressive social principles as the equality of women and men, the oneness of humanity and the need to eliminate extremes of wealth and poverty, but also in-depth discussions of topics concerned with the soul, the spiritual reality of existence, and the fundamental purpose of life.

The in-depth discussion of religion and spiritual topics underlies a fundamental tenet at the Institute: that truly sustainable development is impossible without tapping into the power of faith.

"If development agencies spend enough money, they can make any project happen," said Mr. Rushdy. "But we believe that sustainability comes from within, and the key to sustainability that all development agencies are looking for is what inspires individuals to take action to develop themselves and their community.

"What we find is that this inspiration, in the long term, does not come from the social worker or the professional development intervenor. It comes from the individual's own connection with God.

"Faith is the key to sustainability, and translating faith into action is what development is all about. It has always been. Civilizations around the world have all been built on the actions of people who had a new vision and had the faith to carry it through," said Mr. Rushdy. "And this is what we hope to imbue in our students here. For we feel that, more than simply another development institution, we are in the business of establishing a new civilization."

While it is difficult to gather concrete statistics on the degree to which NEDI students are indeed spiritually energized and concomitantly acting to develop their communities, NEDI's approach has certainly drawn favorable attention from various government development agencies. The Institute has received funds for various projects from the Government of India since 1989, and, as noted, has likewise developed relationships with the Canadian International Development Agency and the Norwegian overseas development authority (NORAD). In 1997, the Institute entered into a four-year collaboration with Norway's Telemark College at Notodden. The collaboration will seek to exchange ideas about teacher-training curriculum, with a focus on cooperative learning, peace education and the use of drama.

There is also considerable anecdotal evidence that the Institute's approach is succeeding. Recent interviews with NEDI graduates at six locations in Gujarat and Maharashtra states indicated that many are indeed imbued with a self-confidence and commitment to voluntary community service.

As recounted above, students at a house wiring course in Satara expressed such new attitudes during an interview in November. The course was sponsored by the State Bahá'í Council of Maharashtra, in collaboration with NEDI. The Council provided the classroom and sleeping space, utilizing the Satara Bahá'í Center, and NEDI provided the instructors and funding for the course, which drew some 29 students, of which none are Bahá'ís. It should be noted that this sort of collaboration with regional Bahá'í organizations and agencies is basic to the mandate established for NEDI, which is operated by the National Bahá'í Community of India.

At the same time, in the nearby village of Biblewadi, the Maharashtra Bahá'í Council, in a similar collaboration with NEDI, was sponsoring a series of courses aimed at improving literacy rates, promoting better health and hygiene for women and children, and boosting self-esteem.

The sense of appreciation for these courses, which were given free of charge by NEDI staff and by NEDI-trained volunteers, was evident at a ceremony hosted by village leaders on 20 November 1997. Following a feast, in a ceremony that ran well past midnight, community leaders gave a series of speeches that praised NEDI for its work. Among other things, they said they liked the Institute's approach to encouraging self-development through moral education.

"This is a holistic program for the community, and the whole community has received a new self-confidence," said Tulsiram Moré, the village chief. "We have some bad habits. If somebody in the village is progressing, we sometimes try to pull him down. But through the spiritual education, we'll get ourselves better developed."

In the village of Shendurjane, some 20 kilometers to the north, another collaboration between NEDI and the Maharashtra Bahá'í Council resulted in nightly classes on spiritual development in November. This course, lasting just two weeks, was based on a one of a series of workbooks on spiritual issues developed by Bahá'í educators in Latin America, known in their totality as the Ruhi Institute Course. The course covers topics such as the nature of the soul, the prospects for an afterlife and the connection between the soul's evolution and service to humanity on earth.

The connection between these topics and the development of their own community was evident to the dozen young men who were taking the course. In interviews after the class, they said the discussions helped them see the connection between morality and social progress.

"Those who go through this course, they will never hurt anybody or do bad things because they will remember all the time that God is there to ask us about our actions," said Bapu Jadhav, a 20-year-old Hindu farmer.