Assam woman has given 22 years to bring education to tribal groups and help heal trauma

Trigger warning: This story contains references to violence, harassment

At an education center in Lumding, Assam, children from local tribes come faithfully every day to engage in activities such as reading, writing and listening to stories told by village grandmothers. Some of these children live in the center itself, their food being taken care of by the attached community kitchen. There are also facilities for mothers who are victims of domestic violence to stay here.

The center is the center of laughter, chatter and progress. Similar to this center in Lumding, 160 others have been set up in Northeast India, West Bengal, Karnataka and Goa. And headed by Ananya Paul Dodmani, founder of Tribal Connect, a foundation working tirelessly for the upliftment and empowerment of indigenous communities like the Kunbis of Goa and Uttara Kannada, the Siddis in Karnataka and the Karbi, Dima and Kuki tribes of Assam .

Ananya’s story of heroism is a journey she continues every single day to ensure that tribal communities in India finally get the safe space and respect they deserve.

‘It started when I was at school.’

The communities Ananya works with have a long history of marginalization. For example, the Siddi community is one of the most neglected tribes in India and they have spent generations in abject poverty. Additionally, many tribes in Northeast India do not have access to basic amenities such as education.

Ananya recalls her schooling years in Assam, where most of her friends and neighbors were from the Santhal and other tribal communities. “There was a certain disparity between their way of life and our way of life,” she notes.

By the time she was in 8th grade, these incidents started becoming more vivid. Ananya tells that most of her friends living in the school hostel will not come back after the summer vacations. His parents used to tell the school that he had contracted malaria during the holidays and passed away. Ananya listened to these stories with dismay, while she felt guilty about her own privileges.

One particular day when she was at a shop with her caretaker she was made more aware of these privileges. A local tribal woman was buying a product worth Rs.10. But when he gave the Rs 20 note to the shopkeeper, he insisted that it was actually a Rs 10 note, and refused to give him the money. “I realized that these people should be taught at least basic things like recognizing the value of money, writing their names, reading bus numbers and train timings,” says Ananya.

And at that very moment she realized that if they could not access these teachings anywhere, she would create a place where they could.

“I started looking for kids wandering around and would ask them to come to the local school, where I found an empty space where I could sit and ask them to learn basic subjects. I used to read them stories too.

Soon Ananya was joined by other batchmates who were keen to impart their knowledge to the local tribal children. The team formed by him will travel to villages in Northeast India on weekends, raising funds through cultural activities, football matches and more.

When Ananya left school and went to college, she began persuading her professors to organize exchange programs that would allow these kids to travel and learn as well. But then, an incident shook Ananya’s world, which forced her to make tribal upliftment a goal for which she wanted to dedicate her life.

‘My father was kidnapped.’

Although Ananya grew up hearing incidents of kidnapping of people from local tribal communities, she realized the gravity of the situation when her own father was abducted one day in 2002, she says. “You don’t know the heat of a fire until it burns your own house.”

“It was painful,” she recalls. “For seven days, he was tortured, beaten and escaped only when he jumped from the third floor of the building where he was held hostage. He ran several kilometers to reach the nearest railway station to reach home. This incident had a deep impact on my mind.

While at the time she was filled with anger for what had happened, she now looks back and observes that lack of education compels people to kidnap others for money. “These unconstitutional people have been brainwashed to do these things. It is only when someone does not have money to put food on the table for their child that they do things that are not constitutional,” she adds.

Ananya knew that while she was teaching the basics of education to those around her, she desperately needed to increase the numbers and scale to see the impact. Inspired by this fire to make a difference, she started her first education center in the same village where her father was held hostage after being kidnapped (a name she refrains from mentioning).

He started small with the resources he had at the time. He told about his plan to set up a center where children can learn and youth can get employment opportunities gram booda (head) of the village. But, she notes, they couldn’t live up to her vision. So he started learning in 2003 with five children under a banyan tree.

Today, the same concept applies to over 160 learning centers across India, albeit in a more organized form. Though these centers have been in existence for years, Ananya formally established the organization in 2019.

a welcoming place for all

Language is not a barrier at the learning centers. Ananya often hires local youth to teach the children in the language they understand best. “I collaborate with any NGO or foundation that can help us make a difference,” she notes.

In 2019, when Ananya married and moved to South India, she found many tribes facing the same issues she had seen in the Northeast. “I started working with tribes like Siddi, Halkki and Kundi.”

She explains that education at the learning centers is free, as well as three meals a day. There is also a community farming model through which children and men can grow their own food, which then goes into food. A unique concept is that grandmothers are placed with the children to take care of them. Ananya says it benefits both of them. A center can accommodate 35 children at a time.

There are also community centers for men who do not have jobs. Here, they practice community farming to grow produce and sell it in the markets, while leftovers are used in the community kitchen. Each learning center is headed by three local youth, says Ananya, so that the centers continue to flourish even when they are away.

This is what she always wanted. “My work is often in conflict zones and I don’t want the community center work to stop if something happens to me.”

‘I will stay no matter what.’

Apart from the work Ananya does for community centres, she also creates menstrual awareness and has reached out to “over 90,000 tribal women” through her workshops. These include teaching women to make sustainable pads at home, distributing pads to women in villages and even introducing the concept of eco-friendly menstrual cups.

With 700 volunteers, Tribal Connect is making a difference in the lives of people from underprivileged communities across the country. Ananya was awarded the Karmaveer Chakra in 2019 for her work.

“Sometimes I see children from broken homes coming to the centers just for food. But in 10 days, they change by looking at the environment around them and we inculcate good learning habits in them,” she says.

She cites an example where one of the girls stopped coming to the education center because she started menstruating and the family did not want her to leave the house. “I sat outside her house for two nights, getting a cold and fever in the process, but didn’t budge until she promised she’d be back at the center.”

Twenty two years long struggle and Ananya is still going strong.

How?

“It’s your will,” she affirms. “Our community center isn’t always made of walls. Sometimes it’s just a tent, washed away by heavy rains every year or other times trampled by elephants. But what sets us apart It’s that we rebuild every time.”

In this she further says, “Everybody has trauma. It’s how you let it transform your life that makes all the difference. I could have chosen to be a victim because of what happened to my dad, but instead I saw fear in his eyes and decided to start a center right there.

“You have to be your own cheerleader. Always.”

You can read more about Ananya’s work Here,

(Edited by Divya Sethu)