RGU’s ‘rural immersion camp’

ITANAGAR, 14 Nov: The social work department of Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) conducted a ‘rural immersion camp’ for the university’s third semester (2021-2023) postgraduate students, at Khazalang village in West Kameng district from 6-12 November.

“Rural immersion camp is a mandatory weeklong programme of two years’ master degree programme in social work. During the camp, the social work trainees are expected to inculcate the exposure to community living, indigenous knowledge, and day-to-day challenges of a distant locality,” the RGU informed in a release, adding that such camps “provide students an exposure to rural life, problems and issues related to rural life and enable them to plan, organise and implement relevant programmes.”

The students are guided through the process by faculty members who accompany them during the camp, it said.

Twenty-one students, along with faculty members Drs Kaushalendra Pratap Singh and Rimi Tadu, and PhD scholar Tame Ramjuk, accompanied the students during the camp.

“The students spent six days with the Sajolang community and learned about their rural ways of living and conducted an assessment of their socioeconomic conditions through participatory approaches,” the release stated.

“The students mobilised the community leaders such as gram chairperson, gaon burahs, and SHG members of the Arunachal Pradesh State Livelihood Mission to carry out an awareness rally on swachhta practice in the village,” it said.

The release further stated that the students “conducted village-level meeting and shared suggestive developmental plans for the village, based on the assessment of community in the presence of gram chairperson, GBs, SHG members, and other community members.”