PROTO VILLAGE

CASE STUDY BY
Janarthanan.J.S
Iniyaal.K
Jeevadharshini.L
Menaka.A
Mageshwaran.K
AGENDA
• INTRODUCTION.
• RESILIENCE.
• THE METHODS OF A RESILIENT COMMUNITY
• PRINCIPLES.
• OBJECTIVES.
• EDUCATION.
• 9 BASIC NEEDS.
• GRAAMAM.
• CONCLUTION.
INTRODUCTION
• The dream of a Resilient Rural India.
• Being set up in 12.5 acres of land, in the 2nd driest district in India (Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh).
• Proto Village is the prototype of a “Resilient” rural community built for the villagers ,by the
villagers.
• Proto Village is a space for systemic solutions for rural resilience to be iteratively co-
created ,diligently practiced ,comprehensively demonstrated and openly shared!
• It will be a center for learning, practice, demonstration and dissemination of the knowledge on how
any community in this region can organize itself to be Resilient ecologically sustainable ,socially
cohesive and economically viable.
• A Resilient community is one in which the inhabitants practice harmonious interdependence,
employ ecologically sustainable means and blend native knowledge systems with contemporary
appropriate technology to achieve self-reliance in terms of the 9 basic needs.
9 BASIC NEEDS
RESILIENCE
Resilience is a decentralized, cooperative, steady-state that breaks away from the paradigm of
limitless economic growth. It requires that we adopt a lifestyle that is more respectful of all life
around us.
THE METHODS OF A RESILIENT COMMUNITY

• Self-Reliance – The community builds and nurtures the capability to fulfil the 9 basic needs
without having to depend on anyone external to the community.
• The community commits to respecting, preserving and nurturing the soil, water and the air in the
process of building this self-reliance.
• Interdependence – There’s a commitment to learn and practice the ways of mutuality and
coexistence, synergistically leveraging each other’s strengths, experience and wisdom. It is only
when the individual members establish and respect the traditions of interdependence, that the
community as a whole can enjoy independence.
• Interdependence leads to a resource-efficient system, that gifts each member an abundance of
time.
• The community provides an environment that inspires all members to invest the abundant time in
whatever expresses them best!
PRINCIPLES
• Highest respect Earth’s ecological systems and processes that sustain life.
• Adopt patterns of production and consumption that safeguard the Earth’s regenerative capacities.
• Design interventions that incentivise the nurturing of the natural ecosystems.
• Scaling-in is about Learning and practicing the ways of Resilience and thereby being the change.
• Staying steady is about consolidating the learning and creating pathways for sharing.
• Scaling-out refers to the replication in different locations. It’s like co-creating millions of drops
that collectively form an ocean rather than trying to scale- up one drop into an ocean.
• To optimize efficiencies through leverage, and to prevent reinvention.
• All the knowledge we may have the privilege to get access to is due to the generosity of many, we
express gratitude by sharing it with the many openly. Let an individual’s progress be measured by
her/his contribution to the collective.
OBJECTIVES
• To be a fully functional prototype village demonstrating a Resilient community life.
• To design and implement a replicable entrepreneurial model for the villagers to organize their
respective villages for Resilience.
• To co-create a rural education system that empowers rural learners with the knowledge that makes
them locally relevant and globally responsible citizens.
• To design and initiate a fellowship programme through which teams of fellows from various parts
of the country collaboratively replicate Proto village in their respective districts.
EDUCATION
INSPIRATION
• A forest is a thriving eco-system of diverse interdependent species, coexisting and operating in
harmony, individually and collectively contributing to the perpetuation of the miracle of life. A
seed needs no teaching as to how to grow. And not every seed will grow into a big tree, what it
ought to be and how is all within the seed. All it needs is a conducive environment to thrive. As
each seed grows into a unique tree, there is diversity in the forest. And when there’s diversity,
there’s interdependence, when there’s interdependence, there’s harmony.
VISION
• Our Vision is to create a cohesive community environment that celebrates the unique physical,
mental and spiritual potential of each learner and inspires them to strive for excellence in whatever
expresses them the best, both as individuals and as contributors to the larger collective of life.
EDUCATION
CURRICULUM
• The important 4 Learning Journeys are ,
SELF
• The journey takes the learner from understanding basic physiology all the way to the practice of maintaining physical, mental
(intellectual, & emotional) and Spiritual balance.

ENVIRONMENT
• This will perhaps be the largest chunk of the content. This will be a journey through natural (evolution), social (bushmen to
organised societies, morality, culture etc), political (tribes to nation-states, forms of Govt etc) and economic (barter to
cryptocurrencies) environments.

TOOLS AND SKILLS

• All tools that help learners make sense of and contribute to the world: example – mathematics, sciences, reasoning, Non-
violent communication, Digital skilling and empowerment {including but not limited to Coding, Digital 3D design &
manufacturing, Content creation & Distribution (Audio, visual and text)} etc.
EDUCATION
EXPRESSION
• Aided by the increasing awareness of the self, environment, and empowered with the tools and
skills, the learner constantly endeavours to seek and find what expresses him or her the best –
Languages, Arts, Martial arts, sports etc. This inculcates a tendency to look for meaning and
responsibility in our life instead of focusing on just rights and privileges. To empower learners
with the knowledge, skills and wisdom that makes them conceptually sound, self-aware,
environmentally conscious, globally competent, and locally relevant.
EDUCATION
WHERE FROM HERE
• The school at Proto Village will act as a Nucleus – with a steady population of no more than 30 learners, it presents a
space to experiment, iteratively refine and demonstrate this new system, the evolving content, and the pedagogy. It
also aims to be a training & facilitation centre that enables replication, we need support to make this kind of education
system easily available, and accessible to the learners in the villages.
2020 – 21
• They are determined to provide such education free of cost to about 30 learners from the villages around ProtoVillage
in 2020-21.
2021 – 22
• They will work on digitising the curriculum, in the form of videos much in the lines of Khan Academy (helping
learners interpret concepts from the daily activities), hosting the digitised curriculum on the server in ProtoVillage,
and broadcasting it to the satellite learning centres in 2-5 village clusters around ProtoVillage, as an attempt to scale it
out.
EDUCATION
2022 – 24
• They will utilise the lessons learned from scaling out to the village clusters around ProtoVillage, to
develop a blueprint for context-specific replication. The purpose of the blueprint will be to have
the model replicated across geographies allowing for the incorporation of local contextual
specificities.
• They will work on collaborations with organisations and individuals to replicate and scale out the
model to other districts and states.
9 BASIC NEEDS
FOOD AND WATER SECURITY
• In 2014, the villagers started digging 8 ponds, 16 swales and 300 contour trenches. The aim was to accomplish as
much as possible before the very unlikely event of a rain. They completed this project in a year and a half, and on
the very day of completion, rain filled up the trenches, swales and ponds! It was the perfect merger of fortitude
and serendipity.For food, they grow seasonal fruits and vegetables, and millets over two seasons.
HOUSING/BUILDINGS
• All constructions are earth-friendly and buildings are made by the inhabitants themselves. Usually hexagonal
structures are preferred, due to their resilient quality. “Hexagon reminds me of our inspiration, the bees, to remain
true to our practice of resilience through collective intelligence”, says Kalyan.
CLOTHING
• Two pit handlooms are used for weaving. They are also experimenting with various types of yarn/plant fibres and
natural dyeing. As the handloom organically grow, they hope to depend completely on making their own clothes.
9 BASIC NEEDS
HEALTHCARE
• Emphasis is on preventive healthcare, which is achieved by working on the body, having nutritious homegrown food and
leading a happy life. The day starts with exercise/yoga for about forty minutes, followed by (after breakfast) community
farming for about an hour, in silence. They believe that working with soil brings in a certain sense of happiness.
Therefore, the food that is consumed is not only without any pesticides but also tended to with joy. And only nutritious
crops are grown.They have also started on making a herbal garden, so that that is the first line of defence in case of
seasonal infections/diseases. The villagers plan to start Panchakarma (a five step Ayurvedic treatment) and telemedicine
for providing medical care to nearby village clusters. Digital Empowerment Foundation set up the internet infrastructure
for them, to meet the requirements of such a project and Aarogyaseva, an organisation in Bangalore, plans to send non-
specialist doctors on a pro bono basis to see the patients from Proto and surrounding village clusters face to face, as well
as with specialists over the internet.
ENERGY
• They use biogas for cooking and harness solar and wind energy for meeting their balance energy requirements. All their
buildings are designed to be highly energy efficient.
9 BASIC NEEDS
EDUCATION
The curriculum is based on:
• SELF: Basic physiology to practice body-mind-spirit balance.
• ENVIRONMENT: Covers natural, political, social, economic and technological.
• SELF-EXPRESSION: Expressing the self through art, language, philosophy and more.
• TOOLS: Students are equipped with tools essential for the modern world, such as mathematics, science and NVC (non-
violent communication). They also have tinkering labs with different kinds of equipment including a 3D printer.
• Their curriculum and content so impressed the National Institute of Open Schooling that special permission was
accorded to continue their own methodology from 9th to 12th grades. Parents of children contribute in any way they can
be it by giving haircuts to children, or by providing millets for the meals. All parents join in for all festivities at school.
• Going ahead, all the educational content which Proto has on its servers will be made available to the outside world free
of cost. A few, currently unemployed youth, will turn into education entrepreneurs by setting up their facilities in their
villages where anyone can access the content for a fee.
9 BASIC NEEDS
CONNECTIVITY
• They connect with the rest of the world through physical structures such as roads, as well as via newspapers, phones and the internet.

TRADE
• Firmly founded on the principles of Sarvodaya – upliftment and progress of every single person – Proto aspires to become a Rural
Economic Zone. The concept of REZ was introduced by social reformer T Karunakaran, to further the concept of local self-
governance and local economy. It believes that economic activity and protecting the planet cannot be mutually exclusive ideas. Most
importantly, the livelihood means enables social cohesion and also conservation of environment.

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
• The community constantly looks for ways to ensure they are drought, and hunger proofed. Apart from growing seasonal vegetables
and fruits, each member grows vegetables in 3-4 wicking beds, which provides them more than enough vegetables all through the
year. A few beds are also used only to preserve seeds, so that they will not be any more dependent on seeds even from the outside
world. They also rear cows and chicken, and have a fish farm. The lifecycles of animals and the human inhabitants are linked, and
one feeds/leads to the other.
GRAAMAM
• The Rural Economic Zone translates in the local language (Telugu) into Graameena Aarthika
Mandali, whose abbreviated form GRAAMAM means a village in most Indian languages,
and is their brand.
• They are living in times when Good food, Good education, Good lifestyle, in fact Good
“anything” is labelled as an alternative.
• Graamam represents the commitment to mainstream goodness! This commitment is shared
across the growing producer network including women’s SHGs, farmers, rural youth groups
etc!
• Graamam represents a growing network of people who are taking on insurmountable
challenges to make impossible dreams possible, for themselves and their communities.
• They trust you to not buy from us out of sympathy, but because you trust us to produce and
deliver healthy products – made to the highest standards, with a lot of love and with an
obsession to keep you happy and healthy!
• Naturally grown and locally sourced renewable raw material gets processed in the hands of a
growing network of trained rural women into world-class nutritious food products that bring
health and happiness to your doorstep!
CONCLUSION
• Co-operation is possible.
• Community life is possible.
• Sustainability is possible.
• Circularity is possible.
• It needs a redesign of our economy and incentive structure that promotes the good of an individual
as a part of the community, not against it.
THANK YOU !!!