The Human Development Training School

The 1976 Summer Research Assembly in Chicago marked another turning point in the life of the Institute--and in the life of my family. Roughly a year after the Maliwada Consult in India, we celebrated the selection of the Band of 24 and the consults happening around the world as each in turn was being launched.

At the same time, something dramatic had happened in India. As the story went, the Governor of Maharashtra State had visited Maliwada village and seen and acknowledged the accomplishments of the Human Development Project there. He turned to our staff, however, and said, "One village is a curiosity. I have 60,000 villages. What can you do for them?"

The gauntlet indeed was thrown down--and we picked it up. In addition to the global commitment we had made to launch and sustain the 24 Human Development Projects, and in the very midst of the demands on our staff of the Town Meeting '76 campaign in the U.S., ICA would also take on the challenge of replicating, all across the Indian State of Maharashtra, the success of its village project in Maliwada.

During the Summer Research Assembly, a task force worked feverishly to think through and design the outlines of this new replication strategy. Another tackled what we saw as a cornerstone of that strategy, a training institute for generating the local Indian leadership and staff that an enterprise of this magnitude would require. I had taught the Spring Academy in Chicago, was just back from being part of the Sudtonggan HDP Consult team in the Philippines and was anticipating returning to work on the University 13 Project after the Summer Research Assembly. Instead, I found myself assigned to this task force designing the curriculum for the new training institute--and preparing to depart for India to deliver it there in the fall quarter!

The team that arrived in Maliwada village on September 1, 1976 struck me as the most impressive I had ever seen us assemble. Not too surprising--a large part of our future appeared to be riding on what we were charged with making happen in this unfamiliar part of our world. We took up residence in what we called the Castle--an old abandoned building said to be haunted that the village gave us the use of. While we worked on preparing the training materials for the first school, villagers were constructing in the heart of the community the facility where we would house, feed and train hundreds of Maharashtran men and women in a series of eight-week classes over the next several years. One month later, on October 2nd--Gandhi's birthday and a national holiday in India--the school officially opened. These are a few pictures that capture a small part of what was happening then and over the next two years, during which time our family lived in the Castle, and Roxana and I helped to lead the Human Development Training School.

-- GordonHarper - 23 Jun 2006

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The Exterior of the Human Development Training School in Maliwada

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The School's Inner Courtyard

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Vinod Parekh and Joe Slicker Discuss Replication Strategy Outside Vinod's Room in the Castle

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The Faculty and Graduates of the First HDTI, December, 1976

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The Second HDTI Class, March, 1977

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We Were Always Glad to Share the Credit With Our Supporters

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The Schools Get Larger . . . and Larger . . . and Larger! This is the Fifth, December, 1977

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Pfizer Shares its Story of Helping With the Urban Excursion

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Our Thank You to the Bombay Hosts After One of the Urban Excursions

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Maliwada Silversmith Pandit Rao and I on the Semi-Arid Deccan Plateau With Daulatabad Fort in the Background

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