This
past summer, I had the incredible privilege of working under the TI-Migrant
Project at SVYM in Mysore, India. TI stands for targeted intervention --
the main goals of the project are to decrease the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and
STIs/RTIs among migrant workers in Mysore through migrant community-targeted
interventions. The team does a lot of work to build rapport with stakeholders,
such as supervisors of migrant work sites, so that they can go into these sites
and conduct health camps, educational activities, counseling, interviews, and
much more. While many people may think of migrant workers in terms of
transnational migration, India faces a vast amount of internal migration
between states. Individuals and their families who decide to migrate are
normally in search of employment opportunities and economic security that they
cannot find at home, although their destinations do not necessarily provide the
security that they need. Migrant workers are a particularly vulnerable
population because mobility decreases access to health and social services and
increases feelings of isolation, loneliness, and the likelihood for
risk-taking. The fact that the languages and cultures differ so greatly between
states only increases this fact.
Although
the TI-Migrant’s main focus is sexual and reproductive health, they also value
the overall health and well-being of migrants. My project focused on the social
well-being of migrants; the objectives were to identify the needs of social
entitlements among the migrant worker community. I created a questionnaire to
analyze social welfare awareness, eligibility, barriers to access, and unmet
needs among migrant workers, and disseminated it at various field sites with a
translator. I found that awareness of different social entitlement schemes
among migrants was very low, but that migrants had a strong desire to save
money for the future of their families and their children. I also found that
many migrants lack basic needs at their living site, including toilets and
clean running water. To finalize my project, I created a report outlining the
results of my survey, as well as a document containing information on social
entitlement schemes in different states of India, to be used by migrants who
want to access programs in their native state.
My
project provided me with the kind of education that the classroom cannot provide—the
best kind of education. Visiting the field and interacting with migrants
illustrates the importance of knowing and understanding the community in which
you are researching; seeing faces and hearing stories firsthand puts empathy
and meaning behind numbers and figures. Additionally, seeing the passion and
drive of the TI-Migrant team and the dedication that they held towards their
community showed me how important it is to find meaning in your work. Although
some moments were challenging and I was pushed out of my comfort zone at times,
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to pursue this project with SVYM. I
know that this summer will continue to impact the choices I make and the values
I hold for years to come.
