ASSEFA

The association is linked to the work of ASSEFA INDIA which raised from 'agrarian reform' realized by Gandhi’s disciple, Vinoba. He walked through India for fourteen years asking the big landowners the gift of some acres of land.In this way he had obtained 4.200.000 acres of land to give to the poorest farmers.
But these farmers were too poor to be able to cultivate that untilled land and too many years should have passed before having some good harvests.

In 1969 at Sevalour, Tamilnadu, an Italian man offered a little group of assignee farmers the necessary amount for being able to work for two years. This initiative was a success and the Italian man offered again, on loan, to the assignees of given lands (Bhoodan) the necessary amount to start the work.

The loan had to be given back when the harvest would have been a good one and so some other assignees farmers would have received it.After some years the farmers who were very little owners, noting the assignees progress, began to ask for the possibility of taking part in the projects. After the farms the villages raised, and in 1978 ASSEFA India was born which became, in few years, an agency of global and sustainable development.
Villages communities were reconstituted so as to make them protagonist of their own development with their own assemblies. In this process ASSEFA remained a motive power,respectful of the villages identity and freedom. In this process of social reconstruction great results have been achieved for what concerns women condition and 'the untouchable', the ones called by Gandhi Harijians (God’s sons) in an assembly democracy functioning by consent.

In 1978 the scholastic programme started. Nowadays there are about 1.200 schools including three high schools. In the same year a health programme started with the children responsibleness and of some village inhabitants. The infant mortality has halved. Handicraft has been exploited and some objects are sold in little shops in the villages and in the cities; stock farming and milk production have been stimulated with some kinds of reward saving, reserved to women who become the real protagonist of their own development. There are also three industries for the milk processing.

The villages that take part in this sort of development are linked together by assemblies of village representatives which include 50-100 villages.

The principles applied for the development, for the eucation, for the construction of the democratic community and for the exploitation of the traditional culture are for the most parts the ones which Gandhi had thought for the Indian countries liberated from the colonization. About children education a particoular attention is given to the importance of the integration of manual activities in the study, the democracy training with the children assemblies (Balar sabha), self-sufficiency principle, school and village integration between students and their parents. The culture of an innate spirituality but respectul of the other religions.

These are the numbers of ASSEFA INDIA (2002):

- 87 different projects have been started which involve 80 departments in five states of India: Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajastan;
- there are 1500 Gram Sabha (villages assemblies), in total two millions beneficiaries;
- 3000 and more villages are involved in the projects;
- 70.000 students and 1.900 teachers are present in 1.300 schools;
- 700 biogas installations have been built, 3000 wash houses, thousands health services and 1000 water pumps;
- 550 little handicraft activities and 50 Kandhi Shop (little handicraft activities in the village);
- 8.400 post-pregnancy programmes, 24.000 pediatric programmes, 31.000 children have been vaccinated against polio, there are 500 nurses and obstetricians;
- 360 agrarian committees, 600 milk committees, 350 house committees and 400 factory committees;
- cows, sheep and goats stock-farming;
- about 6.000cows, 3.000 sheep and 2.500 goats.