Keystone Foundation is hosting a group of five undergraduate students from Cornell University as part of the Nilgiris Field Learning Program (NFLP). This program has given various Cornell students the opportunity to work and learn in the Nilgiris for six weeks (June 9th- July 22nd, 2022), that focuses on “Mental Health, Healing Systems, and Community-Based Care: Community Resilience and Culture in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve”, with a particular focus on the Irula and Kurumba communities of the Nilgiris. The student cohort as part of the NFLP, also consist of selected individuals from the local indigenous communities of the Nilgiris, who will co-learn and work jointly with the Cornell students on key areas of research, with an overarching theme of wellness and the COVID pandemic. This year the selected students are indigenous community health workers who are part of the Community Health and Wellness programme at Keystone, with a few months to year of training on community preventive health.
The programme is led by Professor Andrew Willford who has been an anthropology professor at Cornell University for the past twenty-two years, and co-anchored by Dr. Jyotsna Krishnakumar and Ms.Lakshmi Amarneeth, both.
The NFLP is an engaged field-based course that uses ethnographic and participatory analysis of the indigenous societies within the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve in South India. According to Prof. Andrew, the students will “examine the relationships between culture, health, and the environment (social and physical), and the patterns and adaptations that have developed within Nilgiri societies. In doing so, they will also examine debates in the anthropology and of healing, development, and public health, more broadly drawing upon tools across several disciplines (e.g., medical anthropology, nutrition, psychology, psychiatry, social work, public health, counseling, etc.)”.
The cohort of eight students will be also conducting research, looking into three sub-topics for their project: the impact of the healthcare system, traditional healers and how their work has changed as society has progressed, and the impact of COVID-19 on community health workers and their relationship with the communities as frontline health workers.
The NFLP also has a study tour planned to Chennai (July 6-14th, 2022). The purpose of this one-week tour is to provide Keystone’s students, an opportunity to “observe and interact with peers working within the innovative and influential mental healthcare and rehabilitation organization, called, The Banyan and Banyan Academy for Leadership in Mental Health (BALM). For Cornell students in the program, that are focused on community mental health, the study tour offers an opportunity to compare community-based models in an urban, peri-urban, and rural setting that is quite distinct from that in the Nilgiris, thus broadening their understanding of global mental health and methods of intervention”.
A critical part of the programme, similar to the NFLC programme in the past decade, is the partnership between Cornell and Keystone (indigenous) students. The NFLP is expected to strengthen these collaborative imperatives with benefits flowing to both Cornell and Keystone students, alike.
