Profugo Blogs

We were introduced to Naveen on our last visit to Bangalore in Dec 2006. At that time Naveen was working as a consultant for CHC (Community Health Cell). We were impressed by Naveen’s heart for the underserved. CHC is an organization created to study and publicize health needs among the marginalized. Through their efforts they help the governement shape health policy decisions. If you would like to know more about CHC, check out their website at: http://www.sochara.org.

After completing his work at CHC, Naveen moved on to working on his PhD at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai (http://www.tiss.edu/). We have been in touch with Naveen ever since our first meeting in 2006. In the last couple of years, Naveen has worked on putting together a group of like-minded people to form an organization called Headstreams. To learn more about the organization, please visit their website: http://www.headstreams.org.

To be able to study the Wayanad area, we were in need of connecting with people who were familiar with the area. Our hope was that we would be able to find someone whose vision would be similar to Profugo’s and would be willing to guide our study. We turned to Naveen for help and he put the word out among his friends. Shortly after, he got back to us. A collegue of his was willing to speak to us! This person was Rincy Sebastin, a PhD scholar as well at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Rincy was also willing to connect us with her husband Baiju (also a PhD scholar), who was doing his research in the Wayanad area!

Connecting with Rincy and Baiju was probably the most crucial part of us being able to study as much as we did, in as short a time frame as we did it in.