SAIIER 2021:Kailash Youth Residency

Agni Veda Research		Citizens' Assembly Pilot
Entity::Kailash Youth Residency by Kripa

Kailash is an educational residency. The general idea of Kailash is to have a shared living experience where the youth manage their community life, the duties that come along with it and the social outcome of it. This means that they will have to organize their own lives to keep the harmony of the residence. They will learn from the consequences of their acts and not because they blindly apply externally imposed rules.

We have 14 rooms, with 2 big rooms that can potentially be shared, so we have a regular hosting capacity of 14 that can go up to a maximum of 16 residents at a time. The minimum stay is 2 months and maximum is 6 years.

A few rules have been set up as a frame from the start, and are fixed:

• Open to youth between 16 and 21 years old.
• A daily activity such as school, work, apprenticeship, etc. is compulsory.
• Active participation in the community life. (Weekly meetings, gardening, cooking shifts, maintenance of the building, and so on.)
• Respect each other and the neighborhood.
• No illegal drugs in the residency.

Activities of the year:

This year we hosted children of Aurovilians as well as children of foreign and Indian non-Aurovilians with volunteer or student statuses.

As we are a residency, we do not conduct activities as such. We deal with daily life. We have our traditional dinner with a Secret Santa around Christmas time, and we have our annual group photo taken that is a highlight.

Throughout the year, we have our weekly community meeting as well as monthly (or more if needed) collective clean-up and work for maintenance of the building and its grounds.

This year, we have all together painted a big room as well as the bathroom doors as part of our collective clean-up days.

Every day, 2 people shop, cook and clean up for the others. This way every evening everybody can eat dinner together, while cooking only once a week.

The situation of the pandemic and general stress linked with a sense of responsibility and who answers who, brought SAIIER to look at the organization of Kailash, asking us to have names of adult residents to be referred to as caretakers in addition to the caretaker’s team. In response to this, we have put in place that 2 Aurovilian young adults (above 18) living in Kailash are apprentice caretakers. We asked Bagirath, who moved out after having lived in Kailash for 4 years to join the caretaker’s team. He is very mature, poised and has an in depth understanding of Kailash’s organization in spirit and in practice. He is a great addition to the team.

Outcomes:

Kailash is a place that offers the space for youngsters to grow, develop and find themselves in a safe environment away from the family home. It is not simply a housing option. The space is created so the individuals learn from each other from the most basics of material responsibility of cooking, cleaning, and household chores to applied notions of respect, communication, understanding of others, others’ needs, others’ growing and maturing process. Kailash is their home and the residents and caretakers become family.

As there is a regular turnover of residents, there is a natural passing on of information from the older residents to the newer ones. There is a transmission of identity and spirit of the place where the older ones act as older brothers and sisters within the group.

Over the years, we can appreciate that former residents of Kailash having finished their studies and integrated actively in the Auroville adult work force want to give their energy and time to Kailash, and ask to join the caretakers team. This is the case of Fabien, Quentin, Inge, and now Bagirath.

Reflections:

This year was marked by the pandemic and lockdown. It has been a very interesting collective and community experience.

Kripa and Jean-Francois left for an extended period of 2 years from June 2018 to September 2020, leaving the care of the management of Kailash youth residency to Fabien, Safia and Quentin. Safia who had joined in 2018 did not stay long. Quentin left due to personal reasons at the beginning of the pandemics in 2019. Inge joined to back up Fabien, she stayed a year and left the team when Kripa followed by Jean-Francois returned (Sept 2020 and Jan 2021). Fabien is still after 10 years a constant regular stable presence and back up, and now hopefully as it seems to be the case, Bagirath is a new stable addition to the team.

In the early stages of the pandemic and just before the initial lockdown in March of 2020, there was an uneasy energy in the building. Some residents were strongly affected by the threat that the virus may pose. This was largely due to the environment of misinformation surrounding the virus, as the virus itself was just making its way into news headlines and hadn't yet been extensively studied. During this lockdown, understandably, the routine and daily activities of all residents was forcefully changed. In response to this, the residents reshaped their routines to improve the community life which was temporarily affected. They did this by having meetings amongst themselves, adding a daily lunch to the task of the cooking teams, taking on more responsibility, playing games together, attempting to create a community vegetable garden and some residents even exercised together. The situation of life surrounding the initial lockdown was somewhat scary and very new. Even though there were minor conflicts, a sense of community prevailed bringing the residents together.

The residents had to at some point quarantine as some were identified as primary contacts. Parents took turns for the shopping and would drop the food at the front door of Kailash, so the residents could cook 3 meals a day on the spot without going out. The caretakers (at the time Fabien and Inge) were in contact with the residents only through phone and Whatsapp, so the residents were in full self management. A bonding sense of community settled in with a sense of shared responsibility.

After lockdown, while the schools and activities were still shut but people could go shopping and move around, was a more difficult phase. 14 teenagers living together with no outside activity to structure their day or release their energy drifted towards a more active night life and passive day life. The general atmosphere of being subjected to Covid protocols and regulations, living under pressure of vital fear and confusion on what was actually going on and the overall consequences on global life and future was putting a particular pressure and focus on our youth. A general lack of motivation and direction in life settled in.

At the end of this period, three of the older residents left Kailash, making it a very young group in age and in time. At the same time, Kripa returned after 2 years in France. While there was a list of youngsters waiting to move in, a time of pause and reflection was needed to work on the existing group and take care of the building making sure that the new residents would enter into a space that was going in the right direction, offering a safe collective space for individual and collective growth. The existing residents needed guidance concerning their own engagements with school, work or day activities. The empty rooms needed a full repaint, the building needed repair and maintenance. An educational/social work was needed to create a sense of ownership integrating the notion of rights and duties in regard to Kailash as an educational residency, working on communication, mutual understanding and responsibility.

Once these consolidated, we could integrate three new residents, and soon after a fourth one. The collective life now is smooth and harmonious, with a good quality of communication and sense of responsibility.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, we can appreciate the resilience of our youth who have managed to organize their collective life and pursue life in a very uncertain moment of our history. Each individual had to readjust, some stopped their schooling, some pursued their studies with their colleges online, some had to find a new interest and educational project. The teenage phase of life is already full of shapings and reshapings, full of uncertainties and questions about the future, and this pandemic situation brought in even more.