For Faculty and Staff

By conducting research or leading workshops, Carnegie Mellon faculty and staff can help the people of Wardha to achieve their dreams. The Bajaj Lab and the Bajaj Foundation can help you design your project and can provide logistical support as you implement your ideas.

Research

If you are a researcher, consider exploring the Bajaj Foundation’s innovations in water management, alternative energy, women's empowerment, sustainable agriculture, and village industries. Your research can help document best-practices that could be used in other parts of India and the world.

Your research will also help the Bajaj Foundation continue to improve their work as they move towards establishing projects in over a thousand villages. The Bajaj Foundation believes in careful monitoring of all their projects, and in continually revising their methods to achieve the best possible results.

The Bajaj staff are ideal partners for researchers—helping with all local arrangements and responding to new ideas with enthusiasm. In addition, the Bajaj Foundation has the resources to implement new ideas at scale.

Teach

Help a women’s collaborative design a successful business plan. Assist village volunteers in improving their English and communication skills. Discuss the legacy of Gandhi with village elders. Teach farmers how to use their cell phones to check the prices of crops.

There are many ways you can share your interests and expertise with the people of Wardha. In keeping with the participatory philosophy of the Bajaj Foundation, all of our trainings are community-driven and involve two-way exchanges of ideas and information. Everyone shares in the opportunity to communicate their own ideas, concerns, questions, and dreams.

Trainings build upon each other in a way that is responsive to the changing skills and needs of the local beneficiaries, the village volunteers, and the Bajaj staff. We facilitate the kind of learning that happens when villagers, social workers, students and scholars come together to improve communities from the bottom-up.

If you are interested in conducting research or teaching in Wardha, please contact Nico Slate.