1. Ethnic Identity and Oral Narratives and Oral Epics:

Oral narratives play a vital role in maintaining ethnic identity and group solidarity. The narratives have its social functions representing the collective memory of the people combining the past with the present and attach a meaning to the space and time.The organization aims at preserving the intangible voices of the age old people to store the wisdom and knowledge those are valuable with rich human existence with loving struggle.

2. Gender, Environment and Folklore:

Tribal society has no gender disparity. There is also no disparity of nature and animal. The intrinsic relationship of man, nature and spirit teaches the coexistence of the whole world the importance of earth with sky, the visible with the invisible, the mortal with the transcendental. The symbiotic relationship of human and animal with the environment is manifested in the oral tradition and in the rites and rituals, the totems and the symbols. Folklore as a combining force between the two realms of nature and culture represents the gender equity and nourishment of nature. The modern concept of environment is embedded in the folkloric expressions, which is a positive phenomenon in the tribal society. Women, especially in tribal society have long attachment with the nature. In fact there is no tribal with out forest and environment. Folklore offers a living expression of the gift of nature to the mankind for their survival which is the alchemy of nature.

3. Indigenous Knowledge and its use for social development:

Detached from tradition leads to the tribal in the land of nowhere. Identity, ethnicity, language and obsession to the land they own and the community who shares their understanding of life in group solidarity help the tribal to understand the meaning of development in their own context. The individual approach to development needs redefinition in tribal context. Indigenous knowledge is not away from praxis. If the tribal society has existed , it has existed for its inherent in built power of survival. It is their indigenous knowledge that helped them to grow up across time and space.

4. Use of folklore in primary education:

Experiential knowledge of the society is the foundation of education. The home as the classroom and the society as a school is a natural learning center for the child. The gap of home language and school language is a factor, which affects the learning of tribal children. The experiential knowledge of the children is not associated with the book knowledge. The non-contextual text books in regional language, the non-contextual curriculum and classroom hampers the learning of the children. Learning of an alien situation with out a tribal context becomes the basic factor of low achievement of the children. Folklore as the rich depository of children’s verbal and non-verbal learning materials plays a vital role in creating a contextual learning situation for the tribal children.

5. Linguistics survey and mapping:

This is to understand the level of linguistic variation of tribal and non-tribal language and to assess the akin language group to plan for preparation of teaching learning materials for the tribal children.

6. Preparation of learning materials in tribal language:

The verbal and non- verbal teaching learning materials helps to develop the children’s cognitive abilities. The tales, riddles, songs, legends, myths, play and traditional games have learning potentials which are used for teaching and learning of tribal children. Teaching in a tribal context reveals the mutual learning process, because teaching in a multi lingual class is more critical and challenging than a monolingual class.

7. Training tribal youths/women on leadership, community participation and social development network:

Changing society needs the tribal people to cope with the changing situation. The youths, women, and the community as a whole need to understand the social transition and cope with the change. So training of leadership and personality among the tribal group is one of the basic aims of the organization.

8. Documentation of local language and culture:

The fast vanishing folklore and cultural aspects of the tribal society is documented to understand the wisdom of the past and learn from the past for future. The social function of folklore, the cultural values, and the literary value reveals the collective wisdom. The reinterpretation of folklore is also important in respect of shaping the culture of future.


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