Ray Rowden visited the Local Policy Forum in Kerala during August to support a wider community meeting. The forum is supported by a grant from the community fund and has been up and running for a year. The forum wished to meet again with their wider community and report to the community on their activities so far. They also used the community meeting to consult on future priorities.

The community meeting attracted 198 participants from across the Kollam district, with many users and their carers involved! This was a huge success and was achieved through word of mouth in the community and no press advertising. This was undoubtedly due to the hard work of VG Nair, the Local Policy Co-ordinator and the forum members energetically promoting the work of the group in the wider community.

During the first part of the meeting members of the forum who attended the conference in Slovenia last October reported back on their shared experiences. People at the meeting were pleased that the forum had developed international links and were interested in the value of such links.

A number of forum members who have received loans through the micro credit scheme reported to the meeting the success of their projects in practical terms. The forum was able to report that the lenders were paying their loans off in a timely fashion, which will allow the forum to support more people in the community. The forum was also able to report that donations from a range of sources in India and elsewhere had allowed modest expansion of the micro credit scheme.

The forum has started another new initiative to help users repair and improve their housing. This initiative was reported to the forum by its initiator, Father Thomas, a forum member. The forum is attracting modest donations for this work and forum members with building skills are giving their time free of cost to support this important work.

The meeting was advised that the forum is planning a major public event at the state parliament on world mental health day. Many at the meeting expressed interest in joining in, so there should be an impressive turnout at the office of the chief minister for Kerala in October, drawing attention to the real needs of users and carers!

In the second half of the meeting the participants broke into facilitated work groups to discuss relative priorities in mental health to help guide the future work of the forum. People work with enthusiasm and commitment and each group shared their findings with the whole meeting. Key issues identified were the need to support users and carers into paid employment; the need to challenge and remove stigma through better campaigning; the need for better information for users and carers about mental health issues and treatment choices and the need to keep the forum strong and effective, working where possible with kindred organisations, e.g., Kerala partnerships, who were represented at the meeting.

The forum has made incredible progress in one year and is an excellent example of a group of committed and empowered people who are using community based approaches to bring about real change in peoples lives. The energy levels within the forum are high and the fantastic level of attendance at the open meeting suggests that the issues are striking a chord in the wider community.

Ray also arranged a dance-based workshop for 45 children and young adults with learning disabilities at the MGM charitable trust. The workshop was lead by Errol Pickford, a former principal dancer with the Royal Ballet in England and Olivia Thorne, a renowned teacher of contemporary dance. Errol and Olivia run the Ashiya

International Ballet in Osaka, Japan. Parents and teachers also attended the workshop from MGM charitable trust.

The participants got involved in the workshop easily and used mime and movement very creatively. Using Japanese fans the participants created a dance where they were butterflies. The workshop also encouraged the participants to become various animals, including elephants, giraffes and monkeys. The children and young adults buzzed with excitement and some of the parents were surprised and proud of how able their children were at learning new skills. The teachers were left with good ideas about how they could use music and dance as part of the ongoing education within MGM trust. Errol and Olivia were so impressed with the work of the forum and the MGM trust and have agreed to attempt some fund raising back in Japan, so all in all, an excellent outcome, forging yet more international links.