community development

Itchy skin lesions, changes in skin colour, hardening and thickening of skin into nodules - these were some of the afflictions suffered by the villagers due to arsenic contamination of their drinking water sources. But read how this brave village fought back against this scourge, with even a 95-year old pitching in very actively!

How a group of Engineering students from Vellore Institute of Technology have come together (despite their hectic academic schedules) to start helping the communities around them in small baby steps - conducting medical camps in schools, teaching children about dental health, teaching parents about sanitation, etc.

Read how children playing on see saws ensures that there is water in the overhead tank, how one headmaster has helped children in his school save Rs. 25,000 and how children are learning the value of growing their food - all through the role played by local communities linked to schools called School Management Committees.

India is a country traditionally rich in arts and crafts. Artisans are the backbone of the non-farm rural economy, with an estimated 7 million artisans engaged in craft production. Over the past 30 years, the number of Indian artisans has decreased by 30%. They, then either engage in manual labour work or are unemployed, abandoning their high level of handicraft skills. Srujna is a social enterprise aiming to improve the standard of living of the artisans and also encourage more people to seek crafts as a livelihood option.

A wonderful bunch of good samaritans have come together to help the Toto tribe get quality education for their children and preserve their rich linguistic traditions. Read more about the great effort and how you can help run the school for a year!

It has been three months since disaster struck Uttarakhand in June 2013, and the situation is still alarming. However, in Uttarakashi district where there has been widespread property destruction and loss of livelihood, the situation is worse, with not enough food supplies and no doctors to examine the sick. For a population of almost 3.5 lakh people in Uttarkashi, there is not one single woman doctor. The Mountaineering community is still reaching relief supplies such as medicines and food to the far-flung villages on foot as road connectivity is lost. Given this scenario, we here present two initiatives working towards rebuilding the lives of the locals.

Women-led panchayats (village councils) in many parts of Jharkhand are proving to be a very successful model of governance, with the women leaders taking charge to address local and long-ignored issues like sustainable employment and equal pay for women, corruption in government schemes, women's property rights, irrigation and water supply, among others. Could this be an example for the rest of the country?

Govind Singh Rathore was 14 years old when he realised that in his patriarchal society widows have no status, respect or any rights! Together with his family and friends, he took steps to raise the status of Dalit women in the caste-prejudiced state of Rajasthan, and so Sambhali Trust was born in 2007. This is what they do.

Remember the 2004 Bollywood film in which an NRI Mohan Bhargava (played by Shah Rukh Khan) returns to India and is moved by the harsh realities faced by the people in his village to become an agent of change? The name of that film was Swades, and here is an organization called Swades Foundation that shares a similar mission - to bring about change in rural India. To know how they are doing this, read more.

Change is possible only if each of us accepts our responsibilities and it gets even better when your entire community is willing to support and stand by you. The idea of harnessing the power of gated communities may not seem like much, but the change it has wrought in the lives of 1000-odd families in this apartment complex is indeed remarkable.