AWARD - Action for Women and Rural Develpment

GRAMIN VIKAS MAHILA SANSTHA - Early Childhood Devlopment

KHSITIJ - Primary Education

SANWAD - Women and Health

TELEMEDICINE - Medical facilities for rural India

VEDH - Organic Farming

Name of the project:  Arogya Sahayogini

Objectives:

• Making people aware of their right to health
• Improving the status of women’s health
• Providing health care facilities to villagers in their vicinity
• Training members of the self group of women to be a Health worker in the community

Project description: The project has been implemented in 8 villages for the last one year. The focus of this project is to address issues relating to women’s health. This project aims at improving the status of women’s health in the interior hilly region of Satara district. The project involves training of local women, a member of the Self Help Group to serve as a barefoot doctor. These trained women provide treatment as well as referral services to women suffering from reproductive tract ailments (RTA) and other common diseases like cough, cold, fever, diarrhoea etc. These village health workers (Arogya Sahayogini-AS) emphasise on Promotive and preventive health services. The necessary training is provided by MASUM a Pune based NGO. The project also aims at developing rights based approach towards health issues.

Outreach: 8 villages from Satara district

Project focus: Health

Primary beneficiaries: All the residents of the selected villages with more emphasis on women’s health

Budget of the project: Rs. 194000/-

Name of the project: Balwadi Project

Objectives:

• Facilitating scientific early childhood development in villages
• Creating a model pattern of pre primary schools (Balwadi)
• Aspiring to incorporate Balwadis into the existing ICDS (Anganwadi) system
• Providing income generation activity for women form the SHGs

Project description: This project has been implemented for last three years by Gramin Mahila Vikas Sanstha of Latur district. for the children between age group of 3 to 6 years.Twenty-six balwadis are run in 25 villages. The aim of these Balwadis is to impart scientific early childhood education to children in villages, where there are no balwadis. Members of local Self Help Groups run these Balwadis. External experts train the local teachers in imparting Early Childhood Education.  The Balwadi is child centric and the teachers use informal and experiential method to make the learning more interesting and lively. “Learning by doing” is the core philosophy of these schools. Children learn through experiencing different facets of learning through project method. The pace of learning of each child is different, therefore the teaching and learning is highly individualized in this school.

Outreach: 731 children form 25 villages

Project focus: Early Childhood Education

Primary beneficiaries: Children between age group of 3 to 6

Budget of the project: Rs. 322575/-

Name of the project: Reading and writing improvement project

• Improving reading and writing of the children
• Improving comprehension abilities of the children
• Inculcating reading habits in the children

Project Description: This project aims at improving reading and writing skills of children from Zilla Parishad (Z.P.) schools. The project is initiated because it was found that even a child going in Std. VII couldn’t write his name properly. The skill of reading is also at the minimum level and therefore the comprehension of what they read is completely missing. This also leads to non-performance during secondary school examinations thus affecting the confidence of children. A child may also drop out due to continuous non-performance. This project is implemented through facilitators from the same villages. The facilitator conducts scientifically designed session with the children from Std. I to IV .The sessions are conducted thrice in a week. The facilitators are trained to use specially designed child-friendly books during the session. They also organize many interesting word games.

Outreach: 10 Zilla Parishad schools from Mulshi block of Pune district

Project focus: Education

Primary beneficiaries: 380 children from 10 schools

Budget of the project: Rs. 168,800/-

Name of project: Arogya Sakhi

• Improving the status of women’s health
• Making people aware about their right to health
• Providing health care facilities to villagers in their vicinity
• Enhancing women’s capacity to earn and improve their status within the family and the community

Project description: This project is implementing in ten villages. The focus of this project is to address issues relating to women’s health. This project aims at improving the status of women’s health in villages in Chiplun taluka of Ratnagiri district. The project involves training of women barefoot doctors. The project involves training of local women, a member of the Self Help Group to serve as a barefoot doctor. These trained women provide treatment as well as referral services to women suffering from reproductive tract ailments (RTA) and other common diseases like cough, cold, fever, diarrhoea etc. These village health workers (Arogya Sahayogini-AS) emphasise on Promotive and preventive health services. The necessary training is provided by SATHI CEHAT a Pune based NGO. The project also aims at developing rights based approach towards health issues.

Outreach: 10 villages

Project type: Health

Primary beneficiaries: Women and villagers in general from project villages

Budget of the project: Rs. 385000/-

Name of the project:  Residential school for Kathkari and Dhangar children

• Providing quality education to Kathkari and Dhangar children
• Bringing the Kathkari and Dhangar children in the mainstream of education
• Ensuring combination of formal education and vocational skill building

Project description: Shramik Sahayog is implementing this project for last three years. This school is an experimental project in the education sector. This project aims at providing residential facilities to the children from deprived Dhangar and nomadic Katkari communities and runs a unique model school for their benefit. The school follows a specially designed curriculum. The curriculam is designed by keeping in mind the characteristics of Kathkari and Dhangar communities. The curriculam aims at holistic development of these children by focusing on academic as well as vocational education. Experiential learning is the main focus in this school and the teachers use project method. The school will also prepare these children to appear for S.S.C board examination in the future.

Outreach: 40 children from Kathkari and Dhangar community

Project type: Education

Primary benefiaries: Kathkari and Dhangar children

Budget of the project: Rs 382000/-

Name of project:  Telemedicine

• Providing diagnostic services to rural area by using modern technology.
• Making people aware about the services provided by P.H.C.
• Improving the outreach of P.H.C by using IEC activities.

Project description: Telemedicine project is based on the latest technology for providing better health services for rural communities. It is expected that this process would strengthen the existing government Primary Health Centres (P.H.C). It involved installing computer with Internet facility, web camera, microscope and a small ECG unit in the PHC.This was provided by KPIT Cummins. This facility is useful in rural Maharashtra.

Outreach: Approximately 25 villages of Khed-Shivapur P.H.C

Project type: Health

Primary beneficiaries: Villagers in general from project villages

Budget of the project: Rs. 201000/-

Name of the project: Organic farming project

• Making farmer’s aware of the importance of organic farming
• Improving soil fertility
• Reducing cost in agriculture thereby improving income of farmers
• Ensuring that agriculture becomes sustainable means of livelihood
• Making farmer’s aware of ill effects of chemical farming

Project description: The project will be implemented in Potegaon region of Gadchiroli district. This region is occupied with thick forests and is home to various tribes. The main occupation in this region is agriculture. However due to excessive use of chemical fertilisers the farming input has increased significantly. In comparison to the input the production and income is very low. The soil is also turning infertile in some areas. The project aims at creating a model of sustainable and low cost agricultural practices. Under this project 10 farmers will be selected, each farmer will divide his farm in two parts. In one part he will cultivate his land with the organic means and in the other part he will use methods of chemical farming. Each and every input (including time) will be monitored. At the end of the year the input, output and actual income from the crops from both the parts will be compared.

Outreach: 10 farmers from 2 villages of Gadchiroli district

Project focus: Livelihood management

Primary beneficiaries: All the residents of the selected villages with more emphasis on women’s health

Budget of the project: Rs. 100000/-