“You’ve given us the gift of life!”
As far back as she can remember, Sunita has been collecting water for her family. Instead of playing as a carefree child, she had to walk to the river, fill up large vessels, and carry them back to the small Maharashtran village of Kobada, India.
This arduous task would become one of her lifetime duties. She would have to collect water several times a day to provide the 20 litres her family needed to survive. This task would not only rob her of the opportunity to go to school, but years later it would take its toll on her health with the repetitive strain of carrying heavy water loads on her head each day.
Water, the gift of life
But that all changed for Sunita and her entire community this week. Working with our partners, Seva, we helped provide Wello water wheels for each family in the village.
“You have given us the gift of life,” Sunita said. “Now I can spend my life doing more productive things, and it will also relieve the burden from my children.”
The “Wello Water” is a simple water barrel in the shape of a wheel. It can deliver more than enough water for an entire family’s needs for a whole day.
Fullness of life through local partner initiatives
This distribution is part of the Adivasi Voices Project, an initiative to provide remote indigenous (Adivasi) communities with speaker boxes containing audio content that can transform lives.
Using local voices, stories, drama, interviews, and music, the programmes entertain, educate and inform, as well as provide a safe space for community voices to be heard. This stimulates conversations and ideas on how local challenges and problems can be resolved.
With local-dialect dramas, music, and audio programmes that educate, inform and entertain, the ‘Adivasi Voices Project’ is an innovative way to help get communities talking and taking action.
The team leader, Shilpa reports that an extensive evaluation done recently, demonstrates that the project has been a huge success where the speaker boxes have been distributed.
“In remote parts, many communities don’t have access to radio, television or even mobile phones. Many can’t read,” she says. “But since we started distributing speaker boxes, we have seen dramatic changes in health, sanitation, education, and livelihoods,” she adds.
The Adivasi Voices project is a partnership initiative between Seva and Amplifying Voices. Over the next three years, we hope to reach out to more than 53 villages with a vision to serve them so that they may enjoy the fullness of life.
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