Women Beneficiaries

Silent and invisible hope

The target beneficiaries for this campaign are women from marginal farming families who are increasingly under pressure to make ends meet for their families.

In addition to their daily chores to collect scarce natural resources like drinking water and firewood, they must cook, clean, care for children, and work on the field.  After the monsoon season, most women usually migrate with their husbands and children to work as travelling agricultural laborers or construction workers. These positions don't allow for any educational or skills development, and yet such patterns of living have become so standardized that hope for anything better seems to have faded.

Despite all the responsibilities in the household most have little say in their communities - especially the younger women. Yet they carry valuable indigenous knowledge, practical skills and long-term points of view on natural resource use and community development.

Most have no desire to abandon their land or villages for remote cities. Their greatest need is some stable and reliable income that can provide a foundation for growth and regeneration.  Many women know that planting trees on their land can help them meet this need over time, but they acknowledge that their families cannot afford the necessary capital, patience, and trust in markets. They are ready to work with each other and anyone who will offer them long-term support.

Who can they turn to? Modern India is forgetting these women even though they number in the tens of millions. Helping them develop in way that benefits the environment rather than burdens it is the best hope for sustainable development of India as a whole.

 

Environmental Champions

Meet Meerabai, our first Environmental Champion...

She lives with 15 members of her family in mud huts around a small closed yard at the edge of Rapewadi village, the nearest paved road is 6 km away. She and her husband survive off the cotton and grains they grow annually on their 1 acre of arable land. They used to own more such land, but sold it off to raise enough dowry for each of their four daughters. They still own 5 acres of unusable hilly land.

Meerabai is practically illiterate but understands numbers and largely plans household and farming activities. She has witnessed first hand the depletion of resources like water and firewood, and the steep decline of agricultural productivity. Nevertheless, she scrapes together what she can not only to feed her own family, but also a dozen young children from neighboring families whose parents have migrated away for the annual sugar cane harvest. The local authorities have promised to compensate Meerabai at the end of the season for her efforts, but for now she must improvise.

Not surprisingly, Meerabai is regarded positively in her village. She is keen to learn new skills and find new ways to help her family and the community. As an Environmental Champion she will support and monitor the women's groups involved with the campaign and act as a role model and advocate for sound water, energy, soil and waste management practices in the village.

 

 

 

 

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An initiative of CleanStar Trust, a non-profit organisation registered in New Delhi, India
© 2008 CleanStar Trust