PP Medical Camp & BFP Water Conservation
This post has already been read 755 times!
We organized school visit and camp at Palavpada on the same day. Palavpada is a small school, located in Dadade. It is difficult for the teachers to take the students to different venue for the medical checkup. Hence, we prefer to handle the kids at their school only.
We did see improvement in the general health of the kids this time around. Effective de-worming was quite visible. Their growth gets hampered due to not-so-nutritious food, which they get at home. Most of the villagers grow rice and preserve the same for their own purpose. Once the harvesting is done, they move out to make the living by working at construction site, brick kiln, sand digging or fishing. Hence, rice is their staple diet, which at most gives the carbohydrates. The kids are deprived of vitamin and essential minerals.
Despite of getting ample rain, the rain water does not get percolated down the surface, which affect the ground water level. Most of the villagers are able to complete the farming during rains and don’t go for another crop due to low water supply. We did an exercise of creating a check dam at Kaspada a few years back did the de-silting exercise to create more space for water to get stored and percolate down! We did see good result even in the next year, wherein the wells in the vicinity showed good water level for long. We want to carry out the similar exercise this year onwards across various villages. It is very important for the villagers to feel the need of water round the year. Despite of getting 60% less water, Dharampur (Gujarat) have water availability for 12 months due to meticulously planned check-dams. We visited Barafpada for same. Had a meeting with villagers to understand their problems and also surveyed the possible options on building dam, reservoir to help them with their water resources in the village. The scarcity is very evident. Water-level in the ground dips drastically starting from Jan/Feb till the first rain (depending upon the rain in previous year). Teacher had to stop watering the plants in the school compound to ensure that water from their borewell lasts them more number of days until rain. Depending upon readiness of the villagers, we may help them with check dam this year.
Photo Gallery