All of the Above:
We’re Giving Everything We’ve Got to 101 Villages Throughout India
January 19, 2014 - India
Traveling throughout India as part of her annual tours, Amma has personally listened to the problems of millions of poor villagers suffering from poverty and hardship of every kind. But Amma wants to do more than provide emotional solace; for more than 30 years, she’s been initiating humanitarian projects in response to the needs of the world’s poor who have come to cry on her shoulder.
In the process of carrying out those projects, we’ve learned a lot about effective delivery of aid to those in need, and we’ve built an infrastructure capable of delivering a broad range of humanitarian services on a massive scale.
Amma has always said that it is her dream that one day, everyone in the world would have their basic needs met. Now, for 101 villages spread throughout every corner of India, we’re going to do everything we can to make that dream come true. The Self-Reliant Village Program (Amrita SeRVe) is the biggest project we’ve ever undertaken, and in many ways, it’s the culmination of everything we’ve ever done.
We’re currently in the process of surveying and selecting the villages. Once the selection phase is complete, we will begin implementing the following in a systematic, phased roll-out:
- Ensure each villager has a proper home and that the villages have school buildings, streetlights, community halls and proper drainage through our existing housing project housing project
- Start a vocational-training institute centered around Computerized Vocational & Education Training and Life-Enrichment Education systems developed and managed by Amrita University’s AMMACHI Labs
- Establish basic health facilities, clinics and trained health-workers via AIMS Hospital and ensure basic nutrition for children
- Keep children in school through 12th standard through our existing scholarships program scholarships program
- Two hours of after-school tutoring through tablet-based programs, as well as tablet-based literacy training for adults with a goal of 100 percent literacy in villagers aged 60 and under
- Help women start self-help groups through our women empowerment program
- Provide pensions to widows and the disabled through our lifetime financial aid program
- Set up waste management infrastructure with a goal of zero-waste production modeled after the waste management systems already in place in our institutions
- Increase green space in each village through our existing tree planting program
- Establish proper nutrition and food by teaching villagers to grow their own organic vegetables through our existing seed bank initiative
- Ensure access to clean drinking water and increase ground-water levels through rainwater-harvesting
- Foster healthy lifestyles through Amma’s Amrita Yoga and Integrated Amrita Meditation Technique (IAM Technique)
- Reduce the prevalence of alcoholism and cigarette smoking through awareness camps
