A Lovely Summer
What an excellent summer, beginning in June with our extraordinary evening at King’s and continuing with Priyanka Singh’s visit to the UK in September.
Priyanka was able to share her experience of presenting at the Philanthropic Summit in Barcelona, hosted by JP Morgan. Seva Mandir was one of just three NGO’s invited to attend. This is hugely important to Seva Mandir and couldn’t come at a more important time, with several funding streams coming towards the natural end of their cycle. The summit provided a platform to tell the incredible story of Seva Mandir and explain the significant challenges they face today.
At our Annual General Meeting on 10th September, Priyanka expressed her deepest gratitude to all Friends, painting a vivid picture of the huge impact that our funding supports. Delivering sustainable natural resource through clean drinking water is just one such example so well described below.
Clean Drinking Water
In Southern Rajasthan, the need for water is primarily met from open dug wells and hand pumps. Pumps are the cleaner water source but they are not evenly spread throughout the area and their irregular maintenance reduces reliability. The inevitable consequence is that the villagers are exposed to unsafe water sources which increase the risk of water borne disease, especially among young children.
With the help of the UK Friends, Seva Mandir has created provision of clean drinking water for hundreds of families in the villages of Jogiyon ka guda (home to 195 families across 4 hamlets) and Dhanodhar, home to 160 families across 7 hamlets.
Seva Mandir’s work begins with meeting villagers and engineers to understand the specific problem as a basis for exploring technological, social and management solutions.
Separate meetings are held with the village women’s groupsto explain the importance of clear water and get buy in to the planning. In both villages, women have been appointed to oversee the work.
In Jogiyon ka guda and Dhanodhar, Seva Mandir provides support through community water tanks, well restoration, hand pump repair and home based filters, delivering a long-term benefit to very many families in these villages.
Thanks to this and other similar projects, Seva Mandir has helped over 16,000 villagers to gain access to clean drinking water.