Water Blogged

The Thar Desert of India is an under-developed and poverty impacted area of Rajasthan State in India. The region suffers severely at the hands of frequent droughts due to extremely scanty and unpredictable rainfall. The annual average rainfall is around 500 mm in the east to less than 100 mm in the west and there is high variability from year to year. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for rural folk but frequent droughts smash their crops leading to great declination in land productivity. Due to seasonal migration people are forced to go to mines – the second largest source of livelihood in region. In lack of resources, health and education is often neglected part in Desert. There is a serious gap in the context of children’s education in remote locations. Schools are very few and the awareness levels to get children educated are very low. Water and sanitation facilities are very poor in schools.

Children particularly girls in rural area are deprived from education because of long distance and no sanitation facilities. As a result, a very small percentage of children of the population group go to schools and hence rests are bound to do household work at home. The project water health and sanitation for Schools children has catered the need of primary education in remote location in Desert. The children of community are getting quality education in four supported schools. Through project, GARVIS aim to main stream poor children giving them education, awareness generation and by creating an enabling environment to explore them.

The water, health and hygiene activities have been implemented Ghantiyali Primary School, Block Bap, District Jodhpur with the support of H2O for Life School.

The programs of GRAVIS are mainly committed towards wellbeing of rural community, particularly marginalized, children, women & elderly. The philosophy, in which GRAVIS believes, focuses on holistic development of villages through water, education and health amenities. Keeping this vision of organization in view, the objectives of the project are:

·        Create awareness of health & sanitation practices among community especially children.

·        To enhance water availability in school through physical interventions.

·        Improve health status of the children

·        To improve the school ambience leading to attain better education

Activities implemented at Ghantiyali Primary school 

Construction of Taanka: One rainwater harvesting tank was constructed near to school with a capacity of 20,000 liters water at a time. It was not possible to create an artificial catchment for taanka because of lack of sufficient land therefore roof water will be harvested through pipe. Govt. has also constructed one GLR (water reservoir) in village. When there will be no water in tank, it could be easily re-filled through reservoir.

Construction of School Toilets: Gender segregated toilets have been constructed at school to promote sanitation and hygiene among children. These toilets are helping girls to retain at school and enrollment of girls is gradually increasing.  Parents are feeling confident to send their girl child to school just because of toilet facility at school.

Awareness Camps/Trainings: Two health awareness camps were organized Ghantiyali school for children. The objective of such camps was to generate awareness about physical, mental health, and sanitation practices among children. In the training kids were known about hygiene like personal cleanness, taking bath every day, keep teeth clean, cutting nails, wash hand before taking food.

Medical Camps:Health is often neglected part of village lives in Thar Desert. Obstacles like lack of transportation, absence of healthcare providers and low quality services create barriers in between community and healthcare services. School going children are always deprived from medical facilities in lack of resources and long distance. GRAVIS hospital does medical camps to remote schools like Ghantiyali to give immediate relief to children in need. These camps are attended by one trained physician, one village health worker, and one social worker. In general term, these medical camps can be called as open OPD camps, which adhere to several issues of seasonal diseases, water borne diseases, vitamin A deficiency, fever, cough and colds, eye diseases and other children related problems. Though medical camps were for children but their parents also participated in camps and received best possible treatment and suggestions.