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New Era of Transforming Lives
An Unprecedented Height
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New era of transforming lives |
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Otar is one of the remote villages in Hathiya Panchayat, situated around 12 km from Chakradharpur sub-division of West Singhbhum district. The village has total population of 353, out of which males constitutes 183, whereas female constitute 170 of the population. The Scheduled Castes male population of the village is 180, followed by female population 170. As far as level of literacy is concerned, data reveals that female literacy of the village is 23 per cent, which is found to be less than male literacy at 72 per cent.
The village lacks in basic physical amenities or facilities such as non-availability or inadequate government or private schools, hospitals, dilapidated road conditions and inadequate means of transportation. These results adverse affects on socio-economic condition of community members. Among all these listed problem, inadequate employment opportunities is major cause of concern for the villagers as they are entirely dependent on agriculture to supplement their livelihood options. However, lack of proper irrigation facilities, credit and lending mechanism, lack of inappropriate technology to improve productivity results the high volume of migration in different sector such as brick kilns, mining, domestic labour, readymade factory, etc.
SMVM has been entrusted to improve their socio-economic conditions of the villagers under the project titled 'Livelihood Prototype Scheme', supported by Meso Pariyojana (Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of Jharkhand).
To understand the underlying issues and uncovered pertinent facts, rapport building was the first strategy. It has been done through organising series of meetings and sensitisation programmes for the villagers. This strategy was instrumental in winning confidence of villagers. After few successive meetings, the organisation was able to identify the potential beneficiaries of the villagers and subsequently formed CBOs. This was aimed to put skills and expertise of CBO members together, it was also intended to inculcate the sense of ownership, this was felt requisite aspect to ensure the sustainability of the project.
SMVM started work with the construction of check dam and pond digging, etc. The dam and ponds had multiple uses for the community such as crop production, plantation, etc. Apart from that 40 compost pits had also been constructed. The work has been completed within the short span of time on account of constant endeavour of villagers and CBO members.
Now villagers can cultivate vegetables, fruits and sell into the local market throughout the years. All these facilities immensely helped to generate and increase their level of income to cater the needs of the members of the family. Since, it to be believed that, youths is most productive element. After, out interaction and discussion, now, youths are also taking keen interest in agriculture production. Their engagement in a villages based agriculture production is increasing the productivity and also bringing the economic growth and prosperity for their families and village as a whole.
The organisation has merely shared the different techniques of deployment of the availed resources of the villages, mould the skills of villagers especially youths and CBOs through capacity building on various aspects and also sensitise them through meetings and exposure visits and further, guided them to sustainable livelihood options. Hence, the intervention has transformed the lives of the villagers and proved boon for villagers.
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