Village Groups
Village Alive
The Village Alive Project (VAP) has grown out of an earlier project supported by American Leprosy Missions to help poor villages improve their conditions. The original project centred on education, income generation and village improvements such as water pumps.
The VAP team carries out household surveys to find out what the villagers regard as their main problems. This often establishes that poverty, education and hygiene are the biggest issues. The team then develops an action plan, agreed with the villagers, to tackle these problems. The villagers, including many women, “sign” this agreement with a thumb print.
Village improvements
The VAP team makes many visits to help the villagers bring the improvements that they want. These can include:
- The establishment of women’s groups to encourage the women to take an active part in all developments;
- New road drainage channels to prevent flooding in the monsoon;
- Light bulbs fixing on to street poles;
- Water pumps and toilets;
- Training as Rural Health Facilitators for some local women;
- The establishment of weekly adolescent girls groups to discuss personal hygiene, education, adult literacy and other issues;
- Encouraging those girls who go to school to give free literacy lessons to other girls;
- The establishment of farmers’ groups for village development.
Moving forward
Support from various organisations such as Sasakawa, a Japanese foundation, and Irish Aid have enabled the VAP team to work with ten different villages over the years.
These villages were all marked by the ravages of deep poverty. Now they are changing into places where hope is a normal feeling, where livelihoods are developing strongly, and where education and health are understood and valued.
Funds are being sought to continue work with another ten villages, building on the lessons learned from the work so far.
Empowering for life
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