Enabling self-sufficiency at Kanhai Village

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” As part of our SIP project, this is what we are trying to do in Kanhai Village located in Gurgaon, Haryana, enabling self-sufficiency. We are a five member team from SOIL- Ashray, Abhishek, Anirban, Geeta and Bhavna, working closely with close to 70 BPL (Below Poverty Line) families in Kanhai. We are enabling these villagers to become self-sufficient in the key areas of Health and Education.

As part of the initiatives, we have conducted a health camp with Max India Foundation, an AIDS awareness camp with SRF Foundation and recently a Polio awareness camp. In the coming months, we are planning to undertake more such camps in partnership with other NGO’s. Getting into a project like this makes you recognize the disparity that exists in the country and realize that the things that we take for granted in our daily lives like sanitation, personal hygiene etc, can be such an alien concept to these families. However, we are overwhelmed by the support that we have got from the people here and are very thankful to the Sarpanch of the Kanhai who has lent us tremendous support.

The best part of being associated with SOIL and such a project is knowing that the work we are doing here will not be forgotten once our batch passes out, but will be continued by our succeeding batches. It is very difficult to capture our experience and our emotions in words; the only thing we can say is that we are very thankful to SOIL for enabling such a humbling experience and allowing us to be a part of change.

Contributed by - Ashray, Abhishek, Anirban, Geeta and Bhavna