Action Related to the Organization of Education, Health and Nutrition (Aroehan)

AROEHAN has been working in the Mokhada tahsil of Palghar district since 2006. Initiated as a Field Action Project of the College of Social Work, Nir Read moremala Niketan to address the issue of malnutrition deaths of tribal children in the region. It is today an autonomous non-profit organization working in the thematic areas of Health, Education, Livelihood, and Governance. In the last decade, AROEHAN has increased its footprint across Mokhada, Jawhar, Palghar, and Dahanu and established credibility in the area especially for its work in water conservation, solar-based irrigation and for introducing farmers to second cropping during the rabi season for growing vegetables and engaging in floriculture. In its quest for bringing sustainable change to the lives of tribal and the rural poor, AROEHAN works closely with villagers through pada samitis, women’s groups, statutory committees of the Gram Panchayat and through the Gram Sabha, seeking to empower villagers to engage in participatory decision-making regarding village development; it also works closely with the Government departments acknowledging that if change is to be sustainable, systems must endure. The projects that are thus undertaken by AROEHAN exercises in deepening democracy which while facilitating better services for the villagers, bringing in the corporates to introduce certain technology and help with services, also try to link villagers and concerned government departments with the change process such that the organisation can exit a geographical area or an issue area after a reasonable time and the villagers can own the change that has been facilitated. Till date, AROEHAN has built close to 196 small and medium-sized check dams, sub-surface bunds, cordons and loose boulder structures, and has repaired defunct wells, built new wells to recharge the groundwater and raise the water table in at least 13 different gram panchayats of Mokhada alone. This has resulted in storing crores of litres of water and reduced the number of ‘thirst days’ these villagers face every year. Apart from drinking water, additional water availability has also encouraged some villagers to make their own bricks and to increase the land under agriculture. AROEHAN today has more than 400 farmers across the tahsil who have augmented their incomes through moving beyond rain-fed, primitive agriculture and growing vegetables using techniques like drip irrigation, mulching, etc.