Marathwada Navnirman Lokayat Manavlok

Manavlok has established Anganwadi Kendras in many villages in partnership with the State Government. It has set up night-study schools to provide education to children who have dropped out of school and also runs training centres and colleges to aid the skill development of the local people. Its efforts include running a social college, hostels, training centres and auditoriums, skill training, toy banks, playgroup centres and the Dr Shaila Lohiya study centre for women.

It works in the drought-prone regions of Marathwada to develop water bodies and construct water harvesting structures mobilizing the local community for help. The efforts include the construction of Continuous Contour Trenches, strengthening soil by packing it up with loose boulders and stones, farm ponds, bunds, desilting ponds and using it in farms, digging water recharge shafts, rejuvenation of rivers and tube wells, cleaning canals and saline soil reclamation.

Manavlok is active in the space of agriculture helping farmers by supporting dry land horticulture, setting up farmer producer organisation support centres, agro-based processing industries clusters, krushak panchayats, production enhancement for local crops, supporting the formation of FPOs and FPCs, distribution of seeds and fertilizers, increasing accessibility to farming equipment, conducting animal care camps and promoting organic farming.

It helps the community with health care initiatives like implementing initiatives to stop the spread of TB, community-based monitoring and planning connecting authorities with the villagers, conducting camps to help fit artificial limbs, free cataract diagnosis and surgery camps, conducting awareness and capacity-building workshops, installation of hemodialysis, sonography machine units and oxygen concentrators.

It fights for the people's rights and ensures that social welfare schemes launched by the Government reach beneficiaries through its advocacy group ‘Jansahyog’. This group spreads awareness about beneficial schemes and enables people to access the same. It has also organised many gheraos and demonstrations before the village authority offices to trigger positive action.

Besides these activities, the organisation has also set up domestic worker's associations, conducts workshops on efficient rural development, imparts training, distributes clothes, medicines and fed senior citizens, supports widowed women entrepreneurs by distributing cattle and organises community kitchens to feed the needy.

Marathwada is unfortunately infamous for drought. MANAVLOK implements several activities in hundreds of villages to minimize the problems of people due to drought and make village water abundant. The best way to tackle this scarcity is watershed development. As Man and his environment are interdependent, the changes in the surrounding environment directly affect the lives of the people depending on it. We are implementing following activities to achieve the goal of drought proof village.

For senior citizens who are staying alone and not getting support from their children, minimum age 65. They are identified by a village committee of 5 people; they need to pay Rs 200 per month. Actual cost is Rs 40 per day per head for 2 unlimited meals (Along with Sweet dish on festivals and special occasions), so about Rs 1200 per month per person. We return the Rs 200 collected in the form of different aids to them such as, Tiffin’s, Blankets, and Solar Lamps etc. during Diwali. The reason we collect Rs 200 is that the seniors can complain in case of any deficiency in service, they should be treated with respect by the women running the kitchen, so if they pay they will complain, mainly we want to add “Dignity”, the seniors should not feel burdened with “Dana”. We appoint a needy woman, who has a gas connection; we pay her Rs 40 per day per head. On average she feeds 10+ seniors twice a day, and she earns Rs 3 to 4000 per month. Our experience in the 28 kitchens we run shows the women are very satisfied. Once in a year we give these women Mixer Grinder, Solar Lamp, Cooker etc. as bonus. The seniors eat in the women's house, which does the cleaning too. Team MANAVLOK visits the kitchen without any prior notice and checks the quality, quantity and hygiene of the service by these women kitchen holders. This way it works full proof system. This has resulted in the following benefits to our seniors