The Story of Karpatwadi

Karpatwadi, is an Adivasi village which we usually used to pass by while going to Pezwadi. By and by, it became familiar to us as the Sarpanch used to come visiting to Pezwadi as also children from Karpatwadi used to join some of the Saaraakassh distribution programs done in Pezwadi school. With the growing connect with people from Karpatwadi, we realized that here was a village with a difference! Education and overall awareness of the Sarpanch (Nathu Pardhi) and Upa-Sarpanch (Chandar Rama Pardhi) made a sea of difference facilitating the Saaraakassh work that we wanted to start there.

It was indeed a pleasure to know that there was a Karpatwadi Gaon Sudhar Samiti which had been established with a few villagers on board and a bank account too had been opened. This samiti with the inputs of all the villagers came up with ideas to make their village a model village. Also with the passage of time and growing experience, we too had learnt our lessons. We had gotten more focussed to keep ourselves within the fold of our vision. Within the Saaraakassh framework we first began with the repairing of school toilets, common kitchen shed for Zilla Parishad school and Aanganwadi with all facilities and distribution of stationery and sports equipments etc to the ZP school.

While we were working on all this we came across the problem of Alcoholism in the village. Thus it was decided to arrange a program in the village for the same. On the decided day, the rain gods decided to send a huge shower of untimely rain. However though the whole place was damp and the stage too had become wet, it did not dampen the indomitable spirits of the villagers and the Saaraakassh team. On October 19th, 2019 a full-fledged program was conducted with cultural events by the villagers, children and our team as well, and a motivational speech by Shri Ranjan Rao on Alcoholism. We also had a demonstration and talk on the benefits of doing daily Agnihotra to help purify the environment. The program ended with Sankirtan by none other than a budding team from Pejwadi (to whom we have donated musical instruments such as the harmonium, tabla, dholak, flute and mike systems). This was followed by a dinner for the entire village where we all sat and talked together under the moonlit night and could sense a spirit of positivity already seeping in. With sustained efforts the Alcoholism rate has come down to a small extent, though much more work needs to be done on this front.

Next, was the Ayurvedic Medical camp for the villagers. Though malnutrition was not a problem here, the villagers especially the women were anemic and had health issues. A medical camp with two senior Ayurvedic doctors and two juniors was conducted on December 14th, 2019 for the villagers of Karpatwadi. Medicines were also distributed on the same day by the doctors.

The next big project undertaken was the eye camp. We were fortunate to team up with Essilor Vision Foundation for this event. Team from Optifocus, Pune did the work of getting all the required machinery, for the check up. We had a training session for the Saaraakassh team and a few enterprising villagers who would carry out the initial screening process. This was done over a 2 week period and on 26th January 2020, we had the mega eye camp. We covered a total of 8 villages in the camp and 250 people got their eyes tested after the initial screening of 1500 people in these 8 villages. It was a herculean task of managing the crowd and 9 hours of hard work by the team of 3 doctors and 2 technicians. Spectacles were distributed free of cost on the same day and for a few they were sent after 10 days.

On the request of the villagers, Saaraakassh has now taken up the task of building a Samaj hall and a Vithal Rakumai temple in the village. The work for this has begun already. The purpose of a Samaj hall is to have a place where meetings, bhajans, and the Life skills camps for the children can be conducted. Any place of prayer helps the community to congregate and have an exchange of positive ideas. Since there was no temple in the village, we felt that this would be a right step to keep the atmosphere of positivity and brotherhood amongst the villagers sustained.

While our work thus goes on, the whole world has gotten gripped by the Pandemic Covid 19. As soon as the lockdown was announced, we realized that Karpatwadi and the surrounding villages, were completely isolated and would be without any means of food as most of these villagers work as daily wage labourers. Thus in this lockdown period, they would be in urgent need of ration supplies. Saaraakassh appealed to its well-wishers and donors to help in these challenging times. With the help of many such good Samaritans, Saaraakassh supplied groceries worth Rs.1200 per family, for immediate relief to help them tide through these tough times.

In the first week of April 2020, Saaraakassh reached out to many adivasi families across five villages and in the coming days was able to reach out to many more such villages. In May 2020, Saaraakassh covered 11 such villages. This would not have been possible without the tireless hardwork done by Shri Nathu and Shri Chandar of Karpatwadi who spearheaded the ration supply distribution across the 11 villages.

Here is a village which has shown us, how much can be achieved by simple unity and team work. Beautiful learnings that we are learning from our fellow adivasi brothers and sisters. Thus goes on the work in our third village…

Tathaasthu
Ravi & Shital...
To bring a smile to every wanting soul…