Community Empowerment

Achieving Social Justice: The caste system is a system of social stratification that began in India several thousand years ago. Despite its ancient origin, Indians from low castes (usually the poor) are still to this day discriminated against and this impedes their ability to rise out of poverty. HEAL has made social justice a major part of the organization’s priorities. We connect community leaders with the authorities that govern land rights. Once land rights are given, community members can apply for grants to construct permanent homes and wells. As a result of these efforts, a number of our communities, previously composed of hundreds of huts made of clay and plastic, now have small, one-room homes made of brick to protect their families during the monsoons. HEAL’s hope is to pursue these measures in all of our communities. With ownership comes the ability to invest and improve one’s situation. These advocacy issues are also incorporated into the empowerment process previously described.

Health Education: The majority of communities in which we serve are characterized by a high prevalence of disease and other maladies, many which could be eradicated through preventative measures. In the absence of HEAL’s efforts, local prevention or remedies are often based on tradition or non-reputable sources passed from generation to generation with little progress. HEAL seeks to provide these communities with a better understanding of what causes disease and how to prevent disease transmission. Social workers teach focused lessons on topics of particular concern in the slums where they work. They average one large-group lesson a month in each community, while countless smaller lessons take place one-on-one each day. Topics range from HIV and cancer to simple first aid and sanitation. The HEAL team helps organize medical camps in which doctors and specialists from the city provide free consultations, treatments, and referrals. In conjunction with other community groups, HEAL also organizes rallies, flag-raising ceremonies, and awareness-building campaigns for major diseases and threats.

Gardening & Sustainability: When HEAL first began its work, the land in the majority of our communities was barren—characterized by nothing but hundreds of scattered huts made from clay and plastic tarp coverings. We would discuss with these communities the importance of nutritive foods, but they could not afford to purchase such foods, nor did they have access to the resources required to plant them. Accordingly, HEAL began its gardening and sustainability program. our social workers provide seeds once every three years and teach the villagers how to garden. The communities then enthusiastically do the rest. They grow beans, squash and leafy greens in small patches of dirt around their huts and, when that space is gone, their gardens often extend up and over their huts. In the first three years of the program, HEAL helped create almost 8,000 gardens. In many of the communities where HEAL has served the longest, gardens can now be found outside nearly every home, with trees providing much needed shade and – in some cases – fruit. In younger communities, much work still needs to be done to promote the use of gardening. The program has also allowed women to earn extra income by selling surplus produce. Along with the gardens, villagers are encouraged to maintain compost pits, and hundreds are created each year. In one major advocacy effort, HEAL helped communities obtain over 10,000 trees donated by the state government. The trees beautify the slums, help with run-off in the rainy season, and often provide edible fruit.

Infrastructure: Water and sanitation are major concerns for the communities where HEAL operates. Individuals are waiting in long lines every morning to collect water for daily use. The water supply is often contaminated. In the absence of toilet facilities, individuals walk up to 2 kilometers to find privacy in open fields littered with human waste and flies. Many of those fields are cohabited by poisonous snakes, scorpions, and bees. Early on in HEAL’s work, we began to assist our communities in obtaining the necessary infrastructure to support their water and sanitation needs. In 2006, for example, HEAL solicited help from LDS Humanitarian Services, who drilled eight bore hole wells and constructed 54 latrines. As more needs have arisen and some of those wells have run dry, we have connected again with LDS Humanitarian Services and other non-profit or government organizations to continue the work of meeting communities’ infrastructure needs. The communities provide all the labor and the salary for someone to maintain the wells. They also agree to build storage tanks and, in some advanced communities, pipe systems to bring the water to each lane. Additionally, in an effort to combat disease in slums, HEAL educates villagers about hygiene in their streets. For example, we conducted lessons on how to build simple drainage pits to prevent unsanitary conditions. In the first year of the program alone, over 2,000 drainage pits were built.

Education: Many slum children drop out of the public school system at a very early age. Because education seems so out of reach for many of the parents in these communities, their children receive very little encouragement at school. Additionally, because many of the parents have to work all day, they often require that the older children stay at home to help care for their younger siblings. Many children drop out of school as a result and – as one might imagine – this unfortunate pattern only serves to propagate the cycle of poverty amongst HEAL’s communities. The children grow up with access to the same limited set of opportunities that their parents had. Accordingly, HEAL has made education a major part of its overall mission in our communities. HEAL operates a number of primary schools in the slums of Hyderabad. We provide a small salary for a local mother to teach basic math and English/Telegu literacy. The schools act as both a crèche, allowing mothers to work, and as prep schools to motivate struggling drop-outs to return to free government schools in the area. HEAL schools successfully return children to their second and third grade classes in primary school, and government teachers report that they are exceptionally well-prepared students. Local boarding schools also use HEAL as a resource for identifying promising students in the slums. The boarding schools then offer scholarships for these students to study with them. HEAL social workers are able to connect students with opportunities that would otherwise unavailable. HEAL has also partnered with other organizations to provide vocational training to young women. With the use of sewing machines donated by the local Rotary Club, for example, instructors teach young women a skill that can provide for their families.

Women’s Groups: Women play a critical role in promoting lasting change. In most societies the most effective agents of change tend to be women. Time and again women are more willing to mobilize, more willing to change old social norms, and quicker to scale up to new groups of organization if they see that a process provides hope for making their children’s future better. Early on in HEAL’s work, we recognized that women, while being the group with the highest potential for influencing their communities toward positive change, were also the most under-utilized. Many in our communities were subject to abuse and a lack of work, education, or other resources to assist in changing the circumstances of their families or communities. As a result of this realization, HEAL has partnered with various state and national organizations to help women organize themselves in our communities. In doing so, many obtain access to capital or employment training which allows them to be self-sufficient—in many cases, for the very first time. HEAL social workers also encourage women to organize into groups of 10 to 15. These groups save and self-insure against illness and funeral expenses, connect to microfinance lenders, begin micro businesses together, and plan water management in their communities. Some groups take turns giving each group member a loan so that each member one at a time is able to make an major investment in her business.