Endorsements
WHAT STUDIES SAY ABOUT OUR WORK
We were honoured with a surprise visit by the then President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam who visited our first project – Village Kharaudi. He was kind enough to pay high tributes to the VLIF development project’s conception and realization.
During his visit, Dr. Kalam declared Kharaudi as Model Village No. 1 in Punjab. People and officials from all over Punjab come to visit Kharaudi and other VLIF-developed villages, which are serving as a beacon for others to notice and emulate.
Ms. Shipra Saxena, an M&E consultant for drinking water supply to the Ministry of Rural Development of the GOI was sent by President Kalam to make an assessment of the integrated development project in Kharaudi and other modernized villages in March of 2005. She observed in her report entitled, “Kharaudi Village in Punjab, Model of Cleanliness: Can This Model Meet the Total Sanitation Challenge in India?”,
“…General well-being and health benefits being realized and reported.”
(see: ddws.nic.in/casestudy_kharoudi.pdf, page 10
VLIF commissioned an Impact Assessment Study to gauge the benefits of the program. One of the significant preliminary findings of our holistic approach is that the diarrheal morbidity in the completed villages dropped by 70%; ‘The Impact Assessment of Village Life Improvement Projects in Punjab’ by Dr. Gurmail Singh and Dr. Sawarn Singh, was published by Punjab Development Society (Regd.) Jalandhar, August 2007, p 30.
JOB CREATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The establishment of infrastructure facilities in Kharaudi created new jobs and small businesses in the village. These jobs and businesses require low technical knowledge and can be easily filled by villagers. These new jobs Include a full time computer instructor, a gardener, and four part time maintenance people for the sewerage and water systems, and for maintenance of solar lights and street cleaning.