Why VLIF

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The Village Life Improvement Foundation has pioneered a sanitation-centered, preventive approach aimed at significantly improving health and productivity in rural communities, serving as a cornerstone for poverty alleviation efforts.

Seventy percent of the population of India – 700+ million people – live in villages that have little or no infrastructure for providing safe water, promoting sanitation, and managing human waste. It is widely known that the sanitary conditions in India, especially in the countryside, need to be addressed, and that the present public health facilities are overwhelmed by preventable waterborne diseases. Despite well-intentioned curative approaches (such as less expensive or free medicines), necessary as they are, these problems have persisted. Parallel efforts to put resources into well-conceived integrated preventive endeavors are required, otherwise these problems will not only persist, but will keep growing.

Village Life Improvement Foundation has thoughtfully designed a unique holistic approach to tackle these distressful sanitary conditions head on, with the aim of putting villagers on a path towards increased prosperity. The focus is on public health, with an emphasis on water and sanitation infrastructure facilities, along with upgraded education, personal hygiene, women’s empowerment, and livelihood development; by fostering these synergistic and interlinked initiatives, we aim to cultivate mutually reinforcing outcomes that benefit communities holistically.

The VLIF program was started in the year 2000 in village Kharaudi, Punjab, India, and has a long-standing record of successful interventions. Leadership is provided by Diaspora/NGO in conjunction with their ancestral village communities – the primary stakeholders – with financial assistance coming from national, state and local governments, foundations and individual donors.