Introduction
Amidst the political rhetoric about “India Shining” and the glaring statistic of 65% of India’s population being in the rural area, we questioned whether India was indeed shining. It seemed as though a fragment of India was developing rapidly and this was masking the real India- rural India. After some basic research and field trips, we realised that several villages lacked basic amenities such as clean drinking water, electricity, sewage disposal systems and disease prevention infrastructure, education and basic infrastructure. The presence of such squalid conditions was something we wanted to address.
In 2009, this gave birth to The Village Project – called Empowering Rural India, where we decided to "adopt" one village at a time and work with them with the objective of eradicating poverty and unemployment through a three-pronged strategy – Education, Infrastructure and Empowerment. This also helps us achieve the UN Millennium Development Objectives as well as the IB Mission goals: "Think Globally and Act Locally."
We hope to achieve our goals by an investment into practical interventions such as introducing means of income generation, empowering women and allowing them to contribute to the household income, implementing infrastructure and supplies for health care delivery, education, and communication. We believe that lasting changes in India’s villages will come about not through distribution of commodities, but through education for children and training for adults.