For more than 30 years, Gram Vikas has taken a unique approach to development work. For them, sanitation is the key to good health, and community participation is the key to sustainability. “Sanitation” meant toilets and showers here; “participation”—a year-plus of hard work. Junash said Gram Vikas’s proposal was initially met with some resistance, as each of Engreda’s 130 families would have to do a “lot of work” that would cost “a lot of money.”
For Gram Vikas to work in a community, 100 percent of the people must agree and contribute, and after a short time, they did. But their involvement didn’t stop there.
After all 130 toilets and bathing rooms were constructed, community members then helped lay pipe from the well Gram Vikas constructed high in the mountain near a spring. It was tough going. Villagers spent more than a month breaking stones in the rocky ground, but beamed with pride at their achievement.
I sometimes hear people accuse those in the developing world of laziness. But the more I travel, the more I find that’s just not true. Communities like Engreda give what they have, even if it’s not the cold cash that comes easier for many of us. Written on the wall next to our contribution was theirs, and while not in the form of a check, its value far exceeded ours.
The stone, bricks, gravel, and labor the people of Engreda added to the project came to $19,851. At least half of that was sweat equity and calculated at the going rate of 17 cents an hour. For comparison, if their labor took place in the United States, where hourly minimum wage is $6.55, they’d have contributed more than $364,000 of labor value—58,345 hours. In that light, charity: water’s $7,822 contribution for the hard costs of piping, taps, and the water tower was a steal.
Bringing Water to India: a Dispatch from the Nonprofit World | GOOD
