Rural Development
Bring solar lighting, sanitation facilities, strong local governance and much more in rural India
Challenge
Lack of sanitation facilities, Inadequate electricity,
Poor education infrastructure
Strategy
Infrastructure development, Community building,
Empowering local youth
Outreach
Water recharge pits built across Maharashtra,
Light a Home project
Overview
Rural India is calling! Not just for basics like sanitation, clean drinking water, electricity, economic development and so on. But for long-lasting change. Simply, because there is no point of building a toilet if no one uses it. No point of running a solar center if no one in the village can install solar lighting. No point of having a model village plan when problems of the community remain unaddressed.
With ever-growing numbers of villagers migrating to cities for better lifestyle and employment, there is an equal and bigger need to tend to the lack in rural India. And, to fix it. We believe that a key ingredient in the recipe for a sustainable change is community participation. Thus, when we build toilets, we sensitize masses to use them too. When we build solar centers, we train village youth to install and service solar lighting systems. When we talk about model villages, we gauge problems of a village and inspire the ones who understand them the best, the locals to become torchbearers of change.
In short, to us, infrastructure development walks hand-in-hand with people development. With this basic model, we are working to:
- provide solar lighting to remotest of villages
- empower rural youth and women with skill development training
- build toilets and ensure communities use them
- provide clean drinking water
- strengthen local governance
- making villages self-sustainable
Rural Development
Transform villages
Bring solar lighting, sanitation facilities, strong local governance and much more in rural India
Donate nowWith the Beacon Gram Panchayat training, we realized we can help curb menaces like addiction in our villages. The situation of addiction was extremely bad in our area. Boys as…
Sarita Devi
Ward member, SHG member, Bhandro, Jharkhand
India will be truly empowered when people at the grassroots start feeling confident about themselves, their way of life, their tradition and language.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Strategy
Our rural development projects follow a 3-step strategy which is implemented simultaneously:
Infrastructure development:
Be it through social infrastructures like skill centers or knowledge infrastructure like providing a knowledge framework for good governance, we make sure that we cater to the needs of the locals.
Empowering local youth for solution-driven action:
These local youth are developed on various facets by the Karma Yoga program (former YLTP). This gives them the skills, motivation, and abilities to initiate and lead service projects in their communities sustainably. We equip these youth leaders with technical know-how and finances to run a project.
- Community-building exercises:
We build communities through programs of The Art of Living. With communitybuilding exercises, we ensure that the whole community participates in the development of their village, making it a long-term success.
Impact
70,000 villages
reached in India
90,200 hygiene camps
conducted
2.5 lakh youth
trained in 402 districts of rural India
22 lakh farmers
trained in natural farming methods
3.1 lakh+ people trained
in various vocational skills over 14 years
110 model gram panchayats
being developed
1.11 lakh+ women trained
in vocational skills
3,819 homes
62,000+ toilets and 1000 biogas plants built
43,980
cleanliness drives conducted by volunteers
45,000+ individuals
from 12 states of India benefited through HIV/AIDS Awareness for Rural Adolescent (HARA) campaign
12,831 youths
benefited from de-addiction programs
3,588 Panchayat members
trained for good governance
Solar training boosts confidence of youth “The solar training gave us the foothold we needed in facing reallife challenges. It got us set up right from the basics in a…
Mayur Chauhari
Graduate of Solar Skill Training Center, Bengaluru
Yuvacharya drives villagers into action “I would go to the village and make them aware of the issues that need to be resolved, make them meditate and sing together. To…
Abhay Todkar
Yuvacharya, Dahiwadi Village, Satara