The change was initiated by UNICEF under its Integrated Village Planning Project with the help of Saarthi Foundation. The project has already covered around fifty per cent of the over 350 villages of Lalitpur district. The project works on the premise of sustainable development of village through direct involvement of people and so has formed various Samuhas (groups). The groups — Bal Samuha, Kishori and Kishor Samuha and Mahila Samuha— hold regular meetings to discuss issues and share ways to tackle them.

Each village today has an information centre that has detailed information on the village — the number of houses, literacy rate, level of HIV/AIDS awareness, immunization data, number of school-going children and sanitation facilities.

In a year’s time, the villagers have learnt to address their problems and find solutions. Each village chalks out its work schedule and it is painted prominently on a wall for every one to read. On reading about the absence of a toilet in Tal Behet village on one such wall, the children took the initiative to do something about it. They got an application with signatures of all villagers and stormed into the office of the Block Development Officer (BDO). ‘‘He asked us to get the pits dug and promised to get money released for a pucca toilet in a week,’’ says Anup, the leader of Bal Samuha of the village.

The work schedule includes what needs to be done and the name of the person responsible for it. ‘‘The purpose is to make them self-sufficient and fight their own battle, because we will eventually move on to other places,’’ says Shafqat. He says their brief is to get the villagers used to a clean and decent life and ‘‘once they are, they will themselves demand their rights.’’

... contd.