EHA

Spandana is working in 200 villages, and has three components.

The first is the Reproductive and Child Health Programme. This is to help improve the situation of the health of mothers and infants. The poverty, coupled with beliefs in myths about pregnancy result in the prevalence of widespread anaemia and malnutrition among these. With the help of Spandana many villages now have Village Health Committees, which, with increasing awareness, are trying to help solve local health hazards with participation of the people. Spandana facilitated the training of 1721 members in the areas of health and development. 46 open wells were treated so that 1857 families could have access to safe drinking water, thereby reducing the diseases they are exposed to.

154 Self Help Groups are functional, which together have received loans adding up to Rs 44,00,000 at low interest rates from banks. The money has been invested in income generating activities like animal husbandry and shops.

Spandana also has an HIV/AIDS component. Lakhnadon and Chhapara are located a along National Highway (NH-7) and HIV/AIDS are largely transmitted by truck drivers who have unprotected sex with commercial sex workers. Along with this, 71% of the men of the area migrate to cities in search for work, and contract the disease there. Through the year 3229 people were tested by the project, out of which 12 were HIV positive. Awareness about HIV/AIDS have been spread among the people in the villages and also among truck-drivers, and 20,770 condoms were distributed in the year. A rally, which had around 1000 participants from the local community, was conducted in Lakhnadon on World AIDS day.

Spandana's Watershed and Agriculture project was started in the past year to help the people deal with the low rainfall and falling ground water table. The construction of 22 check-dams, 48 mud dams and 32 water tanks helped 3349 farmers to get water for irrigation, and in 50 locations, the ground water is being recharged successfully. All of these efforts help the agriculture of the area, which in turn reduces the poverty and improves the food security of the people. If these are improved, the farmers will not be forced to migrate to cities, which brings its own problems with it.