Water woes
SALONI GOPANI, 18 SALONI KUKREJA, 20
A sari-clad woman
carefully balancing pots of water on her head during her trek back home—isn’t that the quintessential image of rural India? The enthusiastic students behind Project Jalvruddhi could well change that picture with their bright blue Wello water wheels. Project Jalvruddhi, HR College student Saloni Gopani’s brainchild, came after months of primary research which lead the students to understand that purification, accessibility and availability of water was one of the major problems faced in rural Maharastra. “Pipelines had never worked in the villages in the district of Wada, and the people had resigned themselves to collecting water from the source. But it was very time-consuming,” says Gopani, one of the 30 who make up the student-run organisation, Enactus, at HR College.
Village Ways
When they came across Wello, manufacturer of the water wheel, the students realised that an economically viable solution existed but had never made it to the village. Similarly, the students found that there was an existing solution to the villagers’ problem of clean, potable water—Wockhardt’s filtration pills. “Considering electricity is either too expensive or not available, the pills were a more feasible solution,” explains Gopani. Project Jalvruddhi has managed to reach out to 28 villages till now. “We began to focus on creating a cross-subsidy model that will help fund Jalvruddhi. We taught the women from the villages to stitch tote bags, which we are now selling to corporates in bulk and retailing on e-commerce portals,” says Gopani. Website facebook.com/projectjalvruddhi