History of Overseas Volunteers for a Better India — OVBI
Volunteers for a Better India formed out of India’s citizen’s outcry on the Nirbhaya Rape in New Delhi. The organisation was for citizen’s action instead of blaming it all on the Govt.
In 2014, when PM Modi visited the US, individual volunteers and NGOs, specifically Art of Living volunteers asked what they can do to help, and there was a suggestion to form a group as Overseas Volunteers for a Better India.
Initially, projects were randomly taken on by smaller groups across the nation for whatever felt fitting. Great initiates stemmed out of this focusing on issues of farmers suicides (OVBI: Adopt a Village), human trafficking (OVBI: Project Udaan), water and sanitation (OVBI: Water is Life) and education in distressed communities (Art of Living: Care for Children).
2015–16 onwards, we focused on cleanliness to rise to PM Modi’s Swachta Abiyaan, Clean India movement. We wanted to address the Farmer’s Suicide rates and initiated work leveraging the Art of Living ‘s Youth Leadership Training Program. YLTP was launched in 2003 and has trained 5600 so far to be able to work to uplift distressed communities). These leads focused on an adopted village to address all its needs, including water, sanitation, education, gender issues, suicides, etc. We started a pilot program in Halgara village in Latur and soon realised that it is not viable and scalable to do it all. The cost/village was staggering when we were trying to do it all.
We also realised that if we solved the water issues, a lot of the other issues get resolved. We can address farmer’s suicides, migration, water-wives, girls education etc. So we made water structures our primary activity and then while the PMs work there, they can work on supporting activities including education, training and social interventions. So we engaged retired Geo-scientists from ISRO and Dr Lingaraju, who recommended an action plan to scale our efforts. So the fundraising from last year focused on just water. A training centre was formed under the leadership of Mahadev Gomare to train leaders to supply, demand and management of water resources for agriculture.
The organisation now has a renewed focus on Eliminating Water Poverty for rural India looing at the following stats:
- 85% of water is used for agriculture in India and currently
- Only 50% of the water need for agriculture is met. This impacts not only the farmer but also the entire social and economic foundation of the country.
- 20 million tube or bore wells that irrigate about 50% of agricultural land while our underground aquifers have bled dry
We reviewed the cause of the crisis to understand why are we facing the crisis:
- Over Population
- Deforestation
- Chemical farming
- Soil Erosion and siltation
- Overexploitation of groundwater
- Weak water conservation efforts
All of these are human-created issues and WE have to do something to address it. Our passionate overseas volunteers are stepped up to support the initiatives on the ground by providing expertise, planning, creating liaisons and above all raising funds to execute the projects to eliminate water poverty in India.
During the last three years, OVBI has worked with nearly 300 drought-stricken villages on water infrastructure and education. Partnering closely with government bodies, ex-ISRO scientists, other NGOs and local communities, OVBI has helped de-silting water bodies, build micro-dams, recharge wells in 140 villages. Building on this foundation and on-ground experience, OVBI is on a mission to Eliminate Water Poverty in 5000 villages by 2023 and scale it to the entire nation by 2030.
Our vision is to transform India from a state of water poverty to water plenty by 2030 and we have a reason to believe that we can.
Join us in Eliminating Water Poverty in India: www.eliminatingwaterpoverty.org
Overseas Volunteers for A Better India (OVBI) is a 501-©(3), IRS registered non-profit based in the United States with a mission to accelerate social impact projects in India. We are a non-political, non-religious and non-ethnic group managed and governed by Indian diaspora community leaders.
