Organic India Foundation (OIF)

ORGANIC INDIA FOUNDATION

People’s Wellness

Ecological Regeneration

Holistic Development of all (Holistic - Physical, Financial, Social, Natural, Intellectual, and Emotional) for All

The Organic India Foundation (OIF) was established in 2006 to support the welfare of farming communities in rural India while promoting sustainable agriculture to ensure a healthier, safer future for all.

Organic India Foundation works with local rural farming communities in and around the operational areas of Organic India Private Limited (“Organic India”) with the purpose to serve.

OUR MISSION

To Promote and Support health and wellness in rural farming communities through projects related to healthcare and nutrition, environmental sustainability, and empowerment-led lasting upliftment of all.

We believe the collaborative effort is key to driving change and we partner with farmers, communities, government, non-profits, and peers to expand and amplify the impact of our work. Our 4-E Approach:

Educate

Engage

Enable

Empower

OUR FARMERS

Farmers are at the heart of everything we do at the Organic India Foundation.

We strive to understand current challenges and identify opportunities and potential solutions to help farmers, many of them from marginalized and excluded groups to become self-reliant and create a sustainable ecosystem to thrive and flourish.

Because when farmers succeed, their villages also prosper, leading to a collective enhancement of the quality of life.

INITIATIVES

Organic India

Based on a deep-dive analysis of the needs of the communities in which we operate, we have identified five pillars to guide our efforts.

1. Community (Human) Wellness

1.1 ) Outpatient Care

Organic India Foundation, in its mission to provide healthcare facilities to rural communities, runs a primary clinic in Azamgarh to offer basic medical care including medicines and doctors’ consultations for free. OIF also organizes rotating health camps in and around the villages of the Hamirpur and Mahoba districts.

I) Primary Healthcare Clinic in Azamgarh

To fulfill our commitment, we support the health of rural farming communities of Azamgarh through a primary clinic managed by two BAMS doctors in two shifts – morning and evening. We provide patients with medical consultations and medicines free of cost.

II) Healthcare Camps in Rath

We organize health camps at regular intervals to offer free medical consultation and medicines in the villages of Rath and other geographically dispersed and underserved areas.

1.2 ) Inpatient Care

I) Group Health Insurance Policy for farming communities

We have been providing health insurance facilities to farming families for the past 6 years. To meet this need, OIF has provided the farmers with an affordable, accessible, and easy-to-operate health insurance policy with an annual cover of Rs.50000/- per family. The beneficiary family of up to four members, including a spouse and two dependent and unmarried children (up to 25 years) is covered under the insurance program.

1.3) Educational Outreach (Preventative Care)

I) Water Sanitation and Hygiene, Health, and Nutrition, Ante- and Post- Natal Care, Menstrual Hygiene

At OIF, we organize regular awareness campaigns and workshops in the villages of Azamgarh and Rath to help educate the local population on topics including WASH, Health and Nutrition, ANC and PNC, MHM, etc. to enable them to lead a healthier and more conscious lifestyle.

1.4) Safe Drinking Water Availability

In regions where water is scarce and finding safe drinking water is extremely difficult, we have been working to recharge and restore groundwater levels through larger projects like rainwater harvesting and also supporting the immediate water needs by setting up a water filtration plant to help people avail safe drinking water and secure their health.

1.5) Anaemia Mukt Gaon

This is a recently launched program to address a pressing health issue currently prevalent in the whole of India.

Organic India Foundation is running a pilot program in Azamgarh in collaboration with Impact4nutrition [a platform to mobilize and engage the private sector in building a social movement (Jan Aandolan) to support the POSHAN Abhiyaan project] to address anemia through its prophylactic management and T3 (test, treat and talk) strategy across two target groups i.e., adolescent girls (10-19 years of age) and in pregnant and lactating women.

Link to Pledged Partners of Impact4Nutrition

2. Equity and Inclusion (Women Empowerment)

While women contribute significantly to farming activity, their work is often undervalued, and underpaid. By imparting training to women on entrepreneurial skillsets and mindsets we help close their income gap while empowering them to become more active contributors in decision-making across households and communities — helping promote gender-inclusive leadership. (one such story - Read Here)

Educate, Engage, Enable, and Empower

This approach helps us address any given problem holistically with ensured participation and hence empowerment of the beneficiary group. Participation-led empowerment lasts and helps implement our agenda of raising consciousness among communities and sustainability to foster inclusive and sustainable development.

3. Environmental Sustainability

We have helped create innovative solution blueprints for favourable economic, environmental, and social ecosystems, as well as promote healthy lifestyles and conscious living via sustainable and regenerative organic agriculture through education, training, and infrastructure support.

a) Integrated Soil Fertility Management

Project Kamdhenu : Project Kamdhenu promotes collective action on sustainable, and organic agricultural practices while ensuring care for abandoned cattle.

Project location: RATH, a small town in the drought-prone Bundelkhand region, District Hamirpur of Uttar Pradesh, India, and one of the operational areas of Organic India. Years of drought and indiscriminate use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides have degraded soil quality and impacted agricultural livelihood.
OIF is assisting local cow shelters to use cow dung to manufacture manure and vermicompost, which is sold back to the community by the gram panchayat at nominal prices to keep the project sustainable.
The foundation has also established a local compost manufacturing unit and conducts awareness workshops to educate about natural soil health practices.
Project Kamdhenu has helped farmers adopt soil health practices that enrich the soil, prevent erosion, reduce carbon emissions, and generate new income opportunities including the market for bio-based products.

b) Water Conservation

Conserving our water resources is a key sustainability challenge in building our resilience to climate change. Organic India Foundation is promoting collective action on water conservation and responsible usage by providing technical, infrastructural, and informational support as well as strengthening capacity within communities to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Paani Shakti Climate change has increased droughts and flash floods, impacting communities worldwide.

Our Paani Shakti program is helping communities conserve and use water efficiently while achieving greater agricultural yields.

Project Location: Kilahua village in Uttar Pradesh, India, where over 70% of the land has no forest cover, 88% of the net sown area is un-irrigated and farm irrigation is dependent on the depleting groundwater.

The Paani Shakti Project is using a multi-layered approach to increase the soil’s water retention capacity and revive barren farmland by:

• Constructing dug wells and rejuvenating defunct check dams (Jagdish Check dam in Kilhauwa village) and ponds (Mote ka Pond and Morar ka Pond in Kilhauwa village) to recharge the underground aquifer.
• Farm bunding & planting doob grass and trees on new bank slopes.
• Setting up seed banks to promote local climate-resistant crop varieties

OIF has also partnered with the local Panchayat Community to train farmers on soil and water conservation techniques to build a resilient environmental ecosystem.

SOCIAL

Anaemia Mukt Gaon

With almost 50% of women and 59% of children under 5 years of age suffering from low hemoglobin, anemia has become a severe public health crisis in India. Organic India Foundation is running a pilot program in Azamgarh in collaboration with Impact4nutrition [a platform to mobilize and engage the private sector in building a social movement (Jan Aandolan) to support the POSHAN Abhiyaan project] to address anemia through its prophylactic management and T3 (test, treat and talk) strategy across two target groups i.e., adolescent girls (10-19 years of age) and in pregnant and lactating women. Link to Pledged Partners of Impact4Nutrition) Our outreach and outpatient care programs are designed with specific context-based targets with deadlines to ensure regular progress monitoring of the indicators.

Organic India Foundation Inpatient and Outpatient Care Program

Organic India Foundation is offering free medical care to rural communities by running a primary clinic in Azamgarh and organizing rotating health camps in and around the villages of the Hamirpur and Mahoba districts.

In addition to this, OIF is offering farmers an affordable, accessible, and easy-to-operate health insurance policy with an annual cover of Rs.50000/- per family, which includes four members, including the spouse and two dependent and unmarried children ( up to 25 years).

Case in point: 70-year-old Khurmulli Sahni of Haripur. A father of 6 children, he had lost his job and his condition was deteriorating due to kidney failure. Two OIF outreach workers organized an ambulance and convinced Khurmulli’s family to take him to the hospital. Khurmulli was successfully treated for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), with the full medical expenses borne by the Organic India health insurance scheme. Examples like these demonstrate how accessible health insurance can help vulnerable communities afford timely and quality medical care.

ECOLOGICAL

Project Kamdhenu

Project Kamdhenu promotes collective action on sustainable, and organic agricultural practices while ensuring care for abandoned cattle. Project location: RATH, a small town in the drought-prone Bundelkhand region, District Hamirpur of Uttar Pradesh, India, and one of the operational areas of Organic India. Years of drought and indiscriminate use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides have degraded soil quality and impacted agricultural livelihood. OIF is assisting local cow shelters to use cow dung to manufacture manure and vermicompost, which is sold back to the community by the gram panchayat at nominal prices to keep the project sustainable. The foundation has also established a local compost manufacturing unit and conducts awareness workshops to educate about natural soil health practices. Project Kamdhenu has helped farmers adopt soil health practices that enrich the soil, prevent erosion, reduce carbon emissions, and generate new income opportunities including the market for bio-based products.

Tips

The above initiatives have enabled us to bring positive, measurable impact to the farming communities while demonstrating the value of organic, nature-based solutions, convincing more people to get involved to amplify the impact on people and ecosystems.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Recognition of Project Paani Shakti by CII-Triveni Water Institute as a “Noteworthy Project in Water management” at CII National Awards for Excellence in Water Management 2022.

Ranjana Maurya, an ORGANIC INDIA FOUNDATION beneficiary commemorated as a beacon for farmer resilience

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