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:
People’s Wellness Ecological Regeneration Holistic Development of all (Holistic - Physical, Financial, Social, Natural, Intellectual, and Emotional) for All
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
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.
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
a. 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.
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 consultation 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.
b. Inpatient care Group Health Insurance Policy for farming communities
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.
e. 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 -- https://impact4nutrition.in/pledged-partners/)
2. Equity and Inclusion (Women Empowerment)
while women contribute significantly to farming activity their work regularly goes undervalued and underpaid. by imparting training on entrepreneurial skillsets mindsets we help close income gap while empowering them become more active contributors in decision-making across households communities helping promote gender-inclusive leadership. such story (https://www.fairtradenapp.org/shaping-the-future-of-women-in-her-rural-community-manita-singh-organic-india-farmer-producer-company-limited/)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
Project Kamdhenu
Inspired by the ‘celestial wish cow’, Kamdhenu, who could give her owner whatever he desired, this initiative aims to promote collective action on natural, sustainable, and organic agricultural practices while ensuring care for abandoned unproductive cattle.
There are several reasons for abandoning unproductive cattle in India, ranging from neglect of the indigenous cattle varieties to moving to mechanised farming to excessive usage of synthetic fertilizers vs natural manure-based fertilizers.
To battle this problem, Organic India Foundation has started a pilot project called Kamdhenu, in 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.
Consecutive years of drought coupled with indiscriminate use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides have degraded soil quality and severely impacted agricultural activity and subsequent livelihood in Rath. Organic India Foundation is assisting the local government in the PPP model by assisting cow shelters in caring for abandoned cattle and using cow dung to manufacture manure and vermicompost to enrich our soil naturally and prevent erosion. The manure is sold back to the community by the respective gram panchayat at extremely low prices to ensure the project remains sustainable.
The foundation has also established a local compost manufacturing unit and is conducting regular awareness workshops among farming communities to create awareness about the benefits and usage of nutrient-rich vermicompost.
With Kamdhenu, Organic India Foundation has not only helped farmers adopt soil health practices that reduce carbon emissions but also helped generate new income opportunities and increase 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 is leading to more unpredictable weather patterns like droughts and flash floods, which are impacting communities worldwide.
Our Paani Shakti program is helping communities conserve and use scarce water efficiently to achieve greater yields and pollute less water.
This pilot program is currently being run in Kilahua village in Uttar Pradesh, India, where over 70% of the area has no forest cover and 88% of the net sown area is un-irrigated. The majority of the farm irrigation in this area is heavily dependent on groundwater which is rapidly depleting due to excessive usage and lack of efforts to recharge the levels.
Under this program, Organic India Foundation is following a whole-village approach to make the villages water-secure. We are, therefore, providing infrastructural support to rejuvenate the defunct check dams (Jagdish Check dam in Kilhauwa village completed) and ponds (Mote ka Pond and Morar ka Pond in Kilhauwa village completed), and constructing dug-well recharge structures to recharge the underground aquifer.
Additional efforts on farm bunding and digging wells, as well as turfing of slopes of new banks with rough grass, planting trees and doob grass, and supplying organic manure for their upkeep, are helping to increase the water storage capacity of the soil and convert barren land into fertile farmland.
The Organic India Foundation is also partnering with the local Panchayat Community leaders to train farmers on low-cost soil and water conservation techniques including creating regional seed banks to promote local climate-resistant crop varieties to deliver greater productivity and build a resilient environmental ecosystem for future generations.
Through the last several years, Organic India Foundation has helped create solutions grounded in the context of their operating environments to deliver transformational outcomes across diverse ecological, social, and economic areas.
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 -- https://impact4nutrition.in/pledged-partners/)
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, in its mission to provide healthcare facilities to rural communities, runs a primary medical clinic in Azamgarh to provide basic healthcare services including medicines and doctors’ consultations for free. Similarly, the OIF organizes rotating health camps in and around the villages of the Hamirpur and Mahoba districts.
Another health challenge in rural communities is the lack of adequate funds to meet medical emergencies. This is because buying a regular health insurance policy is still a challenging and expensive prospect for vulnerable communities in rural areas. This leads to compromised care and an overall decline in health outcomes.
To meet this need, Organic India Foundation 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.
Take the case of Khurmulli Sahni, aged 70 yrs. (Haripur). A father to five daughters and one son, he had to leave his job as a bus driver due to failing kidneys. When his condition deteriorated in Oct 2020 and the family had almost given up hope, two Organic India Foundation outreach workers on their regular village visits, encouraged Khurmulli’s family to seek urgent medical attention. They also organized an ambulance to take him to a hospital. Khurmulli was treated for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and was successfully discharged after treatment, with the full charges being borne by his Organic India health insurance scheme. Today he continues to lead a healthy and happy life.
Examples like these demonstrate how accessible health insurance can vitally help people living in rural areas to afford quality medical care at the right time.
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.
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.
1) 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.
2) Ranjana Maurya, an ORGANIC INDIA FOUNDATION beneficiary commemorated as a beacon for farmer resilience
A life-enriching festival scheduled from 29th September – 8th October 2023, SOUL is a verdant space to celebrate ancient and modern healing practices. To register, click on https://soneva.com/soul/
