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December 2013 Trip

Mahila Mandals and Self-Help groups

The self-help groups include those from other panchayats as well, while Mahila Mandals have started up across a total of 11 villages within a variety of panchayats but all are located in the Thondamathur block.

Group of women in on CORD Siruvani's 11 Mahila Mandals

Leprosy in Coimbatore district

A leprosy awareness program was conducted to one of the Mahila Mandals on the morning of December 17th, 2013. The awareness program discussed topics such as the signs and symptoms of leprosy, the diagnostic process of leprosy and the importance of early treatment. They also discussed public health precautions surrounding leprosy as well as the number of local cases that their team had treated in the past. Treating roughly around 6 cases per year and 30 cases in the past seven years, their team strives to provide financial government compensation for those who are affected as well.


 Guest speakers conduct a leprosy awareness program to a Mahila Mandal

TOILETS:

CORD Siruvani has made efforts to construct toilets for the community in an effort to curb open defecation. Dr. Meera explained that they first built a honeycomb structure surrounding an open space, dug a deep pit, inserted cement rings to prevent the liquid from collecting. This allows the fecal water to leave through the rings and the fecal matter to decompose into the ground.

Dr. Meera explains the engineering behind CORD Siruvani's latrine. 
Unfortunately, due to an increase in labor prices, CORD was unable to build more toilets within the community. CORD Siruvani intends to continue to build toilets utilizing the twin pit method, which takes advantage of nutrient cycling in order to provide future fertilizer.


STAGNANT WATER
Another issue that arose in many villages was stagnant water in miniature wells. Stagnant water can cause dengue fever and it also serves as a potential breeding ground for infectious diseases such as hookworm and malaria. Underdeveloped sanitation systems is a large concern as it is one the leading causes of the spread of infectious diseases.

A potential mosquito breeding ground and harboring of dengue fever.


Dr. Meera pointed out the open drainage system, in which we could see food wrappers, maggots, and a thick black-green slime. She explained that there needs to be a grassroots initiative to clean up and maintain the open drainage system. Since the system was not built on a slope, there is stagnant water, which leads to a multitude of health issues in the area.

CHAANI POWDER
An environmentally healthy practice and a preventative of TB, the spread of cow dung was traditionally widespread. Recent media marketing, however, has popularized a powdery substance called chaani (meaning cow dung) powder within the community. Regardless of being known to be carcinogenic and toxic, chaani powder is regularly spread out in the front of 75% of people’s homes for an aesthetic appeal.  As a result of its usage for suicide, the selling and usage of the powder was deemed illegal by the state government. Unfortunately, due to poor enforcement and smuggling of the powder, chaani powder continues to be used.

An example of a chaani powder covered ground, as evident by the green tinge.

A practice that is currently being used in order to retain the benefits of cow dung and the aesthetic appeal of chaani powder is to mix the two. To test this, Dr. Krishna, Dr. Meera’s husband, carried out an experiment in his micro lab in Coimbatore to test this assumption using yogurt curds, filled with lacto bacilli. Dr. Krishna added a small amount of chaani powder to a sample of yogurt and looked at it under a microscope. Within 30 seconds of adding the chaani powder, all the lactobacilli were reported to stop moving completely. Thus, it was inferred that the powder reversed the beneficial effects of the cow dung.

The chaani powder stains the hands of the women, potentially having carcinogenic effects.
Agriculture and Organic Farming

A highly common form of agriculture in India is rainwater and groundwater harvesting. During the monsoon season, massive amounts of rainwater and groundwater are collected in open wells and canals. In a very interesting yet straightforward irrigation system, water is channeled to flow between rows of crops at will.

During the 1990s-2000s, much of agriculture shifted towards the usage of chemical fertilizers as the central government of India began to subsidize farming on a macro scale. Currently, many farmers are transitioning back into organic farming, in which natural biofuels such as manure and vegetable compost are used. Though producing fewer yields than fertilizer, organic farming is ultimately healthier for the soil and environment.

IFFCO Fertilizer being loaded into storage. Farmers will take a loan from the local bank to obtain a designated amount of fertilizer


CORD Siruvani actively works with local farmers to promote organic farming and addresses needs surrounding labor and resources.


BETEL NUT USAGE

When a few village women speak, we could make out a distinct red tinge on their teeth and tongues. We knew this to be from paan, but Dr. Meera specifically spoke of the ingredient betel nut, explaining how it was commonly chewed by the men and women in the village, along with some children. She explained how the betel leaf was non-addictive and even healthy, but the mixing of tobacco and betel nut, which contains carcinogenic compounds, has adverse health effects. For more information on Betel Nut and our intervention against it, please refer to ‘Betel Nut/Tobacco Awareness Program’ under ‘Initiatives’.


Thennamanullur Rations Shop
Across from the CORD office lies 2 important buildings. One of which is a ration shop. Each family in the scheduled caste, backwards caste, and scheduled tribe community is given a ration card. The amount on each ration card varies with the number of members in each family.  That which you can get at the rations market is less than it is on the public market. For example, a kilo of sugar is 70 rupees on the public market while it is 30 rupees with a ration card. Rice is free for the given amount on the ration card.


“Don’t Throw your Waste, Give your Waste”     -Dr. Meera

Most of the waste generated tends to come from the packaging of products bought at stores. This includes plastic bags, paper, cardboard, polythene wrappers used for milk, and low grade plastic wrappers used for food such as chips and candy. When these are bought from the store and used, two main things usually happen to them. For one, they are usually discarded on the side of the road or in an existing pile of trash. Secondly, if a household decides to throw all their trash away, they will eventually dump it on a pre-existing pile of trash, or burn the week’s trash in a pile. Finally, they may also burn the waste, including polythene plastics, to generate heat to be used for cooking or heating water.

Polythene wrappers and other plastics are being used along with palm tree husks as fuel to heat water.
One of CORD Siruvani’s recent initiatives included having the elderly make newspaper substitutes for plastic snack packets. Paying 8 rupees for each packet, the shop owners were in support of a decreased amount of waste production while supporting the elderly who make the newspaper packets. 

A proud shopkeeper shows off the newspaper packets that he uses to wrap the snacks he sells.
 Another option that many consumers of these products have is to resell their waste to a ‘scrap store’. For example, if I purchased milk regularly, I could collect each of the wrappers until they weighed in at one kilo. I could then take my milk wrappers to the scrap store and exchange it for 18 rupees. In this way, there are differing rates for paper, food wrappers, cardboard, plastic bottles, and glass bottles.

                       
For more information concerning waste management, Look up ‘ Environmental Health Leadership Initiative’ under the ‘Initiative’ tab.

School center for 2-5 year olds.

There is a one-room school for children from newborns to age 5 close to the Siruvani office.
 Stepping inside, one will notice that there is chaani powder, the carcinogenic powder mentioned earlier, smeared all over the floor of the classroom.

As we watched a little girl drop her snacks over the powder-covered floor and then pick them up and eat them one by one, we knew that this had the potential of becoming a real community issue.

See the post on Chaani Powder for more information on this substance.

An interesting weighing mechanism

 Pregnancy data was kept here, with a tracking of progress from each stage of pregnancy in each woman. The current state government of Tamil Nadu under J. Lalitha provides 12,000 rupees for pregnant women. This includes:

-4,000 rupees after 8 months of pregnancy,
-4,000 rupees after delivery
-4,000 rupees after receiving 3 vaccinations.

An ad by the J. Lalitha administration explaining the benefits offered to pregnant women

PRG Middle School-
Further down the street lay the entrance to a small government school called PRG Middle School. The school itself is made up of three large rooms divided into smaller rooms with mobile wooden boards. Behind the school is a large playground with a mound of trash in the corner and toilet stalls lining the back wall. Later on in the trip, we taught english grammar classes to the kids. Parthu also taugh a Waste Management and Hygiene curriculum to the kids. For more information, on this initiative look under “Environmental Health Leadership Initiative”.

An empty classroom in PRG middle school
The school's kitchen, from out of this structure billowed a thick black smoke due to the burning of firewood, the only means of cooking afforded on the school's budget. With little ventilation in the building, and much of this smoke flowing towards the school, the smoke constituted a serious health hazard. 
School's source of drinking water and tap water. Before the evening noon meal, the children wash their hands here, usually without a bar of soap which is available to them.


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