Give Farm training to Indian HIV Families

Thank you for your support of our organic farm. You are helping children like Shivaji whose mother died of a HIV-related illness a few years ago. Although the seven-year-old’s father is also HIV+, Shivaji himself is negative and since his mother died Shivaji and his father, who looks after our 15 dairy cows, have been living at our Himmatgram.

Shivaji is really smart and speaks very good English which is why his father recently made the decision to move him to our Rehab Center where he can more easily attend our English Medium School. Living there also means he has 260 friends to learn alongside and play with as well as take part in the program of activities we arrange for our children outside of school time. He is settling in really well, he is getting very good marks in school and is a big fan of playing marbles with boys his own age. Although the father and son miss each other, they are only 7km apart and with our van travelling to and from our farm to deliver food from our Rehab Center three times a day they have plenty of opportunities to see each other.

Also making the 7km between our farm and Rehab Center is our brand-new water pipe. It has long been an ambition for our organisation to reduce our costs by pumping water from the dam at our farm to provide fresh drinking water to our 350+ beneficiaries and staff living in our shelter home. It may seem like an easy task but the railway line running between our two projects proved a major stumbling block in laying the pipeline. After many negotiations with the Indian Railways authorities we finally received permission to lay the line under the train tracks and the water started flowing earlier this month. We are already making substantial savings by reducing the number of water tank deliveries we require each day.

We also recently opened our new Agricultural Training Center, just outside the boundaries of our farm. This means that the agri-entrepreneurs studying on our agriculture technology course have their own specially designed accommodation and teaching facilities to learn more about farming processes and techniques and also means more interaction between the students and our farm residents. The center blends into the natural landscape and has been cleverly designed to maximise natural light and ventilation.

Your support enables us to keep cultivating the lives of our beneficiaries and also the facilities we offer and the projects we deliver to them. Thank you so much for investing in our growth.

Links:

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