Joe Madiath « Skoll Foundation

Gram Vikas

Skoll Entrepreneur(s): Joe Madiath
Focus Area(s) Addressed: Education and Economic Opportunity, Water and Sanitation
Award Year: 2007

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Joe Madiath has spent 30 years working in development among the poorest communities in Orissa, India. Drawn there in 1971 to help communities that had been ravaged by a cyclone, Joe stayed on as an activist focused on sustainable development projects. He founded Gram Vikas in 1979 and has served as executive director ever since, growing Gram Vikas into one of the largest non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Orissa. Gram Vikas originally focused on providing renewable energy for rural communities, building more than 54,000 biogas units. Over time, Gram Vikas developed its more holistic model of development, based on Joe’s conviction that every family in a village must have healthy living practices and an improved quality of life before total development can occur. This model has transformed at least 1,000 villages and has proven that the rural poor can and will pay for better sanitation and water facilities.

IMPACT AS OF JAN. 2013:

Joe, and others like him, are proving a model, providing evidence of success that can influence decision makers and be taken to scale. Gram Vikas has been at the forefront of promoting ‘life with dignity’ for thousands of households in rural Orissa by enabling them to have water and sanitation facilities covering 100% of the village population.
Gram Vikas has partnered with more than 66,000 families in more than a thousand villages covering 354,100 poor in 27 districts of Orissa. But Joe’s dynamic leadership and Gram Vikas’ model of inclusive sanitation is having impact beyond the state of Orissa.
The MANTRA program is shaping future policy at the national level. Movement and Action Network for Transformation of Rural Areas is Gram Vikas’ comprehensive habitat development and governance program that uses common concerns regarding clean water and sanitation to unite and empower communities, launch development initiatives, and improve community health. MANTRA is based on inclusion, sustainability, cost sharing and social and gender equity.
Scaling GV model throughout India: In 2011/2012, Joe Madiath chaired the Working Group for Rural Drinking Water and Sanitation for India’s 12th 5 year plan (2012-2017). The Secretary of Drinking Water and Sanitation says Gram Vikas’ approach should be the model for India, and the Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh said, “We must feel that investment in water supply and sanitation is a matter of urgent priority. It is as important as investing in defense.” The Minister has proposed a significant increase to government subsidy for sanitation and 100% inclusion in villages (versus focus on households), consistent with the working group’s recommendation modeled on GV.
Direct Village Engagement in FYE 2011: GV helped 7,307 poor families in rural communities access safe drinking water and reliable sanitation, bringing the cumulative total to 55,422 households across more than 1,000 rural and tribal villages.
GV identified means to scale its model more rapidly in 2011, including corporate partnerships and incentives for village leaders to promote replication to neighboring villages.

SEE THEIR WORK IN ACTION:

Orissa unfortunately, is one of the least of the developed states in India.

The very poor live on less than one dollar a day. There is no public transport coming there.

Electricity is available for one or two hours a day. People have no toilets .

They are extremely poor. So we said OK, if you really want a challenge be challenged by the poorer state.

Gram Vikas which literally means "village development" first seized this challenge in 1979 when it began working in Orissa.

In the mid-1990's it launched a new program to transform communities by changing the way they used water.

We've been back and analyzed why people were falling ill. Basically people used to go in the open and defecate, and they used to mostly defecate near the water sources.

Contaminated water causes diseases like hepatitis, cholera and diarrhea. Which alone was killing nearly 2,000 Indians a day. Most of them children.

To prevent these diseases, Gram Vikas came up with the solution as simple as it was ambitious.

All of us thought if every family had a toilet and a shower room, and they could be protected, water supplied. These diseases could be prevented.

But even if one family in a habitation of one hundred families did not practice sanitation, they could pollute... The entire water of that village. So, it had to be hundred percent, today and forever to come.

Because success depended on the whole community, every single family would have to agree to change it's sanitation habits, and to contribute money, an average of about twenty two dollars to a common fund.

Gram Vikas realized that the village needed sort of a endowment fund towards repairs, maintenance, and if necessary additional facilities.

Then it is expected that every household will contribute it's share of endowment.

Once every family commits, Gram Vikas trains people as masons and painters.

More than seventy five percent of all contribution in the form of labor and material comes from the people themselves.

They build a quality toilet and bathing room for each family.
But getting every family to participate is not always easy.
Ramchundra Behaira led grampic effort in Bahalpour, the village whose 7 different casts live together , but often did not speak to each other.
This task was made more difficult because it came from one of India's lowest caste, the Dalits, or untouchables.

Ram was not accepted by the mainstream community. Initially they considering myself a joker for taking on this challenge.

But Ram persisted, explaining to all the villagers how clean water could solve their health problems.

Eventually, the citizens of Bahalpour, not only built new toilets and bathouses, they took the unprecedented step of electing Ram president of their village.

The lower caste people, for the first time, they were treated equally. For them it's like a dream come true.

Today the man once considered untouchable performs his official duties on a motorcycle the village bought for him.

Just a few miles away in Sameapali, it was Pato Praha, the village leader's wife, who took on the challenge of organizing her community.

With the help of grand figures, Pato mobilized the village to tackle the sanitation problem, installing water and toilets for every house. But that was just the beginning.

All of a sudden most people and especially Pato began to say our toilets are better than our houses.

Can we do something?

What they did was nothing less than build a whole new town.

They borrowed money from a hosing development bank. From then onwards these people have not stopped.

Today, the pond that used to make people sick, now helps to feed the village. The old dirt roads have been paved. And for the first time, most children are getting an education.

Using water and sanitation as an entry point, the whole village is put into a new trajectory to better health, better schooling, better living environment and full of hope. This is the transformation.
Gram Vikas has now reached more than 700 villagers and 50,000 families. Their efforts have eliminated 85% of all water-borne diseases in those communities. They feel a sense of pride. It is ours.

It is not government's or it is not, because it is ours.

So potentially the market, so to speak, is at least 350 million rural folks in this country.

My dream coming true is what Mahatma Ghandi said. "Sustainable independent individual republics, where the villagers are able to take care of all their needs and governance. Where all people will progress together where we truly believe all for one, one for all."

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