International Project - Tribal Village, Lambani, India

Soroptimist International Douglas

Status: Currently seeking donors/sponsors

Lambani Tribal Village, India

Our second international venture is in support of a water project in the Lambani Tribal Village, India.

This is being supervised by SI Bangalore, one of SI Douglas’ Link Clubs. When we learnt that they proposed to build a village of 61 houses without a single toilet between them, we decided to fund the building of a toilet for every home and have pledged financial support for the next three years. This is a long term project with a target donation of £15,000.

SI Bangalore's overall aim is to improve the living facilities in the village. Apart from the provision of toilets, the Club has taken up with its Government various issues on the villagers’ behalf - such as:

adequate potable water year round
a visiting doctor
a bus service up to the village

The villagers have been advised to get job cards to allow them to build a dam and thus provide water to assist in reforestation of the surrounding hills, which although once densely covered by trees, are now barren due to felling for firewood. The reforestation exercise will be under the supervision of the Alt-Tech Foundation.

SI Bangalore members themselves are providing training in health matters and hygiene, together with cultivation of medicinal plants, sewing and tailoring and have provided materials and sewing machines to get this part of the project started.

To start the fundraising, one of the SI Douglas' members completed a 71.5 miles swim i.e. the distance between Douglas and Liverpool! That’s just over 2,000 lengths of the NSC pool. Sponsorship money is still coming in and is expected to be well over £2,000. We all think this is a tremendous achievement. Why swim to Liverpool? Well, SI Liverpool is another of the Douglas Club link clubs and is joining with us on supporting the Lambani village project. SI Liverpool is walking their waterfront and we have had another offer of support from SI Victoria in the Seychelles (another of our link clubs).

Progress to date has been spectacular. The Government has sanctioned construction of another bore well to serve the village and has arranged for a doctor to visit regularly to take care of the medical requirements of the villagers. Two sewing machines have also been promised if the villagers’ skills improve.

From the point of view of SI Douglas, our project is going well. To date, we have forwarded £2,500 of our pledge and a good number of toilets have been constructed. Ther is still a way to go and Douglas members are working hard at fundraising.

If you would like to support our swimmers' achievement and/or assist in our efforts, please click on our 'Donate' button on our Overview page.