Project Title: Drought, Discrimination, and Progress

Partner Organization: UNNATI

Summary: Intern Jeffery Schuhrke worked with UNNATI to address the Western Rajastan drought, through disaster risk reduction. The drought causes time and money spent trying to get water, which is time not invested in crops and livestock. All of this in turn usually forces people to migrate. One way UNNATI is trying to counteract these problems is by giving funds to families so that they can build under ground water tanks, which catch and store rainwater, along with water that is brought in by truck. The second project is the development of horticulture with 30 households. The women of the households oversee their own plots of berry and plum producing plants that require little water.

Project Title: Tribal Rights to Forest Land

FSD Partner: Samarthak Samiti

Karen Donnelly, a graduate student from the University of Missouri, worked with Samarthak Samiti, an environmental NGO in Rajasthan, India. Karen documented the struggle of tribal communities to obtain legal rights to forest land and usage in the areas they have inhabited for generations. She demonstrated how poverty, unemployment, migration and displacement have plagued these communities for years. Even with the many forest laws passed by the Central and State governments (in support of tribal communities), a lack of follow-up with process rules on the State’s part had done nothing to improve the tribals’ desperate situation. Karen determined that a lack of communication and networking as well as limited resources to knowledge of laws and policy among NGOs and tribal members created a gap between public policy and implementation of that policy in the field. Karen’s project addressed these problems by creating a training workshop program to educate the NGO community, tribal community and other stakeholders. The workshop training program focused on how to apply the current laws in the field as well as educate all stakeholders on advocacy and awareness initiatives for the community.