Mission (Partly) Accomplished!

After I had decided that I wanted to come to India to do some social work, the big question was how long I was going to spend here.  I kept going back and forth between 1 month and 3 months.  I thought that 1 month was a short enough time that if I wasn’t liking it or if it wasn’t what I had hoped, then the end was already around the corner.  But after talking with people who had done similar things, it sounded like 3 months was a bare minimum to get anything worthwhile done.  It turns out, they were right, and I’m glad I listened.

The 11 weeks I spent volunteering has been the perfect amount of time.  Any less time, and I wouldn’t have been able to finish things up like I wanted to.  I could have volunteered more, but the high efficiency that I was working with is starting to flatten out as the initial research is all done.  Plus, I’m about ready to go back home and see my friends and family.

The people that for some reason or other, I miss and want to see!

This is my last week of work, and I’ve been wrapping things up.  We ended up identifying more than 10 ways to improve the oil extraction unit and process; making the process safer, more environmentally friendly, easier to use, and more efficient at extracting oil.  These changes range from adding a pressure relief valve so that the oil extracting tank doesn’t blow up (which will save a few lives every year), to designing a bike-powered crop cutting system so that they can cut the material more easily than a hand powered cutting system and cheaper than the diesel powered cutting system.

 

Old Crop Cutting System vs New Crop Cutting System!

If all the changes are implemented, then the villagers can earn somewhere between 2-10 times as much as they are now, which would mean a better life for them and their families.  Their children won’t have to work in the fields and can instead go to school.  They can all have enough food to eat and enough money to buy shoes (a luxury many village children I’ve seen don’t seem to have).  What’s most exciting is that the generations to follow can come out of the poverty trap that their families have been in for a very long time.

A few of the people who will benefit

However, there is still a lot of work left to go before this can happen, including testing all of the changes that we have proposed and then implementing them, and this is where I hand off the torch to IDEI.  In a lot of ways, the implementation is the hard part.  IDEI will have to convince the villagers that these changes are good for them. Often times, people are set on the ways that they’ve been doing things, especially if it was the way their father’s father also did it.  However, this is where IDEI really shines, as they have been convincing hundreds of thousands of villagers  for over a decade that their low cost treadle pump is a worthy investment.  So while my part is mostly over (except for answering any questions they have and finishing up a few loose ends back in America), I am confident that IDEI will do a fantastic job of finishing the job and creating a better life for possibly thousands of village families in India.

On a sappy note, I’ve realized through my time with IDEI that anyone can make a difference.  I originally thought that I had very little to offer in terms of being able to help people halfway around the world, but all it really takes is a little bit of will, and the right people around you to nudge you the right direction.  It’s through these experiences that I realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by such good hearted people everywhere I go, and I feel like everyone has been placed in my life for a reason.  And for all of that, I am very thankful!