Employment by cow donation to needy family

Employment by cow donation to needy family

Shri. Late Ishwarbhai Patel, who looked after the Harijan Sevak Sangh at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, was also the founder of the Environmental Sanitation Institute. He dedicated his life to spreading this awareness. He travelled from village to village talking to people about the importance of hygiene and sanitation. To enable this process, the Nandini Van, who they lovingly call ‘Nandiniben’, was created to travel into remote interior villages

During one such visit to small villages in Patan district, in Patan taluka, they visited a village called Samoda. The Nandini van was taken for this trip, with 7 volunteers for 3 days. A common practice during these trips is to spend the night with different host families.

One such family is that of Dhaniben Baaskuji Thakor. She is a widow, who lost her husband to an accident, 4 years ago. She has 2 sons, but has no land to their name ad lives in a ‘kaccha’ house. One son is Sachin, is mentally and physically handicapped. The other son, Hasmukh, studies in the 10^th standard. He saw his mother doing labour and working very hard without any help. He then decided to quit studies and does masonry work to help with the economic condition in the house. Based on their situation, it was decided that a cow would be donated to the family.

The Sarvodaya Patra in that village was decided to be given to Dhaniben- and 30 kgs of wheat were given to her family.

A ‘gramsabha’ - village meeting was called for and they discussed who is the neediest in the village. The village came to a common consensus and decided Dhaniben was most deserving of economic help and the cow donation should be rightly offered to their family. Dhaniben and her family were extremely grateful and happy for the donation. They have promised to look after this offering to the best of their capacity and abilities and to pay the favour forward if they ever feel they are not able to do justice to the maintenance of the cow and look after her with upmost care.

The District Magistrate and Collector of patan gave her the money of cow donation. Rs. 10,000 was given to Dhaniben for buy to cow and Rs 1500 for the food for the cow.

Hasmukh today, is able to study and also looks after he cow. This has been of great help to Dhaniben and her family since the milk feeds the family and it can also be sold for revenue. The cowdung also gets used for fuel uses and provides great support to the family.