Initiatives taken for Water Conservation
To create awareness among rural communities regarding water conservation and water efficient technologies, Shri Real Dream of Foundation launched a major education and communication campaign called Jal Jivan Hai or Water for Life, in partnership with Centre for Environment Education, on the occasion of World Water Day 2019. The campaign reached out to over a hundreds villages spread across chhotaudepur and Panchmahal District of Gujarat state of the country with the help of a specially trained cadre of youth called Krishi Jal Doot(KJD). Along with training, KJDs were provided with a kit containing educational resource materials to conduct “A day in a village” campaign module. They were also provided with a detailed manual on how to conduct the campaign. KJDs thus acted as facilitators and implementers of the campaign at the local level. The campaign was conducted with the objective of enabling mass participation and voluntary action on water harvesting, conservation and encouraging water use efficiency in agriculture.
The campaign designed and developed educational material to promote public awareness of the need for water conservation. The campaign adopted a cascading approach to enable the flow of knowledge to the grassroots. Training was provided to the over 30 Master Trainers identified by Shri Real Dream of Foundation, who in turn trained over 760 KJDs developed the awareness of water save trics and the ‘A day in a village’ campaign module. The KJDs worked in pairs to cover a hundred thousand villages. They met key people in the villages and identified 6 youth volunteers who helped them in running the campaign activities which included save water awareness rally/padyatra, water resource mapping, meetings with farmers and SHG women members and Krishi Jal Samvaad an event open to all the villagers to discuss issues related to water. This campaign not only created awareness but equipped village communities to prepare participatory water resource maps of their village. The KJDs also helped them develop a list of action points to further augment the village water resources through various means such as use of innovative, water efficient technologies and practices in farming, renovation of existing water harvesting structures, enhancing the potential of storage bodies, and creating new structures. Post campaign, debriefing workshops were held to obtain feedback from KJDs and capture the essence of the campaign.
Shri Real Dream of Foundation has been implementing large number of watershed development projects in various states, the important learning and successfully demonstrated local technologies for efficient conservation and management of water resources and promotion of climate resilient agriculture through community involvement, will be one of the key inputs to sensitize the rural community during the campaign.
2. The campaign would essentially focus on creating awareness among the rural community about the methods of water conservation, preservation and its efficient utilization at various levels using the modern technologies like micro irrigation (more crop per drop), traditional water management practices, adopting improved package of agronomic practices, etc. As a part of the campaign, area specific contents covering different water management practices applicable to local conditions for various agro climatic regions, with emphasis on community participation, is being developed.
3. In an innovative move, Shri Real Dream of Foundation proposes to identify Village Volunteers (Jal Doots) for a localized and more effective approach. These volunteers will increase awareness about various methods of rain water harvesting, efficient water use, recharging groundwater and integrated farming systems besides facilitating creation of water conservation structures& adoption of water efficient practices/ technologies through convergence with the ongoing schemes of the Govt./ banks.
