Medanahalli, a small village in Ramanagar district, Karnataka, has been in need of sustainable transformation. The villager needed basic infrastructure, quality education and improved agriculture.
Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages’ (HCCB) factory at Bidadi is located in the neighbourhood of Medanahalli village. Having developed a close relationship with the villagers and observing their lifestyle day-in-day-out, HCCB’s executives understood what the village was in need of. Believing in creating shared value with the communities that it proudly serves, HCCB saw this as an opportunity to turn its vision into reality.
The HCCB executives approached villagers for collaborating to make Medanahalli, an HCCB Model Village. They could not have asked for better support, as the enthusiasm with which the whole village came together in this mission reinforced the company’s faith in the power of community.
Holistic goals were laid and along with village elders and community leaders, HCCB proposed to provide clean drinking water facility, hygiene and sanitation facilities, healthcare, education and means and methods for sustainable agriculture in Medanahalli.
The first step was to develop infrastructure for clean drinking water. In line with this, a 50,000-litre overhead water tank (OHT) was set up. The Bidadi Town Municipal Council collaborated by providing a direct water connection to all the 226 households in the village.
In order to ensure that the water thus received, was pure and safe for human consumption, a standalone water purification plant was installed to dispense over 350 cans of purified water daily. This benefitted over 2,500 individuals.
The drinking water problem at Medanahalli was solved successfully. However, now the question was how to provide water where it was most required - for agriculture. This brought an opportunity for HCCB to work as one unit with farmers, who were sensitized to make optimum use of water and save as much as possible, for irrigation.
To give an economic boost to the village, it was imperative to improve the yield from agriculture. For this, the farmers required advanced sensitization about agricultural methods. They were introduced to the importance of soil-health and value-based food growing methods. As a result, 30 farmers, covering about 100 acres of land, were able to improve their yield and income by maintaining soil quality, reducing soil degradation and erosion, saving water, increasing biodiversity and by planting crops that suited the soil conditions like papaya, mud apple, guava etc.
Now that the farms were fertile, it was time to look into the health of the villagers. To do so, 25 preventive and curative health camps were organised. This led to a significant improvement in the village’s primary healthcare that provided timely referrals for serious ailments and led to improved immunisation and 100 percent institutional deliveries.
Towards ensuring a better tomorrow, comprehensive measures were undertaken for quality education and infrastructure at schools. A significant reduction in the number of school-dropouts became testimony to these initiatives.
Medanahalli, thus, became HCCB’s first successful model village. Today, HCCB stands proud to see how the village community has completely taken over the ownership of all of HCCB's initiatives, hence reaffirming that with integration comes sustainability and transformation.
Comments