About NGO:

Oxfam India is an Indian non-governmental organization formed on September 2008 by integrating the 60-year-old India operations of 6 separate international Oxfam affiliates working in the country.

Oxfam india's vision is to create a more equal, just, and sustainable world by empowering the poor to demand their rights, engaging the non-poor to become active and supportive citizens, advocating for an effective and accountable state, and making markets work for poor people. The overarching vision of Oxfam India is "right to life with dignity".

Fund Usage:

Climate change is happening now and its effect is slowly but surely being felt across the globe. Apart from the environmental changes that we all can see, what we fail to notice is how it is pushing the poorest to the edge of survival. It's forcing many other small holder farmers, the bedrock of India's agrarian economy into debt and a life of extreme poverty.

India, largely an agrarian economy and heavily dependent on its natural resources, stands at a very precarious turn. With a long coastline and more than 400 million people still below the poverty line, the government has a massive task of buffering them against the impact of impending climate change. Over the years, rise in population and falling food production will begin to affect the rest of the country.

At Oxfam, we work with these small holder farmers in remote regions and help them develop methods to increase productivity through sustainable farming practices, changing from mono-cropping to multi-layered cropping to diversify the risk and training the farmers in knowledge of early and late yields .

Oxfam India plans to utilize the funds raised in the standard chartered Mumbai marathon 2012 for its ongoing projects on adaptation to climate change in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand, and Orissa. Over the years, more than 45,000 farmers and fishermen in these 4 states have already benefitted by our program.

Impact:
Summary:
In india's madhubani district, severe flooding in 2007 destroyed peoples' homes and crops, causing many to migrate to north india. The last decade has seen a significant increase in rainfall, and flooding and storms are making life increasingly difficult for the local people. Oxfam is working in partnership with the bihar sewa samiti to help people adapt to the changing climate, for example by educating them about health and sanitation in order to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases, as well as providing them with a boat for emergency evacuations and helping them to raise homes above floodwater level.

Story:
Biswanath yadav is head of the village disaster preparedness committee (vdpc) in the village of haspura. He has been actively involved in disaster preparedness work in haspura with guidance from oxfam's partner, the bihar sewa samiti. He has also been trained in disaster risk reduction work by bss and oxfam.

He explains how the climate has changed in his village over the last decade:
"it did not used to rain so much 10-15 years ago. The climate back then was beneficial to us, but now the changing climate is detrimental for us. Water levels are rising day per day. The rains were the most harmful for us this year. It has never rained like this before. Even the elders in the village who are 70-80 years old say that they have never seen it rain like this before. It rained continuously for 5 months. This has never happened in our village. We've also never seen such furious floods before. We've had some bad flooding over the years but the 2007 floods were something else. Many people lost everything they had."

He goes on to describe how the area has been affected by the change in weather: "there are 3 things - rains, floods, and storms. The land has become loose and weak due to these factors. Our houses have been built on this unstable land. The land inside our houses is also weak. Then we saw that one day a house would be standing, and if it rained the next day, it would suddenly fall. So we started doing the rounds in the village to identify those houses that were built on particularly soft land. We would then ask the inhabitants of that house to move to another house in the neighbourhood. This is how we prepared others and ourselves in the village to cope with the rains and flooding."

"also, none of our farming exists anymore. All our crops have been flooded. Our fields have been destroyed. We don't get employment easily so we always wonder how we will eat and survive. We managed by making use of the relief given to us by bss, by availing of government aid, and by taking loans by landowners and wealthier people in the village. We won't get employment till april. Many people have migrated to places like punjab (north india) in search of work. Hopefully they will send home money from what they earn. But they haven't sent anything as yet. They probably only have enough for themselves only, not enough to send home. So we eat sometimes and have to hungry other times. Until we don't start working full-time, we won't have enough to eat. We save up a month's worth of grains to be used in times of a disaster. But this time we have been affected for 5 months. We just did not have enough saved up for so long."

Biswanath tells of how the bss has helped the local people adapt to the changing climate by helping them raise their homes above floodwater level. In his village, they helped 51 households raise their homes in 2008 by training them and providing the mud needed to raise the homes.

He explains the importance of this initiative: "this year [2008], the rains started coming down heavily on 15 june, and by 29 june we were faced with huge floods. However, because many people's houses had been raised, they did not need to relocate.

Nonetheless, biswanath adds that bss do not have the money or resources to provide for everyone, and many are still living at risk: "bss has definitely given us the skills and knowledge about what to do to lessen the damage caused by rains and floods, but most of us don't have money to implement these changes beyond what the bss does for us. For instance, the bss helped raise our houses by 4 feet. If we had the resources, we would have raised them another 2 feet on our own. So we are not able to help ourselves much."

Aside from flooding land and homes, floodwaters also bring with them the risk of water-borne diseases, which the bss has helped to combat by constructing new latrines: "we faced a big problem with a lack of toilets. So if people used to relieve themselves outside their homes or on a public pavement then diseases would spread very quickly and easily. The bss have helped us build toilets that have stopped the spread of disease."

The construction of the new latrines, as well as better health and sanitation awareness and provision of medicines has led to a considerable reduction in the spread of illness and disease during floods: "earlier every single person in this village used to get diarrhoea and malaria when the floods came. This year during the floods, only 5 people fell ill in haspura. We were able to give them the correct medicines on time and they were cured. Bss has given us a lot of knowledge about health and sanitation and this has helped in stopping the spread of diseases in the village. They did not know about good hygiene before. They wanted to know but there was no one to guide them. Bss has been a great help in spreading awareness [...]if it weren't for the bss [oxfam's partner], i'm convinced that at least half of this village would have been wiped out during the floods

Page Url :
http://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/ngo74_oxfam_india.htm

Founded Year: 2008

Cause category: Environment

Our Supporters

• Achin Goel
• Arun Agarwal
• Somika Basu
• Knight Frank (India) Private Limited