The WADI project has been implemented by Amrita’s CWEGE to develop community independence and resilience, especially of rural women, in isolated tribal areas. Throughout India, Indigenous Peoples live disconnected from mainstream culture and survive through their traditional pathways. However due to environmental destruction, many now face serious issues such as endemic poverty and lack of access to essential resources—even food and water. Through the WADI Project, we have worked with farmers and landless people of tribal communities in the Hindol Block of Dhenkanal District, Odisha. The poorest of the poor from the villages are the prime recipients. The WADI Project puts a special emphasis on the participation of women in all agriculture and livelihood activities and encourages them to actively participate in decision-making processes. The core approach is to strengthen income generation in a sustainable way by developing agri-horti-forestry in small underutilised plots of land and developing wastelands, with a combination of fruits, forestry, and agriculture interventions, alongside using the latest technologies to address the most complex challenges. Across six villages in the Dhenkanal District of Odisha, seven cooperative community groups have been established.
The leaders were provided with capacity-building training and then managed all the field activities like plantation, pit digging, care of the saplings, water resource development structures, etc. They then independently kept track of all activities done and processed the relevant payment for the services rendered by the beneficiaries of the project, thereby building communal ownership over the process of plant care. With the recently developed water resources (7 Wells in 4 villages and more wells to be done in coming months), the beneficiaries have started to go for intercropping, where they are cultivating seasonal vegetables and oil seeds native to the region. Along with this, we also provided income generation through goat rearing. In this segment, we have been working in 12 villages with 288 women beneficiaries. WADI is a project supported by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India.
