At Light of Life Trust, India (LOLT), our vision is to build an engaged, aware and resilient community that feels ownership and pride in its continued success. Our approach is multi-pronged. We enable community members to be confident leaders and provide a platform for them to connect and problem solve. We focus on the health of the people and conservation of the environment. Many of our graduates return to serve their community with their skills, time and passion. This enables our success and strengthens the sustainability of our program.
Historically Indian communities have been divided into classes, each with a designated purpose and job in life. For generations people have followed their parents’ path, not questioning their socio- economic status in society. For those who dreamt of a better life they never saw a path to a better future, and soon gave up on their dream in their daily struggles to feed their family.
With Light of Life Trust’s community empowerment program we seek to not only help them see a better future but believe in themselves and their ability to achieve their dreams. We provide them with education, support, tools, and systems to work together in achieving them.
Most of LOLT’s communities are in poor farming villages of India. The environment and conservation is key to helping these communities. Some of these regions have seen huge numbers of farmers commit suicide due to drought, lack of funds to purchase seeds, and their inability to pay unreasonably high interest rate loans by predatory lenders.
At LOLT, we have programs to increase awareness and access to bank loans and subsidies through National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. We have a concerted effort to counter the risk of drought and corresponding failure of climate sensitive and water needy annual crops. At our farming school we worked with the community to identify drought tolerant plants and resilient crops. We also identified sustainable long term crop of fruit trees which help offset the failure of annual crops.
Farmers receive hands-on education in high density farming, efficient use of fertilizers, and making and using cost effective organic fertilizers like compost and vermiculture. These greatly increase yield per acre and thus their income.
We educate and empower through individual conversations, group events and involving families in school programs. This builds an internal support of community members helping each other and investing in their children’s education. Our program graduates often return to their village to support, educate, and mentor the next generation of learners.