Community
Outreach Programs
Community development projects are an important aspect of OSDI's work in order to achieve our vision and mission. Being a developing nation, the rural areas of Pakistan, lag behind in basic facilities like education, health, water and sanitation systems and the availability of basic utilities like gas and electricity. Such deteriorated conditions have resulted in extremely poor living standards in the rural areas. The lack of development in these areas is directly correlated to widespread poverty in the region. At OSDI we believe that every person is entitled to atleast the most basic public facilities in order to live a decent life. We have developed community outreach programs especially focused to improve the living condition of the communities we work in. In order to ensure and promote sustainable development in these areas, these community development projects will play a significant role.
We have identified 6 areas for our community outreach programs, they are:
- Provision of clean drinking water
- Provision of basic health facilities
- Improving access to and raising the quality of education
- Increasing availability of efficient energy sources by using renewable technologies
- Youth mobilization
- Social Enterprising
Our community outreach program is in line with the goals 2,4,5,6 and 7 of the Millennium Development Goals envisioned by the United Nations. We will work in close collaboration with the government, NGOs and other groups in order to achieve these goals and help improve the lives of the people of Pakistan.
Providing Access to Clean Water
One of the greatest problems in Pakistan is the availability and access to clean water. This not only limits agricultural production and industrial growth, but it is also the leading cause of disease and child mortality in the country. People, particularly in the rural areas, do not have access to clean drinking water. By resorting to drinking from the locally available water sources, the poor people are plagued with water-borne diseases, which is an immense financial burden in health care costs and also results in the loss of poor household incomes. Considering most people are day laborers, this loss perpetuates the cycle of poverty.
Urbanization, inefficient use of water for irrigation and the use of chemicals and fertilizers in the agricultural sector, and industrial pollution has deteriorated and depleted supplies of drinking water for people, particularly for those in the rural areas. According to studies just over 20 percent of the people have access to safe drinking water.
Studies indicate that water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases are a significant economic burden in the country, with diarrheal diseases contributing to half of this economic burden.
OSDI has found that most people do not have access to clean drinking water in the villages that it is working in. It is for this reason that we are initiating community development projects to educate people about waterborne diseases as well as spread the use of common water filtration techniques. We are currently conducting research on the products and techniques available in the field of clean water. Some of these include bio-sand water filters, solar disinfection of water, as well as water filtration products which can be distributed at the household level.
In line with the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #7 (Ensure Environmental Sustainability) of the United Nations, OSDI aims to devise viable solutions in order to provide sustainable access to improved water sources and sanitation in the urban and rural areas of Pakistan; helping to improve the quality of life in those areas.
Health Sector
The poor state of health in Pakistan is attributed to the lack of access to basic health care services, medications and general awareness on prevention of common diseases. In the urban areas, access to health care clinics and facilities is not a problem, though the general state and quality of public services is very poor. On the other hand, in the rural areas, people live far from hospitals and basic health care units. It is for this reason that most women give birth at home with the assistance of a dai or lady health worker. Illness pushes people into poverty through lost wages, high spending for treatment and recurring treatment for their illnesses. One of the main causes of illness in the rural areas of Pakistan is poor water and sanitation systems. Some studies indicate that a significant portion of the rural poor incomes is spent on preventable common diseases linked to contaminated water and unsanitary living conditions. Thus the severity of health-related poverty is closely reflected in the country's poor health indicators. Poverty is thus both a consequence and a cause of ill health.
Additional economic burden, primarily of health care costs, contributes directly towards driving people into deeper debt. As for the indicators of the state of health in Pakistan one can look at the current statistics for infant mortality (67 deaths per 1,000 live births) as well as maternal mortality (276 per 100,000) which are the highest in the region. In terms of population planning, people still have little access to effective and safe family planning which is another strain on the state of maternal health. Nearly 1 in 10 children do not survive past their fifth birthday with the majority of deaths due to diarrhea, pneumonia and vaccine-preventable diseases. Based on these trends, it is hard to imagine that Pakistan will be able to achieve the targets set in the Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6 related to health: reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
OSDI plans to undertake research into the state of basic health care in the villages that it is currently operating in. This will include studies on the basic health facilities, the primary diseases in the area and their causes, the prevalence of alternative health providers, availability of basic medicines and the availability of basic first aid in the villages. It is from these studies that OSDI intends to formulate an intervention strategy which will aim to solve some of the major health-related issues facing the local population. OSDI will also estimate the health-related costs to family incomes and initiate programs to eliminate these common diseases in an effort to minimize the costs and improve the standard of living of poor people in these rural communities.
Education
Education is the backbone of the social development sector and a great indicator of progress in a country. The education sector in Pakistan is still plagued by a myriad of challenges like rural-urban disparity, gender disparity as well as lack of and poor quality of schools in many areas. The literacy rate in the country is a mere 56%. This figure shows just how much work is required to be done in this sector to achieve the Millennium Development Goal # 2 of achieving universal primary education by 2015.
We at OSDI believe that the high food and fuel related inflation in the last 2-3 years has increased the economic burden on the poor, resulting in lower enrollment rates as well as higher dropout rates for children.
OSDI would like to help improve the state of education in the target areas where it works. We conduct surveys to ascertain the main problems in the education sector. These surveys will help us to analyze the number of schools, their quality, enrolment rates as well as the reasons for low enrollment/ attendance of the children of the surrounding areas.
Based on this information, OSDI will formulate an intervention strategy that will help improve access to education, increase awareness as well as provide families with incentives to send their children to school.
Renewable Energy
One of the greatest problems stifling the growth of Pakistan is the lack of cost effective energy supply in the country. While most of the villages in the rural areas also suffer from the non availability of electricity and gas supplies.
We at OSDI believe that such lack of and inefficient energy infrastructure becomes an added economic burden for these marginalized communities.
OSDI is working actively in assessing the economic costs to these poor communities for getting access to alternate energy sources like fire wood, coal, gas and kerosene. After analyzing the economic costs, we try to find a better solution for cheaper, reliable and sustainable sources of energy based on the collective benefit of such marginalized communities. Our approach towards implementing renewable energy projects is in support of the MDG goal 7 of ensuring environment stability. We endorse this concept and are working passionately to fill in the gap of providing a better a green energy infrastructure.
The OSDI team is studying localized solution like biogas, bio fuels and clean renewable technologies like solar and wind powered products.