The journey started with little groups of people in the year of 1988, mostly comprising of tribal and Indo-mongoloid women and marginalized farmers. These people gathered courage to fight all adversaries and organise themselves and likeminded people as to elevate their socio-economic condition and secure food and shelter at the family level. During the second half of the twentieth century, traditional village life and land management have been destabilized causing the decay of the village as a community and a declined productive capacity of most of our land. The causes of these are many, chief among them modern agricultural technology fostered by so called green revolution, absence of proper governance. Simultaneously liberalised economy accelerated the same leading towards marginalisation and hardship for rural poor. As most of the people are cultivators, so Rajadighi Community Health Service Society known as RCHSS started from re-greening the denuded earth by planting trees and erosion checking floras. Also the team started to plant mango, Seesum tress and some grasses including vetiver in and around high Barind tract involving the school students and some community people interested in social development. RCHSS re-greened forty villages and nurtured nurseries to be distributed among the local communities. RCHSS by then started a programme on family welfare called “Kurumutu” in tribal language which means effort and lasted for one year but the enthusiasm of the community did not stop and they initiated a new project on family welfare supported by government of West Bengal. In the year 1992 RCHSS launched the programme on disaster management with the technical support from OXFAM and CRS whose prime objective was to provide relief measures to the flood victims as well as enhance preparedness.
Way Back
A Dane, Dr. Else Hoilund’s voluntary work in the area from 1948-1979 is the main inspiration behind RCHSS mission. Rajadighi Community Health Service society emerged after the closure of Rajadighi Christian Hospital in 1988, which was established by Dr. Hoilund in early 50’s. The inspiration revitalized a local school teacher Mr. Shibesh Das and his students in mid 80’s and on wards with their environmental programmes.
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As days and months passed, RCHSS realized that relief measures were not the ultimate solution to the sorrow of the community. In order to alleviate the sorrow of the community they should be trained to identify their potential and capability. So a shift in working strategy for social development was introduced with the consultation of the managing committee and the stakeholders. In front of RCHSS there were several issues like high infant mortality and morbidity, poor health and nutritional status of children especially among the tribal villages, high crude birth rate, occurrence of flood, drought and consequences of climate change almost every year and throwing the life of people out of gear. Increasing gap between the haves and have not’s.
All these issues churned the mind and at first RCHSS were perplexed as to the start point of the solution. With passion and support from the people, Governments and partners the community started various activities utilizing the local human resources including support to women self help groups beyond the line of financial benifit. To know RCHSS route direction please browse http://rajadighingo.blogspot.in/
