Earth File

During the last few visits to my native, I had been desperately trying to know the exact population of the region for which I got different answers from each one of them I met. Some said thousand and some said more. To my surprise I got the right answer from one of the newly launched unique website called OurVillageIndia.org.

A dedicated team of Indians and Indian Americans have developed OurVillageIndia.org that seeks to provide information about census data, geographic location, infrastructure facilities, local government, history, prominent people, interested volunteers, change-makers and NGOs for all the 600,000 plus villages of India. OurVillageIndia.org is dedicated to put every village in India on the web. Though the main goal is to create a web presence for every Indian city/town/village on the WWW map, the ultimate objective of the makers is to bring people in these places to come together to help their motherland. Organization’s mission is to help accelerate sustainable development in rural India by building up a network of social entrepreneurs, donors, volunteers, role models among individuals, NGOs, projects and village folks.
It’s a place where PIOs, NRIs and RIs can find their roots, learn what is going on and adopt villages/districts for rural development. It’s also a place where one can find subject matter experts on water, education, agriculture, livelihood, training, health, energy, ecology, sanitation and waste management. The portal will also serve to find role model villages and districts; new technologies and methods (solar energy, vermicompost, etc.); NGOs, which are doing work in villages; success stories; and information on how to replicate sustainable development in villages. If you are interested in publishing more information about the village you know, you will be able to request publishing rights for that village. If you are interested in a particular project, you will be able to send a request to the project owner to be included. With a very little effort, we all can make huge difference to the people living in the rural parts of the country by registering as voluntaries for either our own villages or to the villages we know.

For more details, log on to www.OurVillageIndia.org.