Heal: Health & Education for all

A GROUP of international students are on the verge of creating a social enterprise scheme aimed at helping impoverished young people in rural India to grow their own food on a commercial scale.

The London-based students, who are drawn from far and wide across Europe, South America and Asia, came up with a proposal to enter into partnership with HEAL (Health and Education for All) after they heard about the charity’s ambitious plans to create a new self-sustaining village, near Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.

Construction is already under way on Paradise Village, which will become home to hundreds of severely disadvantaged and orphaned children, giving them shelter, healthcare and an all-important education as part of the ever-growing HEAL family.

The £3million project will comprise of a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly complex of buildings, including – in addition to the main school – health facilities, a vocational training centre, a school for the blind, a care home for the elderly and edible plantations and gardens.

The village, according to HEAL founder/president Dr Satya Prasad Koneru, is designed to create “a safe haven where children can be nurtured and realise their full potential, creating a self-sustaining and mutually beneficial community based on the pursuit of happiness through the common good”.

Dr Prasad, a Peterborough-based GP who founded the charity 20 years ago by donating his former family home in Guntur to create a school for needy children, said he was impressed with the students’ proposal to grow food on a commercial scale as a volunteer pilot project at Paradise.

“The village is leading the way in construction, using recyclable materials and ‘green’ technologies for electricity, water, sewage and edible plantations, so I felt that their idea fitted in perfectly with the Paradise project,” he said.

An artist's impression of the school block at the HEAL Paradise Village

“Such a social enterprise, which will involve using grow bags to produce natural, wholesome food such as mushrooms, tomatoes and aubergines will help our children become self-sufficient, as well as involving the local villages.

“I was delighted to meet with such an energetic, bright and enthusiastic group of young people and look forward to developing a fruitful partnership with them. The added benefit of their scheme is that profits will be re-invested back into the project.”

Hult International Business School student Raiana Chowdhury explains how the scheme was born: “Myself and Max von Luttichau initiated the idea of mobile farming a year before we made this group.

“The aim of the enterprise is to educate children and young people how to grow their own food in an alternative way, provide them with essential material needed and see them grow together with the project.

“The food grown through our ‘bag farming’ method may then be used by the local people for trading amongst each other, which we hope will lead to community formation and an additional sense of belonging.

“Vegetables will be grown in recyclable bags, using a minimum amount of soil, water and solar energy and can then be sold in the market or traded within the local community and surrounding villages. Unsold produce will not be wasted, being used as the primary element to grow more new and fresh vegetables.

“We went along with fellow Hult students Maria Camilla Sierra, from Colombia, and AnaMaria Meshkurti, from Albania, to meet with Dr Prasad to discuss our collaboration. It was an honour to meet the founder of such a wonderful charity and we were highly interested to learn more about the HEAL village and the Paradise project. We look forward to working closely with him in the future.”

For more information on the HEAL Paradise project visit www.healparadise.org