Ann Arbor North Member Speaks To RCAAN On October 25, 2012 About Project Dignity India

At The Rotary Club of Ann Arbor North meeting, on October 25, 2012 Manish Mehta, talked about his trip to India. Where he visited the Rotary Club of Ann Arbor North sponsored toilet, which is a part of the Project Dignity of India.

Our own Manish Mehta, our international service chair, brought us up to date on our Project Dignity, a project to bring sanitation facilities to the Sunderbans area of eastern India, and showed us photos from his recent tour of the area.

Manish shared some stark statistics with us: 4 in 10 humans have no toilet facilities, 90 percent of diarrhea is caused by bad water, there has been a 40 percent decrease in cases of diarrhea in areas that now have toilets.

Project Dignity places Rotary-funded toilets with selected families who will set a good example for their neighbors, to encourage sanitary habits.Clean water means that children are healthier and able to go to school regularly. This means that mothers are able to work to improve their families’ lives. Private toilets mean that girls and women can have dignity and freedom. 

Project Dignity’s Rotary partners are: our own club and Rotary clubs in Ann Arbor Downtown, Ferndale, Milan and Saline. We are also working with the Rotary Club of Calcutta Midtown and the Sri Ramakrishna Ashram to select which families will receive toilets. (The ashram, an interfaith agency, also loans bicycles to girls so that they can get to school safely.)Manish explained that Project Dignity is experimenting with a social entrepreneurship model, to enlist local people to sell the toilets to others. 

Learn More On Project Dignity of India At Rotary India Humanity Foundation