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Couldn't make it to our Launch event in Baltimore?  Didn't hear Dr. Audrey tell the Mere Saathi story?  Take a few minutes to relive it here -- the cow pie beginnings, the killer tiger and the mother's sacrifice, the despair, and the hope!

Here's the Mere Saathi story, in Audrey's own words:

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Welcome to Mere Saathi’s website launch! Thank you so much for being here. It really means a lot to me.  This project - Mere Saathi - is such an important part of my life, and I’m really excited to share this with you!

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The launch of the website is significant for a couple reasons.  I think the most important one is that it is the visible component of what has been overall major progress that Mere Saathi has made this year. And it’s that progress that I’m most excited about - the revitalization of this project and its new phase.

And of course, a website is the primary tool with which to create awareness and support for what we do.   I’m hoping after this presentation, you will all be super pumped about helping women in India, and you'll tell all of your friends to check out meresaathi.org

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Mere Saathi’s vision is to enhance the lives of and empower impoverished Indian women by improving the health of the animals in their care.

In order to really understand why animal health has anything to do with empowering or lifting Indian women out of poverty, I’m going to talk about the One Health concept and give some background info about me, the project, and India.  All the photos in this presentation are from Mere Saathi visits to India during 2010-2017, plus my first personal trip in 2006.

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Things are very different in India.

If you go to India for the first time - I think those of you who have been would agree - your very first impressions are probably going to be the severity and ubiquity of the poverty, and that there are animals everywhere.

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Above is a photo taken during our March 2017 trip.   This is in the heart of the city of Varanasi - a city with twice the population of Baltimore.  And yet, here’s a family dairy operation.  Sights like this are more than commonplace.  Animals are everywhere - from cows, buffalo, and goats that are kept for milk, to the stray dogs and stray bulls that you cross paths with as you walk or drive anywhere.

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I fell in love with rural India and the beautiful women that live there before I started Mere Saathi.  That first time I visited India - I  was in undergrad - was my first time out of the country.  A bit of culture shock

My first prominent memory is of a tour we were going to take of a temple.  Our vehicle had to park pretty far from it, and I’m walking with my group.   I stop and take photos, and then I realize that I've fallen behind quite a bit.

So I start running after them, and I slip on a huge pile of cow poop and get it all over me!  I was right in front of a hut where there was a young woman milking a buffalo giggling at me. I’m embarrassed and thinking there is no way I can go into this sacred temple now with poop all over me.  But this woman, the one who was giggling, gestured to me to come over, and she helped me wash off.

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She had no running water, so we were working from pails that she had collected. She was trying to show me how to use this strange brush device to clean, and of course we don’t understand a word either one of us is saying, so it was this awkward, fumbling social interaction.  We ended up just laughing so hard at the absurdity of it. It was the first experience of what would become many - of connecting across the world - which is an incredible experience.  Finding that even though we are from completely different worlds, at the core we re all the same.

After that experience and many other from that first trip, I just felt so compelled to one day come back and try to have some positive impact on the lives of Indian women.

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So fast forward a few years later to vet school.  We’re learning about the One Health concept, which is the idea that the health of animals, humans, and the environment are intimately connected.  Each affects the other.  And I knew this was how I could, as a vet, help women in India.  And that’s how Mere Saathi was started.

We started simply by visiting rural villages, meeting people, talking, and building relationships with individuals and various organizations, like the local vet schools and various government officials.

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We became immersed in village life, took surveys about living conditions and animal husbandry practices, and documented physical exam findings of animals.

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We did a couple research projects, all of which allowed us to build up a body of knowledge and experiences, and make the connections we needed to develop plans for how to employ One Health to help impoverished village women.

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This is where Mere Saathi does its work – in rural Dalit villages.  Dalit is the name of the untouchable caste, those lowest on the social order, the most impoverished.

The caste system has been officially abolished by the Indian government.  But as you can imagine, the deeply-rooted manifestations of the caste system are still very present in the culture, especially out here in rural india.

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In a Dalit village such as this one, every single family owns a few animals - mostly cows, buffalo, and goats for milk.  This is where Mere Saathi can have the most significant impact - in milk production.

There are also tons of stray dogs and a few stray cats that live in these villages and can affect mostly the children who play with them.  We’ll connect all of that with some photos later.

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The most obvious benefit of the milk production from these animals is its nutritional value.  The women in these villages are Hindhu, thus vegetarian, so milk is the sole source of protein for their families.  And for growing children, protein is absolutely vital for proper development.

We were once in the Sunderbans of India, which is home to some of the most dense populations of tigers in the world.  We were staying in a village and were awakend one morning by screaming and shouting, and we learned that a tiger had come through the village and killed several goats.  When we learned that no humans were harmed, we said thank goodness, it was just the goats.  And an older village woman said back to me, “If a tiger came to my home, I would rather he kill me than my cows.  If he kills me, my sister will take care of my children. If he kills my cows, my children will starve.”

That made a lasting impression on me.  It helped fuel this passion – it helps me to never give up.

So, the milk that these animals produce is truly vital to their basic human needs.

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It’s not just nutritional value that the production of milk has.  In india, milk production also has the unique ability to empower women specifically, and to help lift communities out of poverty.

Any extra milk produced above and beyond what is consumed directly by the family is sold and provides extra income.  But this is a very special, unique income that allows for finiancial independence and social mobility in ways that no other source of income for these women can provide.

The primary livelihoods of the families that Mere Saathi works with is farm labor.  The husband and wife both go out and work in the fields on someone else’s land.  The wages earned from the work of both the husband and the wife are all paid to the husband .  The women do not see this money.  They have absolutely no say in how it is spent.

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However, the money earned from selling the extra milk is paid directly to the women.  Women are their primary caretakers and culturally, it is acceptable and is the current practice for them to hold on to this money and make decisions on how it will be spent.  This opens up an incredibly effective avenue to empower women and enhance their personal financial security.  But it also extends beyond women.  Studies show that empowering women is the best way to lift communities out of poverty, breaking the cycle. Because women are more likely to invest in the health and education of their children.

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This photo was taken a few years ago.  Mere Saathi was meeting with women self-help groups and helping educate these women on optimizing the nutritional regimens for their cows.  This is in Andrha Pradesh, in villages that have already made big steps toward lifting themselves out of poverty.

These self-help groups were made up of 7 to 10 village women who came together to form micro finance groups with the money they earned from milk production. With collective funds, they were able to finance – take out loans - for things like their daughters’ education and acquiring new cows.

They’re not just taking major steps to end the cycle of poverty, but perhaps even more significantly, they are realizing their self worth, gaining independence, which to me – in a cultural environment such as the one these rural women are in – is completely invaluable.

All of this only possible through extra milk their animals are able to produce.

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But in many villages in India, many of the animals aren’t healthy enough to provide adequate nutrition for the women, much less extra income .  Cows like the one in this picture - skin and bones - are the norm in Dalit villages.

This woman, Amrita, told us that her cow - this cow - was giving her half a liter of milk a day. To contrast that, the average milk production of a dairy cow in America is 33 liters per day.  Or contrast this with the cows of the women in the self-help groups I showed in the previous slide.  They were in much better health, producing 5 to 10 liters a day.

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Amrita had been milking this cow for five years straight off of one pregnancy - five years ago, because she knew if she stopped milking and tried to get the cow pregnant again, it would never get bred successfully or have a healthy calf and thus completely stop giving her any milk at all.  All this because of the poor health it was in.  So the poor health of her animal was not only affecting milk production but the ability to give her new calves.  This is a common scenario.

So the bottom line is this:  If you can improve the health of these animals, you can greatly improve milk production, improve the longevity of the animals’ productivity, and significantly improve their ability to reproduce - all of which will have a tremendous impact on the financial stability and independence of these women.

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The third impact that animal health has on rural Indian families is that it directly affects human health, especially children.

Just like humans can pass diseases to each other, animals can also pass diseases to humans.  These diseases are called zoonotic diseases or zoonoses.

Here in America, the average person doesn’t have to worry or even think twice about zoonosis.  But here in these villages, they are still a very real threat to their lives, especially their children - diseases like tuberculosis, brucellosis, leptospirosis, parasites, and rabies.

Most children walk around barefoot, which increases the likelihood of getting worms.  I don’t think Iv’e been to a village yet where I haven’t seen at least one child blinded by larval migrans - from a parasite picked up from feces of animals.  Ive met two women who have lost children to rabies.  Zoonosis are a real threat.

So once again, if we can improve the health of the animals in these villages, we can help prevent zoonosis and in some cases literally help save lives.

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So you can see, there are so many ways that Mere Saathi can employ the idea of One Health to help people, specifically Dalit Indian women. Here are some of the ways we’ve done so already:

In the past we've held animal health clinics, like the one here.

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We did that in several locations.  This photo is from a village outside of Kolkata.

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We vaccinated street dogs for rabies.  These dogs are usually quite friendly.  It’s been difficult keeping from taking them all home with me.

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And as I mentioned before, we have held educational sessions with women in self-help groups about more efficient nutritional regimens for their dairy animals.

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