I hope you will make whatever donation you can.  And more importantly, I hope you’ll become a champion to this cause.  Please tell your friends, sign up for updates, become a partner, like us Facebook, stay involved.  And please let me know if you’d like to become even more involved as a Mere Saathi volunteer.  Info@meresaathi.org

So here you can learn more about the project and how you can get involved.  And most importantly, you can donate online.  The donate page will send you to HIT.  Because Mere Saathi is not yet a 501c3 non-profit, our fiscal sponsor is HIT.

Our current campaign goal is to raise $5000 in five months.  That’s $5000 before our 2018 return to Kachhwa.  This will cover expenses to send a small team back to india with enough de-wormer to treat 300 animals.

The de-wormer I plan to use treats both internal and external parasites.  And its safe for baby animals, milking animals, and pregnant animals.  It will average only $2 per animal to de-worm.  That’s a really tiny cost in order to have such a dramatic impact on these communities.

But in order to make this a reality and make it sustainable -  touch as many lives as possible - I really need your help and support. I need people who want to become a part of this – who want to be a part of helping lift this new phase off the ground.

I’m estimating that just deworming alone can increase average milk production by 100% - from an average of 2 liters per day to 4 liters per day.  That’s going to mean the difference between just enough milk to feed my family, and extra that I can now use to earn money for the first time in my life.  And it will keep the animals producing and healthier for longer, and help reduce zoonotic diseases.

There’s another really important factor in why I’ve  decided that this next phase will focus on deworming, and it’s really simple:  

Each woman that I spoke with asked for a dewormer.  They all know the value that deworming has.  They are asking for this treatment.  But they don’t have the resources to obtain it themselves.  

And most animals were covered in ticks.  These parasites don’t just make the animals look and feel miserable, they carry diseases - severe, deadly diseases - which can be spread to the other animals and to humans.

What I found is that the needs of these villages are much more basic than those I’ve visited in the past, and certainly some of the poorest I’ve ever seen.  Average milk production was only 1-2 liters of milk a day.  The women struggled to get their animals pregnant, and mortality rates especially of juveniles is really high. 

A few months ago, I partnered with HIT - Helping India Together.  Dr Atchison is the founder, and he has graced us with his presence here today.  This was such a breakthrough for Mere Saathi, because HIT works with established projects already on the ground that are working in the poorest communities in india. 

A few months ago, HIT introduced me to the Kachhwa team, in a large town west of the city of Varanasi.  This is a team of people who share my view on the value of human life and share my passion for helping the most marginalized people of india.  So this was huge for Mere Saathi  - a game changer.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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 the next photo - 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. Contrast that with the average milk production of a dairy cow in America, which is 33 liters per day.  Or contrast it with the cows of the women in the self-help groups I showed in the previous photo.  They were in much better health, producing 5 to 10 liters a day.

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.

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 financial 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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