Touching farmers’ hearts & lives through Karishmaa Care Foundation

Pune, June 24 : The withering drought in the rural hinterland of Maharashtra’s Marathwada region has seen around 400 farmers committed suicide.

Neelam Tuteja, founder & managing trustee of Karishmaa Care Foundation, amongst several people, came forward to fight against the drought and dared to visit the villages and personally connected with the farmers who were suffering from drought problems.

Tuteja is a Holistic Healer, management professional and an entrepreneur with a heart of compassion has played a key role in sowing the seeds and in defining the goals and direction of the organisation with the desire to bring the change and support the underprivileged and weaker section of society.

She started the foundation about seven months ago, and her main focus was to cover rural development for improvement in farmers’ health, sanitation, education for their children, women empowerment, cancer care camps, tree plantation. She also helped farmers and their families in drought­ stricken rural areas and her major focus was drought affected areas of Marathwada like Ashti, Beed, Osmanabad and many more to cover.

In the last four months she has personally visited 31 villages. After this she started getting calls from villagers after watching her hard.

The work of the foundation has garnered appreciation, and was widely covered in the print and electronic media. A number of camps were conducted by Karishmaa Care Foundation which included health camp for children, a cervical cancer camp, tobacco awareness programme, new clothes donation in village and a Women’s Day event to create awareness about the Marathwada drought.

Recently this foundation carried out seed donation to farmers’ acre wise, tree plantation activity entitled, “Go Green Marathawada” in various villages to fight against drought and child welfare activity for the poor farmers’ children.

The Foundation’s aim is to provide equal access to qualify for facilities for healthcare and education and to provide a dignified livelihood to all people regardless of their age, gender, caste and religion. The Foundation has taken a comprehensive approach for all cause.

The Foundation’s future step is to help and educate the children of the farmers, health camps for the women and children, Donation of school uniforms, notebooks, stationery, distribution of food grains to farmers who are below poverty line and financial support to the widows of farmers who have committed suicide.

(Husein K Chunawala is a student of Indira School of Communication)