On Sunday, September 18th, the Boston chapter of the Association for India’s Development (AID) hosted its annual fundraising event, Milan, at the Beech Street Center in Belmont. Revathi, the keynote speaker for the event, enthralled the audience with her deep understanding of farming and touching stories of her work at the grassroots. A school teacher turned organic farmer, her pioneering work has helped farmers reclaim agricultural lands destroyed by natural disasters. Milan was attended by more than 90 supporters who generously donated $84,000. The event was also attended by Massachusetts Senator Jamie Eldridge who said that he was very impressed by the scope of work done by AID Boston and project partners like Revathi. AID Boston is still accepting donations over the next few days to help meet its target of $100,000 and you can donate securely here.

From small beginnings, AID Boston (www.aidboston.org) has grown over the years through volunteer effort, and in 2015 supported 25 projects in India, disbursing $270,000. These 25 projects work on a range of issues and communities - from manual scavengers in Karnataka to tribal girls in Gujarat, from the transgender community in West Bengal to adivasis in Chhattisgarh, from fisherfolk in Manipur to farmers in Tamil Nadu. Not only does AID Boston hope to continue these projects, but also scale them up to create a larger positive impact.

Over the last 25 years, through grassroots partners in India, AID has engaged in multiple issues such as healthcare, education, women’s rights, livelihood generation and agriculture. Several of these programs started out as proof of concepts and have grown in scale, both in terms of number of people who have been affected as well as number of issues tackled. Revathi talked about one such project in the Sundarbans, where the lands were devastated by Cyclone Aila in 2009. Through her advocacy and training, 25 farmers in 2009 learned to adopt organic farming, use indigenous varieties of seeds, and recover their lands destroyed by the cyclone. Today, over 20,000 farmers in the area have taken up sustainable agriculture and are on the path of self-reliance.

Revathi has worked with more than a million farmers, training them in organic farming techniques, and has worked with farmers in other countries such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia whose lands had been destroyed by natural disasters. She worked extensively to reclaim land after the Tsunami in 2004, Cyclone Aila in 2009 and most recently after the Tamil Nadu floods in Dec 2015.

She cautioned against the excessive use of chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture which has led to the decline in soil quality, the resurgence of resistant pests and the side effects of working with toxic chemicals on farmers’ health. Corporatization of agriculture has added to the agrarian crisis in India increasing the indebtedness of farmers and ultimately forcing them to take their lives. The relationship between farmers and the earth has become exploitative where the resources from the soil are constantly extracted without being replenished.
 
The audience expressed their appreciation for Revathi’s keynote with a standing ovation and with multitude of questions. Answering a question on what motivates her to do the work that she does, Revathi recounted the following story. A beach is covered by hundreds of thousands of washed ashore starfish and a girl is engaged in throwing the starfish one by one back into the ocean. When the girl was told that throwing back a handful of starfish is not going to make any impact in the overall scheme of things, she replies that it makes all the impact to the few that she did manage to get back into the ocean.  Revathi articulated that, just like in the story, the challenge facing the farmers and human beings is a huge one, but like the girl in the story, she is making positive changes within her capacity and that makes a big difference to the people she does work with. She emphasized that positive change starts from each one of us in our own capacity and advocated the supporting of organizations like AID, which has been walking with her for over a decade.

One of AID’s long time supporters asked how we could as a society give rise to more Revathis! “Our program trains master trainers to continue the work I started”, Revathi answered, and proceeded to add that, as these trainers take on the role of experts in their community and train further more people, it increases and propagates the local knowledge.

The event concluded with an Indian dinner, with AID Boston continuing its practice of using ceramic plates and metal cutleries to make it as zero waste as possible.

Gughan Sathyaseelan, the Secretary of the chapter said, “It is inspiring to see people put in the effort to understand and support the work being done at the grassroots in India. It feels empowering to deliberately be part of the solution along with so many other people”. AID Boston meets every Sunday as part of its Community Service Hour (CSH). Contact secretary@aidboston.org if you wish to be notified of these meetings’ weekly agenda to join our organization and we actively look for volunteers to infuse our organization with renewed energy and ideas.

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