Thematic Areas

Well-being & Community Development

Health awareness has been the trust's first line of work since 1993, when it began with a reproductive and child health programme in Amreli district. The method has not changed much: go to the village, raise the subject nobody is raising, and come back often enough for the misconception to loosen. COVID-19 turned that work into logistics for two years.

Thematic area

Well-being & Community Development

સુખાકારી અને સમુદાય વિકાસ

The strategic goal it works towards

To promote physical, mental and social well-being, strengthen community participation and create inclusive spaces that enable individuals and communities to live with dignity, harmony and resilience.

Read the whole framework

This programme covers

Reproductive and child health awareness
Capacity building of Gram Sanjivani Samiti members
Awareness campaigns on cancer, HIV/AIDS and other serious illness
Mass awareness campaigns on pesticide safety and protective equipment for farmers and farm labour
Hygiene and household prevention
COVID-19 relief — masks, sanitiser, ration kits and transport
Street plays (nukkad natak) on safe drinking water, hygiene, household prevention and pesticide safety

The problem

Two different problems sit under one programme. The first is information. Serious illness is met late here, and often through a screen of belief about what causes it and what will cure it, so the questions that would lead someone to a doctor never get asked out loud. The second is occupational. Cotton and groundnut farming in this district runs on agrochemicals, and the person mixing and spraying them is usually doing it bare-handed, in the heat, without a mask — a farmer on his own land or a labourer on somebody else's. Neither problem is fixed by opening a clinic. Both respond to the same thing: somebody from the village, saying it again, in the village, next season too.

What we do

Take the subject into the village

We take conversations on cancer, HIV/AIDS and other serious health concerns directly into rural communities, creating spaces where people can ask questions, challenge misconceptions and learn about prevention and timely care.

Health awareness begins with reaching people where they live. We use street plays — a traditional, engaging form of community communication — to bring important health messages into villages. In 26 villages across Amreli and Porbandar, street plays have been used to raise awareness on safe drinking water, health, hygiene and prevention, turning complex messages into conversations people can understand and remember.

26: Villages reached through street plays

Street plays · Community-led awareness

Villagers seated on the ground at night watching three performers in bright costumes, with a drummer, in front of a house — A nukkad natak — street play — performed in the village, with the audience seated in the lane.

Work through the village health committee

In past years we strengthened Gram Sanjivani Samitis across 76 villages of Bardoli block in Surat district, providing orientation, training and ongoing guidance on local health services.

76: Villages
76: Committees
1,206: Members trained

By building the knowledge and capacity of village health committee members, the programme helped communities better understand, access and support local health services.

Protect the person holding the nozzle

Year after year, Hariraj takes practical safety messages into farming communities through mass awareness campaigns on PPE use, safe pesticide handling, hazardous chemicals, chemical fertilisers and child labour.

By helping farmers and farm workers understand and adopt safer practices, we work to reduce preventable exposure, protect families and make agricultural work safer for the next generation.

Awareness → Safer practices → Healthier farming communities

Performers in costume acting out a scene before a seated village audience, under a banner announcing an awareness street play for farmers — An awareness street play for farmers, 2025–26, part of the trust's work with the regenerative agriculture programme.

An older man in a woollen cap and surgical mask holding up a hand while a health worker in a blue protective gown gives him an injection in the arm, outdoors beside a mud-walled house — Vaccination during the COVID-19 campaign, published with Hariraj's pandemic response. The trust's own role through the lockdown was logistics rather than clinical care — masks, sanitiser, ration kits, and transport home for people stranded away from their villages.

Health awareness activities have been the organisation’s first priority from the start. The trust was founded in 1993 to improve health and education services in Amreli district, and the reproductive and child health programme was one of its first two activities.

Past projects and activities

COVID-19 relief, 2020 to 2022

When everyday life stopped, community support could not. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Hariraj shifted its field work to help rural families reach reliable health information, essential supplies and emergency support:

Shared accurate information on COVID-19 prevention and safety
Distributed masks, sanitiser and ration kits to families in need
Promoted household hygiene and preventive practices
Arranged transport for people stranded away from home
Supported children with e-learning resources when schools moved online

The experience also showed how deeply rural children were affected by learning disruption — and helped shape the Centre for Learning Assistance, which continues today.

Health · Relief · Education · Community support

Reproductive and child health — strengthening frontline health workers

As part of its reproductive and child health work, the trust held workshops for anganwadi workers to strengthen their knowledge and community outreach on supplementary nutrition, maternal and child health, care during pregnancy and lactation, the importance of breastfeeding, HIV/AIDS awareness and gender equality. Strengthening frontline workers took essential health and nutrition messages closer to families and communities.

Where we work

We work directly with rural communities across Amreli, Porbandar, Rajkot, Vadodara and Narmada districts, taking general health and well-being awareness to villages through community meetings, street plays, campaigns and other participatory communication methods.

5: Districts
64+: Intervention villages

What the programme counted

26,650+: Farmers, farm labourers and the wider community reached on health, safety and protective equipmentThrough awareness campaigns, meetings and street plays; figure supplied by the office, September 2026

All thematic areas

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