Nine villages of Fatehgarh Saheb in Punjab are looking forward to integrated self-help community development projects with the help of the University of Utah and the School for Public Health of PGI.
The University of Utah, USA, chief of public health Steve Alder said after an exploratory visit last year, the team had selected a local NGO, Mehar Baba Charitable Trust (MBCT), and the PGIMER School of Public Health, to be collaborative partners to improve the living standards of people in villages.
MBCT advisor Hassan Singh Mejie said MBCT had been undertaking extensive community development work for last five years in 185 villages of Fatehgarh Saheb district including women empowerment, vocational training for boys and girls, regular health checkup programmes especially in the areas of cancer development, etc from their vocational training centre set up in Bassi Pathana.
The joint project will be known as ?The Bassi Pathana Collaborative Community Development Project (BP-CCDP), (Dehati Jeewan Sudhar Abhiyaan) which is being launched in nine villages, and will focus on medical education and research exchange; sustainable village health development, entrepreneurial cooperatives.
In three years from today, these nine villages will become ?Model Villages? worthy of being emulated by all the 13,000 odd villages in Punjab, said MBCT president and former chief secretary of Punjab AS Chatha. The villages selected for the pilot project in Fatehgarh Saheb include Balara, Damheri, Fatehgarh Niuwan, Salar Majra, Majri, Jallowal, Lohar Majra Kalan, Bagh Sikander, and Ferozpur.