6 - Documenting and Revitalising Local Health Traditions

Summary

In this chapter we describe a programme that represents a first step toward the renewal of medicinal plant cultivation in households, and also perhaps a first step in the direction of health security. The programme eventually included 60,000 households in rural Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India. It involved the training of several volunteer groups and women's organisations spread throughout the state.

The response was swift and encouraging. The women volunteers themselves ensured a ‘multiplication effect’ by bringing many others from the village into the programme. These people came of their own accord and were even willing to contribute large sums of money—which is especially commendable, as the programme had targeted the rural poor. It ended the misconception that programmes for the poor can only be carried out in a spirit of charity; on the contrary, we found that people, however poor, were willing to pay, provided we clearly explained the benefits to them and won their trust.

The chapters in the first section of this book focused on providing a theoretical overview. In this section, we will try and give the readers a ‘feel’ of large-scale community work. The current and next chapter follow the implementation of a large project involving an entire community, tracking it all the way from the most preliminary groundwork and estimates towards its final (yet renewable and replicable) end.