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Anandwan Other Projects Baba Amte’s Inspirational Quotes Honours & Distinctions
The MSS is Take Heart’s parent institution. The institution has a policy never to refuse aid to anybody in need, which has led to the creation of one of the world’s most unique charitable organizations. Anandwan, which literally translates as ‘Forest of Joy’, adequately describes the myriad of activity that is home to Take Heart.
For the last 50 years Baba Amte has been India’s most prolific social worker and now runs what is the world’s largest leprosarium where Take Heart’s philosophy in action that ‘Work Builds, Charity Destroys’ became the leitmotif by which leprosy and handicapped patients forged their new-found sense of dignity and self worth. Baba has been recognized internationally, receiving such awards as the Gandhi peace prize, the Templeton prize (The Nobel prize for religion) and the U.N. Human Rights award.
In 1949, Baba Amte embarked on a journey to improve the lives of the leprosy-afflicted in central India. After an encounter with a dying man who had deteriorated severely due to leprosy, he left behind the life of a wealthy Brahmin lawyer to lay the foundations of the Maharogi Sewa Samiti (MSS).
The MSS began with only $2, a dry cow, Baba, his wife Sadhana, his two small children and six leprosy patients moved in with scrupulous ambition. Its goal was to develop a new community and way of life that would help the leprosy-afflicted regain their dignity.
Read Baba Amte’s inspirational quotes
Honours and awards given to Babe Amte
When I first met Baba Amte in early 1990s, he made a vivid impression on me. In southern India, on what was previously barren earth he has brought into existence a thriving community surrounded by trees, a rose garden and a vegetable garden. It is provided with a small hospital, an old people’s home, schools and workshops. This alone is a great achievement, but what makes the place remarkable is that it was built entirely by handicapped people. In creating Anandwan he provided a practical opportunity for people even with crucial disadvantages to show that they could regain dignity and come to be recognized as productive members of society.
Baba Amte is an extraordinary person. After a long, vigorous life, during which he has suffered great physical hardship, because of damage to his spine, he can only stand straight or lie down. Yet he remains so full of energy and does things I could not think of doing myself, despite being fit. As I sat on his bed holding his hand, and he lay talking to me, I could not help feeling that here was someone who was truly compassionate. I told him that whereas my compassion is just so much talk, his shone through in everything he did. Then Baba Amte told me how he made the decision to dedicate his life to helping others. One day, he met a leper with worms in the place where his eyes had been. That was all it took.
I felt that people of Baba Amte’s calibre are so rare in our world and yet provide such an inspiration to us all that it is important that their stories should be told... a man who has consistently put others before himself; a living example of true compassion in action.
November 16, 2004
(HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA)
During the last 50 years, the activities of the MSS have resulted in many positive changes in many spheres: leprosy, social activism, environmental issues, tribals, disabled and orphan children, senior citizens and aging and rural youth just to name a few. It's extremely difficult to put in words the impact of this dynamic organization to the thousands of people who have been touched in a personal way.
Fundamental values upheld by the organization include that in the inviolable, irreplaceable, intrinsic worth of each human being:
- That however severe their disability may be, each person has uniquely invaluable gifts and capabilities to give to the world;
- That an attempt must be made to overcome any disability, however great it may seem;
- That social prejudice, taboos, and ignorance can all be overcome;
- That as important as physical cure, perhaps more so, is the restoration of the person’s sense of self-respect and dignity;
- That to achieve this the way forward is not charity but empowerment, even of the most challenged;
- There is and should be complete freedom of religion
The MSS provides medical services, food, and housing for cured as well as active leprosy patients, physically-challenged, destitute old leprosy afflicted persons, families and progeny of leprosy-affected persons and other physically challenged, including deaf and the blind children, mentally or mobility disabled children or adults, disabled senior citizens and tribal people.
In terms of outreach to surrounding areas, The MSS is primarily active in the backward region of Central India, including the tribal belt comprising three districts: Chandrapur, Gadchiroli and Nagpur in Maharashtra State (India). The MSS conducts various medical and educational camps (in addition to the similar services regularly offered on the premises). The total number of persons benefited through such programs is about 100,000. This is in addition to the 10,000 regular beneficiaries (including Residents and Students of various educational institutes).
The MSS has educated Indian society at large about leprosy. There has already been a major change in the society’s attitude towards the leprosy-afflicted and this is expected to accelerate further still leading to total eradication of leprosy in foreseeable future in this region.
The MSS has successfully treated approximately 100,000 persons with Multi-Drug Treatment (leading to complete cure) and has rehabilitated about 10,000 cured leprosy afflicted persons back to their own villages where they had been originally shunned and rejected. On the Anandwan campus, a special hospital catering only to the treatment of leprosy patients has been constructed.
The community also runs an undergraduate degree-level college comprising of Arts, Science, Commerce and Agriculture faculties (present student strength around 3000) thus providing the rural youth in surrounding villages and Anandwan residents, an opportunity to obtain higher education and better jobs in the social mainstream. The organization also has special schools for secondary certificate level education for tribal children as well as blind, deaf and handicapped rural children.
The MSS provides agriculture related guidance, and imparting improved farming methods in crops, horticulture, biomass and compost fertilizer manufacturing, animal husbandry, bee-keeping etc. Demonstration plots in every major center of the MSS and organizing visits by rural farmers for on-the-spot education.
They also provide models and practical advice to agriculturists in Central India for improving production and income through use of improved seed varieties, better operating procedures, fishery development, crop-rotation, inter-cropping with pulses, use of bio-mass, bio-fertilizers prepared from farm waste, earthworm culture, effluents of bio-gas plants, bio-control (pesticide measures) and animal husbandry.
The organization has helped reduce unemployment of rural youth, since idleness leads either to criminalization or migration to urban areas that then cause serious problems such as destructive fanaticism. Its training programs are pragmatic and create self-employment opportunities for these young men and women. The MSS provides academic education and trade-oriented craft training to blind, hearing-challenged, mentally, and physically challenged rural children, leading to their financial independence and social acceptance.
The MSS tirelessly provides ongoing medical treatment, education and social integration for one of the most backward and marginalized tribes (Madia Gond) of India. Merely 30 years ago, these tribals were totally illiterate, used only barter exchanges (did not use money at all), were undernourished, and terribly afraid of all outsiders.
Today two of them have already been qualified as medical practitioners, over 100 hold state and other well-paying steady jobs, more than 100 have passed the government school certificate examination and about 500 boys and girls are receiving education in a residential school-cum-hostel complex. By learning their spoken-only dialect and respecting their primitive and ancient culture, the MSS has been able to partner with them in positive ways.
The MSS has made a sustained effort at proper ecological management and conservation to mitigate the current wanton destruction of the environment and India’s flora and fauna. The MSS has stimulated greater ecology awareness and preservation of trees in the rural population of Central India. By introducing micro-watershed measures such as small barrages, large water-storage tanks, and more effective use of available water supply, the MSS has made substantial improvement to underground water-table levels.
Other important activities include recycling of non-biodegradable plastic materials and other waste into profit-making, employment-generating ventures, and the development of environment-friendly building materials (such as stabilized concrete mud blocks), and designs for cost-effective building technology and earthquake resistant structures. Currently the worlds largest leprosarium, Anandwan, remains an example to the globe of a fully self sustained community run entirely by social outcasts.
The MSS has also created programs for destitute senior citizens to lead a more stress-free life and continue to make useful contributions to society.
Anandwan, the first project site is now a bustling community of over 2,000 people including people with leprosy, blind, deaf, and orphan children, senior disabled citizens, and rural youth from nearby villages. Anandwan is the nucleus and headquarters of the MSS. The major activities here are medical treatment, training and rehabilitation of leprosy-afflicted people, blind, deaf, mobility-challenged, orphans and a home for senior citizens. It has schools, colleges, technical institutions, and offers community living to disabled and leprosy-affected people and their families. There is a bank, a post office and store selling products made by the community.
Everybody in the family of Anandwan does their bit to sustain the community. Anandwan remains a example of sustained community living to the entire globe. With the ideology food before cash crops one gets a real feeling that this is how all rural communities across the globe should be managed.
But Anandwan is only one of seven important project sites spread across 300 kilometers in some of Central India’s most backward regions. Others include: Ashokwan (estd. 1957), Somnath (estd. 1967), Nagepalli (estd. 1972) and Hemalkasa (estd. 1973), A House of Opportunity project, Nagpur (estd. 1988). These projects include training and rehabilitation activities, agriculture, hospitals, schools and universities, and a lot more. MSS also does significant outreach to surrounding villages and communities around projects sites.
In 2005 almost 60,000 people received some form of support from the MSS. All the activities are in line with the principle of responsible care toward the environment as it is our only life source and must be preserved. The leprosy patients have reclaimed their individuality, and found a place in society. Apart from the people living in the projects, almost 20,000 people have gone back to their own villages.