Resilient Proto Village: Concept becomes popular only by word of mouth publicity

Proto Village (Sathya Sai): The concept of a 'Resilient Proto Village' is not only attracting the rural populace in the district, but also drawing the attention of progressive-minded people within India and abroad. Some of them, inspired by the village model, are seeking the services of the founder of the village Kalyan Akkipeddi who extensively toured the villages of India for two-and-a-half years and based on the study founded the resilient village model.

"The journey led us to establish a resilient community in which the inhabitants practise harmonious interdependence, employ ecologically sustainable means, and blend native knowledge systems with contemporary appropriate technology to achieve self-reliance in terms of the nine basic needs which include education, economics, energy, food and water security, clothing, healthcare and digital connectivity," says Kalyan Akkipeddi, the founder of Proto Village, during his chat with 'The Hans India'.

Two models, economic and education, have been developed during the past seven years of the village's existence. Ironically, no efforts had been made to popularise the village involving the media but only by the word of mouth of the low profile villagers living in the village, it has become popular

The Delhi government headed by Kejriwal evinced keen interest in the establishment of such villages and soon it is likely to send a delegation to the village to understand its dynamics.

A Nepali minister who learnt of the Proto Village showed interest in replicating the village economic model in his personal capacity in Nepal.

A student from Nigeria impressed with the model is planning to visit the village sometime in the middle of the year and receive training to establish the Proto Village in his country and spread the model to beat poverty in the backward country of Nigeria.

Kalyan says that hundreds of women from neighbouring villages keep visiting the village while some of them are already being trained to implement economic and education models in their own areas.

The mission is to train 7,500 trainers who would in turn train more to keep the revolution going. A Fellowship is being launched in 2025 to achieve the said goal. Every district will have one trainer to spread the message in all 750 districts in the country. The states of Maharashtra and Punjab are evincing interest on the village model, making waves all over.

"We plan to create a network of 1,000 farmers trained in this model. We are in the process of implementing this model across 100 villages in the next five years. We have designed and developed a rural education system to help the learners find abundant lucrative opportunities within their villages, stemming distress migration. We are implementing this education system at a micro-scale now and hope to scale it up in future to various rural clusters. Proto Village demonstrates a broad replicable framework and principles (blueprint), coupled with a revenue model that empowers any community to co-create context-specific solutions, and organise itself for resilience," Kalyan adds confidently.

Proto Village was awarded the Star Village of the Year 2019, by Earth Day Network, for is efforts towards ecologically sustainable communities.