Horn Raiser Update - Week 2

Thank you all for your generous donations to the Community Center for Packianathapuram!

Special shout out to the 28 UT students that donated $391 via Venmo! Thank you Texas Bluebonnets, Kappa Kappa Gamma and assorted students in the School of Social Work!!

Our HornRaiser has been live for two weeks and we are 16% of the way, having fundraised $2,508. We have 31 more days to meet our HornRaiser goal of $15,000.

We appreciate all the kindness and support! Please share our project with others, whether that be via Facebook, our Blog or a link to HornRaiser. We would like all of our friends and family to have the opportunity to help make an impact on someone else's life.

Here are a few updates on what has happened this week:

We had a video-skype call with the coordinator for CASA (our NGO) and learned more about the history of CASA's involvement in Packianathapuram and some history of the community. CASA has been operating in Packianathapuram for ten years and they helped start the Women's Group that signed the petition for a community center.
The community center will be used as place for discussions on livelihood. The region of Tamil Nadu has been declared a drought state, and small farmers have been hit the hardest. There will be a study room with computers and books for community members to research about technology for cultivating land with less water. With that in place, the community can discuss the best practices to mitigate the drought issue.
At the end of last week, we attended a presentation, 'Reviving Earth through Organic Farming', from the Austin chapter of Association for India's Development (AID). It was given by a guest speaker, Mrs. Revathi, from INSPIRE (a non-profit organization that trains marginal farmers and seeks to research and preserve traditional farming practices). Her presentation really opened our eyes to different sustainable agriculture practices used in India, whether it be organic farming methods, soil nutrient management, seed selection, sowing and storage or integrated farming.