Community Kitchens

The condition of women in the hills of Uttaranchal is very disappointing. These women have to venture into deep forests for collection of fuel-wood. RLEK tried to put an end to that by introducing the concept of community kitchens fuelled by LPG cylinders in collaboration with the Hindustan Petroleum. This mitigated the use of the traditional hearth, which was the cause of many respiratory disorders and other diseases among women. These Community kitchens have proved quite successful in breaking caste-discrimination as women from both upper and lower castes have equal access to the facility.

We continue to work in these villages with our innovative interventions like the community kitchens, providing primary school in the areas where there are no primary schools besides providing the right backup to our interventions during the project period. In collaboration with Hindustan Petroleum (HP), RLEK has introduced an innovative concept of "Community Kitchens" in these villages. HP is providing gas connections and cooking ranges, free of cost, and RLEK is proving the kitchen space within the villages. People themselves do the construction work of these kitchens as ‘shramdaan’.

The concept is that any women from the village can come and cook their meals on the cooking range, paying for the cost of the gas proportionate to the time taken by her, on a monthly basis. The management of the community kitchens has been handed over to the women's SHGs already formed by RLEK in these villages.

The community kitchens have been found to be useful in a number of ways:

a) The women have to travel long distances to collect fuel wood, losing a lot of time and energy, which is saved through the community kitchens;

b) The chullahs in their houses are very smoky and as a result, after prolonged use, the woman suffers from a number of respiratory and eye diseases, however the cooking range is smokeless;

c) The women would get more time for conducting economic activities or taking care of her children;

d) All the villagers have equal access to the community kitchens; as a result, a woman from the so-called "lower caste" and "upper caste" would cook their meals in the same kitchen, leading to a reduction in caste-based discrimination.

A people centred approach has been the underlying principle behind all the project activities and since inception the project has focused on community mobilization and capacity building, rather than on service delivery. This process is imperative if there is to be a sustainable impact; however building social capacity is also a lengthy process, especially in such remote areas and amongst some of the most marginalized communities. Despite the difficulties, the project has succeeded in initiating a process of change in these communities. Community mobilization and formation of people’s organisations is instrumental in ensuring sustainability of the process set in motion by Prakriya. However, these community based organisations are still in evolutionary stage and will require further support as the project life cycle ended last year. Nevertheless, the process, which has set in to momentum, shall continue.