Nishtha - Rural Health, Education and Environment Center
Nishtha - Rural Health, Education and Environment Center (Nishtha) is a non-profit organization near Dharamsala in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh , India , which was founded in 1995 by the Austrian doctor Dr. Barbara Nath-Wiser was founded. The aim of the organization is to raise the standard of living of the local population through a number of different social projects (in the areas of health, education and the environment). A special focus is on supporting poor or single women.
Since 2002, the Austrian Foreign Service has been sending young Austrians to the Nishtha organization, who can do their ten-month civil substitute service there in the form of a social service.
The rural clinic
Together with other doctors, specialists and volunteers, Dr. Barbara Nath-Wiser runs a country clinic that cares for up to 30 patients a day. In addition to conventional medical treatment methods, homeopathy , Ayurveda and acupuncture are also practiced. The health project is primarily intended to benefit people below the poverty line, children with special needs, the chronically ill and the elderly. As part of the mobile clinic, treatment and medical education are also made possible for those people who have no access to it due to the isolation of their home village.
The community center
Nishtha also operates a community center which houses a library, a computer room and a meeting room. The library and the computer room are frequented by children and young people as part of a tutoring course. Various cultural and training programs as well as meetings of the action group for single women are held in the assembly hall. Indian women are often exposed to particular social disadvantages. The action group for single women offers them a protected framework to support each other.
The organisation's environmental program aims to establish and maintain sustainable, participatory waste disposal, a clean drinking water supply, reforestation and organic agriculture in local rural areas.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nishtha | Rural Health, Education & Environment Center. Retrieved February 8, 2017 (American English).