One Month In – Experiences on the Field

As I round out my first month here in India, I am starting to reflect on everything that I have and have not been able to accomplish so far. More than anything, I am eager to see the fruits of my labor in the work I am doing with Profugo, from engineering projects to English and more. One thing that has been strikingly clear from these few short weeks is that absolutely nothing ever goes

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Some Experiences of a Field Fellow

Visiting a Post-Landslide Community As some of you may know, between August 16 and August 30,   Kerala was hit with the worst flood the area has seen in over a hundred years. What is very unfortunate about the whole thing is that some of it was not preventable and some of it was. See, 5 meters of rain fell in just about 10 days here in Wayanad where I am. That’s over 16 feet of

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Access to Safe Water

Imagine mostly inaccessible water, tainted with toxic chemicals.  Then imagine being forced to travel long distances to drink that harmful water, because it is your only choice for survival.  In the United States and other developed countries, access to clean water is something we take for granted.  But in many parts of the world, such basic necessities are not so easy to obtain. According to Indian governmental surveys, 54% of homes in rural India do

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Profugo’s Water Quality Program

Monsoon season in Wayanad is quickly approaching but even though the torrential rains will bring large volumes of much needed moisture, Wayanad and the entire state of Kerala continue to endure severe drought outside of the rainy months. The lush greenery of the Wayanad hillsides turns to a parched yellow in the months of the dry season. A large percentage of the monsoon rains are lost as run off into the Arabian Sea due to

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From Villanova’s Engineering Service Learning Team

After travelling dozens of hours and thousands of miles we arrived in Bangalore to the hustle and bustle of early morning rush hour; we witnessed families starting their days as Sabhir, our driver, weaved in and out of traffic on our way to Wayanad. The next day, the four of us stepped foot in Prashanthagiri, and the beautiful rural community seemed like a world away from the busy city. We were eager to learn about

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