“An Unfinished Story : Finished Attempt”
Tags: Innovation, Rural, Tourism, Volunteering, India

Story by ‘Planet Trotter’ : https://planettrotter.in

Founder: Nikhil Pratap Singh

Nikhil is a core team member for the Innovate4India campaign #RuralConnect

Planet Trotter with its Project ‘DAWN’ (https://planettrotter.in/planetdawn) is on a mission to promote sustainable tourism programs in remote villages of Rural India. These adventure led programs offer life altering experiences for travelers and give them an opportunity to contribute to development of the local communities.

About the documentary :Nikhil set the foundation stone for Project Dawn in 2019. He set out on the mission by identifying a quaint village in Uttrakhand called Chalthi, Tanakpur in Champawat District. While doing a recce for his first excursion, the hardships faced by the villagers came to light.

As per the original plan Nikhil was to connect with a few city colleges and take a group of students along. The team was to consist of : A Civil, Mechanical & Computer Science Engineer and one MBBS Student to help with health & hygiene concerns of the villagers. In turn the students would get to experience a 17 km adventurous trek crossing 13 rivers and 3 valleys, learn life lessons in the wild and the college would be featured in the documentary.Like any new start-ups, challenges for Nikhil were plenty. At the last minute the college backed out because of funding.

The villagers of Chalthi had dealt with the agony of many volunteers visiting them in the past . Many NGOs had gathered stories from the villagers with a promise to return and help improve their lives.

Chalthi never saw any returning visitor.They had lost all hope…..

Nikhil had made a promise too! It gave him sleepless nights, he did not want to be yet another volunteer to breach their trust.

As they say “ Victory is always possible for a person who refuses to stop fighting”.He decided to go solo on this mission along with a team to help him with the documentary. He used his savings and gathered the required equipment and materials for the villagers. Being an Electronic Engineer he learnt from his batchmates about the Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Work. This would come handy for the installations at the village.

The following was established for the village in 2019:

1)1.5 KV of solar panel installation was done to start the computers donated by Government to the village school in 2009–2010.

2) Fixing the trolleys for the villagers to be able to cross the valley. These were non-functional since 2016

3) Distribution of sanitary napkins and medicines. Books, copies and other materials for the students.

4) Plantation of fruit trees in school and villages.

A glimpse of the documentary is attached below:

https://vimeo.com/435028484

Seeing Nikhil’s enthusiasm his film crew offered support and became his team. They left hundreds of smiling faces at ‘Chalthi’ and came back with a fulfilling and humbling experience.

The mission is still a work in progress. What can be learnt from this story?What scalable and sustainable models can be generated from this? How can our ecosystem enable and support initiatives of such unsung heroes.

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Innovate4india is a not-for-profit working on building the culture of innovation in India. We are also looking for ecosystem partners for this initiative.Innovate4India Campaign #ruralconnect is on a mission to bring out such stories, build awareness and frame questions for the pressings challenges of Rural India.

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