Village people generally have more than two names: their proper name and a familial name used with love by the senior members of their family. Whenever official Surveys are conducted at village level, the Govt. officials or enumerators note down people’s names, but often different names are note on different occasions. This creates lots of problems and leads to identity crisis when people have to submit documents before any legal authority. Another concern is that, basically the outsiders do not respect the villagers as a civilized human being.

In order to counter these problems, Shakti piloted a new innovation of individual Household name plates. Kantamal, a village in Kasipur Block, was selected for the pilot and 132 household were provided with name plates. We also engendered the name plate by putting the name of both husband and wife of the house in it. Now, every household feels pride in its house with its own name plate prominently displayed. The entire village feels empowered by having name plates in their houses and name confusion on official documents will become a thing of the past.

Basically the women in all villages clean their cooking utensils in the tube well, which creates an unhygienic situation and increases the chances of drinking water contamination.

To change this practice, Shakti introduced a separate Utensil Cleaning platform near the tube well platform in 17 villages of Kashipur Block of Rayagada Dist in Odisha and the women folks are happy with this intervention. To sustain this effort the women have taken an oath to follow the new practice and have devised their own “punishments” for a defaulter, a monetary fine or one day social boycott.