People's Rural​
Education Movement (PREM)
Models in Excellence
PREM’s approach to development places a key role on innovation—creating, harnessing and implementing new ideas to meet the challenges facing marginalized communities in India today. PREM’s emphasis on innovation over the years has made a robust impact on the Adivasi, Dalit and Fisherfolk people and people’s organizations with whom it works.
People’s Rural Health Promotion Scheme
One of PREM’s most celebrated innovations is the People’s Rural Health Promotion Scheme, in which 100,000 people in 500 villages of Adivasi, Dalit and Fisherfolk communities each invested INR 20 towards a comprehensive, three-tiered healthcare programme that created village pharmacies for medicine distribution, trained local people to treat common disease and ailments through accessible medicine and prevention, and facilitated village-level committees to monitor the health situation in their area and access aid where needed.
Among many accolades PREM received for this programme, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) named it as one of the best, most innovative healthcare programmes in all of Asia. PREM was also invited by the Indian Ministry of Labour and Health in Delhi to make a presentation on this programme, which has been taken up as a model for the national health smart-card scheme of the Indian government.
Beyond Shifting Cultivation
PREM was the first NGO to engage in a programme livelihood development of rural Adivasi people by focusing on innovation in traditional horticultural methods.
PREM’s campaign and trainings to move Adivasi famers Beyond Shifting Cultivation—through plantations, intercropping, introducing cashew and pineapple to new areas—was able to quadruple the per-acre production of traditional horticultural practices in tribal areas and improve the livelihood of the people.
Click here to watch a video: Beyond Shifting Cultivation
Central School and English-Medium Education
PREM was the first NGO in Odisha to put a focus on English-Medium Education and computer literacy in its child-centred approached to development.
PREM supports numerous hostels and more than 300 Adivasi and Dalit children who attend government KV schools and are getting a quality education that was previously not possible for children from their remote, poor communities.
Universal Birth Registration
PREM’s Universal Birth Registration programme that was started 2001 saw 5,400,000 children from 42,500 rural villages in 22 states of Odisha registered, the most comprehensive programme of its kind in the state.
Now, not only is birth registration mainstreamed across all of PREM’s child-focused development work, but this UBR programme has been scaled up by the Indian government at the national level.
Gudanggorjang (A Model Village)
LIMPTAM (welcome) to
Gudanggorjang, Gajapti Districts, Odisha, India!
Ensuring 100% community based care of children, literacy, pure drinking water, clean and beautiful toilets and smokeless kitchen and litigation, violence, alcohol and tobacco free, Gudanggorjang remains a smart (model) village because the inhabitants are smart simple, hospitable, caring and sharing (ENTRA) and live in the unity (AMPU) among themselves and with the nature.
BAI BAI SIMPTAM (many many thanks) to all well-wishers.