"To build toilets is easy, but to shift people's mind and hearts is the real work. Software is more important than hardware," Ishwar Dada often used to say.

Ishwar-kaka started volunteering with Gandhi.s Sewadal at the age of 12. When he encountered a painful experience around the taboos of scavengers who gathered human waste, Ishwar-kaka consciously dedicated his life to the work of sanitation and raising consciousness around related issues of .untouchability.. He was 16 years old. To this day, more than 2.6 billion people in the world don.t have toilets; the Ganges river has 1.1 million liters of raw sewage dumped into it every minute. And that number would.ve been a whole lot higher if it weren.t for a lifetime of Ishwar-kaka.s service. He built more than 200,000 toilets through .Safai Vidyalaya. at the Gandhi Ashram and helped launch 118 organizations that would elevate the work of sanitation around the country. Read complete story here

Posted by Madhu on Jan 27, 2011 | permalink