India Village Plants 116,000 Trees, Powers 400 Homes Solar

When Yogeshwari Chatrugan Chaudhary became Dawwa's first woman sarpanch, she didn't talk about awards or recognition. She spoke about cleaner fields, secure harvests, and a future where farmers could actually plan ahead.

The small Maharashtra village had struggled for years with unreliable water, poor soil, and limited options for its farming families. Chaudhary saw potential where others saw only problems.

She started by bringing solar irrigation to the fields and encouraging farmers to try mixed crops instead of betting everything on one harvest. Women's self-help groups, once sidelined, suddenly had voices in decisions about farms and village projects.

Better water management brought fuller paddy fields. New orchards appeared where dry patches once sat, and cattle grew healthier with improved grazing. Farm schools gave growers hands-on lessons in soil health, seed selection, and how to save money while improving yields.

Joining Maharashtra's Majhi Vasundhara campaign gave the village both direction and confidence. Dawwa won its first Smart Gram Award for weaving eco-friendly habits into everyday routines, proving that rural communities could lead on climate action.

Residents planted more than 116,000 trees across the village, slowly healing scarred and degraded land. Waste segregation and compost pits turned everyday garbage into nutrient-rich manure for kitchen gardens, closing the loop on household waste.

Solar mini-grids and home systems now light over 400 households. Families cut their fuel bills while proving clean energy works perfectly well for ordinary rural homes, not just urban showcases.

The Ripple Effect

Not every change came easily. Chaudhary's plan for an immersion tank for festival idols met resistance from tradition-minded villagers, but she held firm to protect local ponds and streams from pollution.

She started recording every project with geotagged photos, making all spending visible to anyone who wanted to look. That simple transparency habit built trust inside Dawwa and caught attention from government officials and NGOs outside it.

The transformation rested on countless long village meetings and steady mentorship from former sarpanch Shri Bahekar, who guided Chaudhary through administrative tangles and procedural challenges. His support helped her navigate systems designed to intimidate newcomers, especially women.

Other villages across Maharashtra now visit Dawwa to see how a small community pulled off such big changes. The model proves that climate action doesn't require massive budgets or outside experts, just committed local leadership and people willing to try something different.

Looking around today, Chaudhary says the hope planted with those first saplings has grown into safer incomes and a closer community, things that seemed impossible a decade ago.