Learn how Indigenous social innovators and their communities are advancing climate action.
Learn how Indigenous social innovators and their communities are advancing climate action.
At the age of 12, Joe Madiath organized farmworkers employed by his father to lobby for better treatment and living conditions. Thus began Gram Vikas (“village development”), an award-winning NGO based in Odisha, India. It works with rural and tribal communities in India and Africa, to help poor, marginalized people achieve a dignified quality of life. Joe’s father responded to his activism by sending him away to a boarding school, but years later became supportive of his son’s work. “The hidden agenda was to address the problem of exclusion, but the open agenda was to see that people got quality water and sanitation facilities in rural areas,” says Joe. “I would like to create a gender sensitive, egalitarian, equity-based society where people live in relative comfort, with dignity.”
