15 Swadhina village workers and the women's committee members from 15 working villages in Orissa, a few years ago, were involved in this unique seed collection and sapling distribution programme.First they collected seeds of mango, mahul and jackfruit from door to door visit at their own village. The village committee members took the responsibility of planting the seeds to raise saplings. Later around 1000 saplings were distributed to 168 families in 15 villages. This is a very special effort at environment protection through exclusively local voluntary initiative with women playing a leading role.

Every year several activities are organized on the occasion of World Environment Day. Activities include children rallies with posters, women's meet, street theatre and tree plantation. highlights of last year's activities

This programme is carried out with medicine support from Action Medeor, Germany. Essential medicines are received every year, which are later sent to different state units of Swadhina. A medicine Kit containing simple medicines and various ointment for treatment and prevention of various diseases for children and women is given to the select workers who act as bare-foot health guide. Before distributing the medicines, the use of each medicine/ointment and its dosage etc. are explained to them. So that for simple diseases the workers themselves can give those and the villagers do not need to rush to distant hospitals or depend on any external health personnel. The medicines have proved to be very useful in remote villages.

Regular Health Check up camps are conducted at rural areas with the voluntary services of nearby town doctors.Swadhina working
villages in this area are very remotely located and the villagers find it difficult to go to the health centres for any health ailment.On an average about 200 people attend these camps every month.

Occasionally special need based programmes are also organised. We share highlights of some of such events of past years.

- A very special Health Camp for women was organised where Dr. Sreelekha Karmakar, a renowned Gyneacologist from Calcutta checked up 80 tribal women. Participation of a large number of tribal women in this camp is indeed encouraging and many of their gyneacological problems were solved which otherwise kept secret. They were also given some medicines as needed. This camp was held in Ghagra village of Garbeta area of Midnapore of West Bengal.

- On the occasion of birthday of Deshbandhu C R Das, who has been pioneer in providing health facilities for women and spearheading establishment of quality hospitals, a Health Camp was jointly organised by Nari Jagat (a 25 year old women's journal) in Calcutta. This was attended by about 70 patients of whom a large number was women. Renowned specialist doctors like. Dr. (Ms) P. Khawash, Dr. Pradip Sanyal, Dr. Labanya Chatterjee, Mr. Ramakanta Pakrashi, Dr. Shantanu Chowdhury and Dr. Ashis
Kumar Dey had given their precious time to attend to these patients. Former Chief Minister of West Bengal and former Ambassador to USA Sri Siddhartha Sankar Ray was present and shared some events of his life involving his maternal grandfather Deshbandhu C.R. Das.

- Free health check-up camps were organised for the people living in Swadhina office neighbourhood slums, conducted by
renowned Dr.(Ms) Sreelekha Karmakar.