Mandalā

Making healthcare & wellbeing accessible, affordable, and local

Context

Rural Indians spend a lot on medical care for common ailments, and lack access to good, affordable healthcare locally leading to growing debt. While Vilvam will continue to conduct regular medical camps, we realized that we have to address the real issue of better lifestyle, better nutrition and preventive care.

We have discovered the valuable use of medicinal herbs, but their knowledge is diminishing. Backyard medicinal plants were once used in every home for health and wellness, but intergenerational knowledge transmission has broken down and commercial medicine efforts have caused their decline.

As packaged and processed food makes its way into rural India, once healthy eating habits have been replaced by  excessive junk food consumption. Home made is being replaced by store bought. Organic home gardens are being replaced by highly sprayed market produce.

People now have begun to visit hospitals for minor ailments that could be treated at home with food or herbs. This is a financial burden and consumes time due to distance and transportation. It also puts pressure on the mental and physical well being of the individual and family. Learning about health-related issues around disease and care in the villages where we work we were convinced that we had to approach wellness differently.  

Through Mandalā Vilvam aims to go many steps further to look at prevention as an all important element of health and wellbeing.

Wellness & Wisdom in Action

Establish and run a wellness space

  • Create an Earth friendly wellness space to hold classes, conduct courses, workshops, retreats and immersions to heal inside & outside.

Establish a world class herbal nursery

  • Run a world class nursery for herb propagation and widespread dissemination.

Create a systematic knowledge bank

  • Build a knowledge repository for common ailments identified  through regular village surveys
  • Build a knowledge repository of local herbs, growth patterns and usage to address common ailments.

Provide Preventive Care with a focus on diet & herbal remedies

  • Actively work with the Govt. primary health care nurse to connect with the community.
  • Through these community touch points we will:
    • Build awareness about use of medicinal plants as a first line of defense to boost immunity.
    • Teach and share knowledge on healing oneself at home through food & herbs before going to the hospital.