Smells like team spirit

Sittilingi, a cluster of tribal hamlets in Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district, existed far from the gaze of mainstream development. This was until the late 1990s, when doctors Regi George and Lalitha Regi arrived, not with grand blueprints, but an idea—that a community could take ownership of its own health.

Humble and yet radical, this idea was the backbone of the Tribal Health Initiative (THI) established in 1993. By 2004, after their work had successfully brought down infant and maternal mortality rates, the couple turned their ears to the land. During evening conversations and a quiet padayathra, they heard the villagers’ woes, all tied to agriculture—debt, distance from markets, and fields that yielded more despair than food. Guided by Gandhian principles, Regi and Lalitha devised solutions rooted in organic farming, which would encourage self-reliance and doing away with chemical inputs.

It took two years before the first few farmers agreed to make the switch. And thus, the Sittilingi Organic Farmers Association (SOFA) was born. Today, SOFA comprises over 700 farmers and 500 women entrepreneurs.