Agrawal runs the nonprofit NGO Sustainable Innovations.
By Raif Karerat
Indian social activist Bhagwati Agrawal has been named one of CNN’s “Top Ten Heroes of 2015.” Each honoree will receive $10,000 and be recognized at “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute,” a globally broadcast event that airs Sunday, Dec. 6.
Agrawal’s nonprofit, Sustainable Innovations, created a rainwater harvesting system that now provides life-changing, safe drinking water to more than 10,000 people across six villages in the driest region of India.
The system frees up adults to spend time doing more valuable activities, while not having to fetch water allows children, especially girls, to spend more time in school. People have reported fewer health problems and dairy cows have become twice as productive.
“The way I look at it, I’m 70 years old” Agrawal told CNN. “I only have maybe 10 years left of active life. Right now I’m like Usain Bolt, the sprinter. … And I will run very fast to accomplish this mission.”
Other winners include:
Dr. Jim Withers
- Withers Withers offers free, quality health care to the homeless of Pittsburgh, Penn. According to CNN, Withers used to walk the streets dressed like a homeless person — rubbing dirt in his hair and muddying up his clothes. He would search for those who needed medical attention who might otherwise shirk his attention. Withers inspired a citywide program called Operation Safety Net. Since 1992, the group has helped more than 10,000 individuals and transitioned more than 1,200 into housing.
Monique Pool
- Monique Pool has dedicated herself to helping wild animals in the South American country of Suriname. Her nonprofit, Green Heritage Fund Suriname, helps protect sloths and implement other conservation efforts throughout the country. Her home serves as a temporary sanctuary for the mammals, and she is now a recognized local authority on them, according to CNN.
Richard Joyner
- Joyner, a local pastor, started a community garden after watching many of his parishioners die from preventable diseases. Today, his nonprofit, the Conetoe Family Life Center, manages more than 20 plots of land, including one 25-acre site. More than 80 local young people help him plant and harvest nearly 50,000 pounds of fresh food a year. Local residents receive some food for free, and students raise scholarship money by selling the food to restaurants and grocery stores.
Maggie Doyne
- When Doyne decided to backpack around the world after college, she didn’t know her life would be so affected by a stop in nepal. Thedre she met children who were struggling to cope with the aftermath of a decades-long civil war. She called her parents, had them wire her $5,000 she had earned babysitting, and purchased land in Surket and built the Kopila Valley Children’s Home. Today, Kopila — which means “flower bud” in Nepali — is home to about 50 children, from infants to teenagers. In 2010, the group opened its Kopila Valley School, which today educates more than 350 students. Doyne’s BlinkNow Foundation supports these efforts, reported CNN.
Sean Gobin
- Sean Gobin’s nonprofit, Warrior Hike provides combat veterans with all the equipment and supplies they need to complete long-distance hikes throughout the country. to help deal with PTSD. He calls it “walking off the war.” The trips range from two weeks to six months and offer a healthy outlet to work out lingering issues.
Kim Carter
- Carter’s nonprofit, Time For Change, provides housing, counseling and job training, as well as services to help women reunite with their children. Carter is familiar with the trials many of the women who come through her organization have dealt with, she formerly cycled in and out of incarceration and homelessness before deciding she was going to change her circumstances. Since 2002, more than 800 women — many of them formerly incarcerated — have been helped by Carter’s program.
Rochelle Ripley
- her nonprofit, hawkwing [sic], she has delivered an estimated $9 million in services and goods to the Lakota indigenous people. Four to five times a year, Ripley makes the trip from her home in Glastonbury, Conn., to South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. Working alongside the tribe, she and volunteers run a food bank and provide free health services, home renovations and educational opportunities.
Jody Farley-Berens
- After a friend who was a single parent passed away, Farley-Berens helped start a nonprofit dedicated to assisting others in similar circumstances. Since 2006, Singleton Moms has provided practical, financial, and emotional support to more than 300 parents in the Phoenix, Az. area.
Dr. Daniel Ivankovich
- In 2010, Ivankovich co-founded the nonprofit OnePatient Global Health Initiative. Today, Ivankovich runs three clinics in Chicago and performs more than 600 surgeries a year. He says more than 100,000 people have benefited from the program.