Aurangabad: People from around 6,000 villages across Maharashtra are being trained to tackle drought situation.The training is being facilated by NGO Paani Foundation under the Satyamev Jayate Water Cup initiative, The NGO’s CEO Satyajit Bhatkal informed on Saturday.This is the third year of Paani Foundation’s Water Cup, a competition between different villages on the work done for watershed management and water conservation. Started with 116 villages across the state in 2016, the water conservation and water shed management initiative of the foundation is operating in 5,945 villages of 75 talukas in the state this year. The foundation started by actor Aamir Khan and filmmaker Kiran Rao claims to have harvested 8,261 crore litres of water through the 2016 Water Cup.“Paani Foundation guides and engages the villages suffering water scarcity to solve their water problem by themselves,” Satyajit Bhatkal said. This is done by providing them observational training and encouraging them to participate through shramdaan. “In the last two years 10,000 and 70,000 people participated through volunteering in shramdaan respectively and this year the figure may go up to 1.5 lakh people,” said Bhatkal.Under the programme, the village representatives are given a four-day residential training as part of which they are taken to the villages who have successfully undertaken the works. In Marathwada there are 12 training centres in 20 talukas. In the Aurangabad district, villages in Khuldabad, Phulambri and Vaijapur are contesting for the Water Cup.The works undertaken by Paani Foundation are in line with Jalyukt Shivar, the flagship project of the state government and therefore, the NGO has received support for its work from the state.

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