Tamil Nadu Village Gets Toilets, Thanks To A 16-Year-Old Girl | Read

Devi Arivalagan, a resident of a village in Tamil Nadu, said for years she and her family had to walk for around a kilometer towards a forest area for defecation. But now, thanks to a teenage girl in their village, that no longer is an issue. When she won an online competition last year to visit the NASA facility in the US, help poured in with funds from various sectors for Jayalakshmi -- a 16-year-old studying in Class 12 in Adhanakottai village of Tamil Nadu's Pudukottai district. The girl is the sole earner of her family which includes a mentally-disabled mother and a younger brother. However, after securing a sufficient amount to realise her dream, the girl turned down an offer from a non-government organisation and instead asked it to help her village which was facing the problem of open-defecation since many years.