Meet some of my placement Partners

Visiting dairy farms, advising Theki Dairy and Milkmandu, city  milk processors, writing budgets, developing new cheeses and helping with VSO development programme proposals have all been part of my experience since arriving here in Nepal, but now the real work is to begin as meetings with my new Partners appear in the diary.  Krishna Olija, founder of Sarvodaya  Shewashram, a locally funded organisation that cares for the disabled elderly, runs a small dairy and promotes organic farming, has been instrumental in finding my placement Partners. He has arranged meetings and added the essential explanations of VSO’s work and the role of the professional volunteer,  that my language skills could not attempt.

Krishna in full flow

 

Cows at Nepal Pigeon Farm




Explanations at Chobar Dairy Cooperative

Simple workshops



Developing 'Theki Maid' a local Nepali cheese

 

My language skills, despite scoring pretty abysmally on the final training oral assessment have been described by Shriva and Amrit, the local bakers, as ‘sweet’. Needless to say other responses from locals can include a blank stare or even laughter but I prefer these guy’s encouraging remarks. In fact the ‘sweet’ description was also used by a bunch of girls I met on a bridge, who were demanding I take their photo. At the time I was using all my language skills to describe the dangers of too many on the bridge, whilst struggling to remember the plural of People!!!!  (answer- mannchheharu)

 

A group of young women demand a photo, at festival time and
put my language skills to the test.

 

Back to Krishna who already has strong links with VSO Nepal since he co-ordinates some of the activities of the ICS programme in our District, Lamjung. Groups of young people from the UK visit the country and work alongside National counterparts on district based projects. ICS in Nepal is to being scaled up over the next few months and I am to have a small role in the District induction programme where I will represent the work of the Secure Livelihoods Programme.

Krishna signs up Sarvodaya Shewashram as a Partner 

 

 

A rainy day but the milking must go on.

 

 

The Milijuli Agricultural Co-operative, itself the creation of a business development programme, is a group of 441 women farmers who have come together to share agricultural knowledge, facilitate training and create a saving fund. Amongst their members are 100 beekeepers who produce a wonderfully tasty product in there small collective processing facility. Their needs are for ‘advanced beekeeping’ training which I hope to facilitate over coming months. At our initial meeting when we received a warm welcome the usual farming topics of discussion dominated proceedings. Before we finished and went to visit a member who grew tomatoes and kept bees, the thorny subject of 'people migration' reared its ugly head. It appears that 40% of their menfolk are working away from home and of these half are abroad. The women identified diminished household security, and a lack of male role models for the children of the affected families, as some of the resulting difficulties. Strangely, work burden was not raised as an issue since the co-operative approach allowed these women to support each other and the remaining menfolk literally put their collective elbows to the wheel.



Milijuli Co-op give us a traditional warm welcome.
To my right is Khavaydo my VSO Programme Manager



After the welcome and meeting some of the organic veg. is shown off.

SOCOD Nepal is another NGO based in Lamjung whose work is mainly in the fields of education, health and community support. Within the eastern Lamjung district are some villages that have small herds of buffalos producing ghee which is sold locally and Kathmandu. I have been asked to visit them, along with an officer from the local District Livestock Services Department, to fact find and discover where we can be of help.

Kisan Dairy is a collective of milk producers of varying sizes. I have already visited one of the biggest and a group of the smallest. They have identified needs of improving milk quality and quantity, technical ability of the milk processing facility and business organisation improvements. A fact finding schedule has been worked out and I visit milk collection centres and the milk processing area later in the week. Sandeep , Nira and Sarun Rai are the young team who want to develop the business to the benefit of the farmer members.

Kisan Dairy's MD, Raj Kumar explains milk collection

Then goes on to identify areas of 'need'



Sarun Rai, Nira and Sandeep, some of the Kisan Dairy team

 

Sustainability of transferred knowledge is the biggest challenge. During my initial visits to farmers and processors we have identified ‘needs’ and areas where ‘change’, would be welcomed. The struggle is to make these changes long lasting and self- perpetuating.  I will be working with the District Livestock Service Office, based here in Besisahar. There are 4 livestock officers and Dr Dhungana is the team leader, who has already expressed the dangers of giving farmers conflicting advice. In an ideal world I will not be giving advice to farmers. Instead I will be building the knowledge of his team of advisors, anyone else giving advice in the district and farmers who are willing to share knowledge with their neighbours. That’s the ideal world, but how can it be done? No real answers. The solution will be built on many things which include friendship, trust, openness . Once these are in place let us hope the knowledge will flow, in both directions. Another part of the foundation will be good communication. I’m hoping that my Nepali speaking colleagues at VSO will help to start things rolling but my own language skills will have to engender more ‘sweet’ reactions and less laughter!