.This project emphasizes the gender empowerment. The coordinator of the Mallamarachy Social elevation Organisation is a Muslim woman who is in charge of all training programs, planning and seeing to the smooth running of the many projects they are involved in. The Sinhala community of the project in Deegavapiya is also led by a woman who is in charge of the compost site its management and distribution. Many Muslim women too have been participants of the training programs and are continuing the work along with their Sinhala counterparts.
Notable Community Participation
Community participation is notable as they have even got the people outside of the project beneficiaries to participate in the water hyacinth clearing and collection efforts. Mr Hussen is a popular personality in the area and well respected and his leadership inspires people to join and be assured of good results form their efforts.
Replication of project activities
Other farmer organizations outside the group that were project beneficiaries are very keen to replicate the project as some of them already participated voluntarily in the water hyacinth clearing and collection programs. If the request of a tractor is met with the assistance of collection they are all ready to continue these activities. The 200 cows that have been given by USAID are a very goods incentive to replicate more compost sites and the training given by Mr Samusideen who conducts adult education programs and the Agricultural officers who work with Samurdhi recipients farmers and school children among others now includes organic home gardens in their teaching programs. This will promote replication of similar efforts and using the water hyacinth and cattle manure containing compost even small scale at household levels may happen in the future.
Project sustainability
People are happy with the prices at the marketability for the better quality organically grown produce from their lands and the increased paddy cultivation.. This makes them committed to keep the canals clean and use the cheaper, better fertilizer for both paddy and their home cultivations. The cows received from USAID will give an added incentive for compost production.
Mr Samusideen?s who is a project beneficiary is an Adult education officer and his program includes his leanings from this project while his home garden is used as the model garden for field visits for his students. He has already trained trained around 2000 farmers in coastal areas (Tamil speaking). More requests are coming for training.
Farmer organizations that are not direct beneficiaries helped in clearing the canals and want to continue to do so. The request for a 2 wheel tractor has been met by the project to continue this activity. Affiliation with the UNDP funded Agriculture Training Institute where 2 day residential training programs for 40 can be held at any one time helps train farmers, other NGOs, school kids and Samurdhi beneficiaries about organic home gardens and their value. Generally 4 trainings 160 people are trained in one month. Hearing about his work and the project Dr PA Piyasiri, Director General of Tertiary and Vocational Commission, Narahenpita, has invited MR Hussen to the Hardy Institute Ampara to help formulate a syllabus on non formal agriculture to train the students.
Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods
There is an emphasis on sustainable livelihoods as they are moving away from purchasing costly (the cost is rising all the time and would soon be unaffordable for the cultivators in general) chemicals as fertilizer and pesticides and becoming self reliant for such. The project actions have made the surrounding environment improve to a fair extent as indicted by the price rise in paddy lands as well as residential lands in the vicinity.
Planning gef grant
They are very competent and this very successful project is ready to scale up ta Medium sized GEF grant if it is available with the leadership of Mr Hussen whose commitment to serve his community and uplift their conditions is very remarkable.
Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment
This is being done in the training programs which are continuous where the broader global aspects of this work is also discussed and environmental impacts of human action are discussed broadly. The paper articles on the project take this one step further.
Capacity - Building Component
This project aims at lowering the cost of cultivation and giving them alternatives that are safer and building self sufficiency in food especially rice, vegetables and fruits. The cattle will also give them, self-sufficiency in diary products. The knowledge and skills for organic cultivation and the how to obtain rich yields (the very large fruits such as water melons) and their improved taste will bring them a much valued additional income as well.
Project Results
? Cultivation of organic paddy and organic vegetable and fruit (Ladies fingers, sweet cucmber, cluster beans, guava, long beans, snake gourd, brinjals, Bibille limes, Chinese mandarin, Sapodilla, Carbonic grass, pomegranate, mango, Nethrampalam- indigenous s banana, Water melon) cultivations by the project beneficiaries. The compost tanks produce fertilizer that has all the trace elements( from the water hyacinth)t. This results in saving of spending on chemical fertile while addressing the problem of micro nutrient deficiencies in the soil. Each compost manufacturing tank produces 5 tons of compost/ month.
? Clearing of the irrigation channels (2km) of water hyacinth and the water flowing freely across them. This resulted in the restoration of cultivable paddy lands which were abandoned for around 50 years. As a result about 2/3rd more paddy lands have been cultivated in total amounting to 459 acres of paddy land.
? 50-55 bags of paddy/ acre is now obtained from previously abandoned and uncultivated paddy lands. They were abandoned owing to the corrosive effect of the water containing FeSO4 causing `root rot? as the waters were blocked by water hyacinth.
? The land values in the areas bordering paddy lands have gone up fetching up to Rs 2 million per acre in the residential areas. The abandoned paddy lands that have been restored are valued at Rs.8 lakhs per acre no one is willing to sell these lands owing to the profits they bring.
? The waters are now carried without much hindrance into the Periya kalapu which in turn takes the waters out to sea. This helps flush all the toxics and chemicals out to a larger body of water ( the sea) diluting their bad effects.
? People are confident that you can grow vegetables and fruits without the use of chemicals. This also supplies an additional income to the project beneficiaries. The fruits are much tastier and larger in size as well as the farmers receive good advise form the Project head Mr Hussen who has over 38 years of experience in ariculture.( 13 years as an agriculture extention officer in Sri Lanka and working under the sultan of Oman fro 25 years on organically grown fruits and vegetables.)
? Food safety as the produce is free of chemicals.
? Seeing the good work of the project USAID has now commenced a program of giving them 200 heads of cattle which will greatly benefit the compost production.
? The soils in Ampara are deficient in Calcium and the use of water Hyacinth which is rich in Calcium being used as fertilizer has addressed this problem.
