Project Detail

Demonstration and Promotion of clean energy technologies and water harvesting techniques for improved household vegetable production

The Bana Project is a centre for care for orphaned and vulnerable children. Among its core programmes are the weekly feeding programme and sessions for equipping the children with survival skills. The centre thrives on monthly contributions by the members and depends heavily on biomass to meet its cooking needs. Even though there is a fairly large piece of land for crop production to meet the needs of the feeding programme, there isn?t much done due to financial limitation of the Centre. Following briefing of the local community council about the GEF-Small Grants Programme, a member of the Council assisted the Centre to develop a proposal to build the capacity of the centre so that it can go beyond feeding and equip the children with knowledge about the environmental challenges facing the country with demonstration of simple technologies and strategies for addressing the challenges. The following interventions are being implemented by the Centre:
- Harnessing of solar energy to meet the lighting and water pumping needs and powering audio-visual equipment for exposing children to what other children in the same predicament in the country and elsewhere are doing to survive and to protect their country?s environment and natural resources
- Water harvesting, particularly roof water harvesting for household vegetable production and other domestic uses
- Waste management particularly, sewage, which is becoming costly as the centre uses pit latrines which need to be emptied from time to time ? to install a biogas system which produce gas to meet the cooking needs of the centre and produce the needed fertilizer for production of crops to meet the needs of the feeding programme of the centre
- Tree planting campaigns for the youth and children

Project Snapshot

Grantee:

The Bana Project of Lesotho

Country:

Lesotho

Area Of Work:

Climate Change Mitigation

Operational Phase:

OP5 - Y2 (Jul 12 – Jun 13)

Grant Amount:

US$ 29,586.00

Co-Financing Cash:

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 29,941.00

Project Number:

LSO/SGP/OP5/Y2/CORE/CC/2012/17

Start Date:

11/2012

End Date:

12/2014

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

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Project Characteristics and Results

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Capacity - Building Component

A series of trainings have been scheduled for the youth club and children that the centre is caring for and members of the grantee, on climate change issues and environmental managmeent in general. There will also be training on and demonstration of renewable energy technologies (biogass and solar); water harvesting; piggery farming and household crop production. Tree planting is also a major component of the project.

Gender Focus

All sectors of community will be involved in the project, but there will be a special focus on youth and children as the centre is dedicated to care of orphaned and vulnerable children.

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

Apart from training on climate change and educational videos and open days, tree planting campaigns will be organized.

Project sustainability

Empowerment through training in income generating activities has ensured project ownership. Linkages and partneships developed with other CSOs and govenment insitutions such as the Ministry of Agriculture who now consider the grantee as one of their target farmers has ensured continued monitoring and supervision by the Ministry's extension services. THe Biodigester was installed by an organization which is a grantee itself and this has promoted peer-to-peer exchanges thereby promoting netwokring among grantees.

Notable Community Participation

The Bana Project is committed to protection and care for orphaned and vulnerabe children.The local community councilor took the initiative to invite the SGP Secretariat to one of the planning sessions of The Bana following which proposal was developed with involvement and full support of the community council and local chiefs. Various subject matter specialists from different government and non-governmental organizations will provide all the necessary trainings; while all materials that are locally available will be collected and provided by the grantee supported by the local authorities.

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

The centre has a weekly feeding programme nad has been struggling to keep up with the energy and food supplies needs of the centre. The centre will embark on water harvesting and intensive crop production; to take care of the generated biodegradable waste, a biodigester will be installed and also to generate biogas to meet the cooking needs of the centre; a pv ystem will be installed to power audio-visual equipment to enable youth and children to here about climate change and its mitigation strategies and to be exposed to the plight of other youth and children in the same predicament and how they are coping; there will also be a treeplanting demonstration will will culminate in the youth and child beneficiaries getting fruit and fuelwood trees to plant and take care of at their respective homes. Piggery will also form part of the equation through production of piglets for sale and supplementary raw material for the biodigester which will in turn produce fertilizer for crop production.

Policy Impact

The intervention will contribute towards the national priority of increasing economic productivity and growth and reducing pollution across all sectors using green technology and environmental management systems

Policy Influence

The needs addressed by the project were in line with the National Strategic Development of 2012 - 2017 which focuses on poverty reduction through best practices in natural resources management. This also resonates well with SDGs 15 .

Replication of project activities

The renewable energy technologies demonstrated at the centre have generated a lot of interest within the village particulalry among those that visit the centre regulalry.

Project Results

Project has resuscitated the organization such that grantee membership has grown from 35 to 58 members comprising 52 women and 6 men. Members who had dropped out had run away from the pressure of maintainining the weekly feeding programme out of their own pockets. The relief is a result of income from the sale of water and the piggery project and savings made from electricity.

Through the training on piggery by the MInistry of Agric and Food Security, the grantee is equipped with skills to run a piggery farm on their own. They have been able to raise 10 pigglets 8 of which have already been sold to local butcheries with two kept to continue with the production.

The grantee received training on general hygiene and cleanliness and renewable energy technologies. A biodigester has been installed at the centre to demonstrate solid waste management through use of organic waste to generate energy. The biodigester is fed by waste fromthe piggery farm and the center's vip latrines and all organic waste generated at the centre.The cooking energy needs of the centre are being met with the generated gas which has replaced open fire cooking. A solar water pumping system has been installed and the center is selling water to the villages in the project vicinity.

To promote safe and efficient use of water, through the Ministry of Forestry and Land Reclamation, a roof water harvesting system has been installed at the center. THe harvested water is being used for horticultural purposes and this is complemented by the organic fertilizer produced from biogas production. To date a total of 94 fruit trees have been planted.

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