The Rain is Gone -- October 2012 Program Update

Urban gardening uses a small amount of space to create a lot of value!

Now that October has arrived, Khom Loy's projects in Mae Sot have been at full capacity and more!  Some items on the list include: continuing current school garden programs, starting a round of new garden schools, improving the capacity of our pig projects and beginning a new ambitious program of surveying communities on the Burmese side of the border.

School Garden Programs
After a volatile and unpredictable rainy season, we will be continuing work at Hsa Mu Htaw and Holy Infant Orphanage schools, to ensure that some final touches are implemented to keep the schools going strong into the future.  In addition, we will be helping Heavenly Home school transition to become an independent project during their second round of growing.

Semester break for Burmese migrant schools in Mae Sot takes place in late October.  This gives us a great opportunity to launch our new round of garden schools, including Parami and Love & Care. A third school, Min Ma Haw, will begin work in December, and a final school to be determined will begin work in January.  Keep an eye open for updates on any and all of these schools in the near future!

An overhead trellis for vine vegetables at Hsa Mu Htaw school

Pig Project/Integrated Farming Projects
Now working with two schools (Hway Ka Loke and Thoo Mwe Khee), the pig project is picking up steam.  In addition to completing a "How-To" process manual in both English and Burmese, we have also been able to access valuable research from Mae Jo University, a major actor in researching and implementing pig projects that use fermented banana stalk (FBS) as a low-cost feed input.  With this added knowledge, we have an improved feed system for our pigs.



New round of mixed-breed pigs at Hway Ka Loke school

Surveying Communities in Burma (Myanmar)
Given the ongoing political and developmental changes in Burma, we are looking into border areas that would serve as focal points for expanding the spread of agricultural techniques and knowledge, and where larger development programs may not be able to reach right away. 

That's why we've started a survey program to learn more about Burmese and Karen communities bordering Tak province, Thailand.  We have a goal of building relationships with at least 20 of these communities by the end of December.


So if you're interested in learning more about things like vertical gardening, low-cost agriculture and a country that is slowly opening itself up to the world, then this journal is the place for you.  Also, feel free to be a part of KLDF's projects by clicking "Make A Donation" at the top right corner of the page. Thanks in advance!

Wall Gardening Using Plastic Bottles

By Win Ko, UPLift Agriculture Officer

This video is about bottle wall gardening. It is a very cool method for the people who do not have enough space to grow vegetables, herbs, and flowers. KLDF is currently working with urban migrant schools in Mae Sot, Thailand to set up wall gardening projects for nutritional purposes. Enjoy!

Returning to the Landfill community with a Lot of Fun

By Ko Lynn, UPLift Program & Communications Officer

No "I" in "Team"

The Project Inspire program for women's empowerment with UN Women and Mastercard is still yielding results for Burmese migrant women in Mae Sot, Thailand. Due to this, UPLift held a follow-up workshop with motivated women in the community.

On Saturday, July 21st we held a workshop with ten motivated women at the landfill community that especially dealt with improving life skills. The workshop topic, Teamwork, is closely related to communication and responsibility because the individual actions will always affect the others around you. Working with others can make tasks easier, and teamwork can help solving problems by providing different perspectives and different ideas for the landfill women.


After the workshop we had some activities that directly related to the real lives of the women. It was really useful for the women and their daily lives because they all have to work the same type of job and they are likely to be a team.

Women participated in a teamwork activity called "Acid Ocean".

Because of the workshop, women could understand concepts of effective teamwork and be able to work together with different people. Even though most of the women who attended the workshop are illiterate, they felt pretty smart and capable to learn new things. They believe that the training would be able to empower the women who live in the landfill to be independent.

Although we have ended Project Inspire program, we have done a workshop with the motivated women again, and I felt very happy to spend my time with them. I will often visit the landfill and share as much as I can with them. As a Khom Loy UPLift staff I am willing to work with these women in the future.

UPLift and Project Inspire, Finishing Things Up...

As you've read in previous posts, UPLift had the delight of working together with UN Women and Mastercard on Project Inspire, a program designed to improve social entrepreneurship and women's empowerment around the world.  As the winner of the 2011 Best Financial Literacy Project Award, UPlift has spent much of the past year researching, planning and implementing a great project that works with the female residents of a landfill community near Mae Sot, Thailand.

Thanks to UN Women's project grant of USD $10,000, we were able to train a group of young CBO staff from Burma on financial literacy, give them the tools and skills to be trainers themselves, and then set off on a series of basic financial literacy trainings for a group of over 60 women.  The results were fantastic: women now have realistic and achievable savings goals, they use household budgeting to control their lives, and their dreams of moving on into the future can be fulfilled. 

In addition, the grant allowed UPLift to hire a new staff member, Ko Lynn, to join us on delivering innovative and exciting programs for migrant women in and around Mae Sot.  He has blown new wind into our sails by pressing for further women's empowerment projects with new migrant communities in Mae Sot.  Using both the positive experiences and lessons learned from dealing with challenges at the landfill, we have now wound down the official Project Inspire program as expected but are indeed planning and fundraising for another year of spreading capacity, sharing experiences and proving that giving more power to women (both fiscally and in society) is one of the greatest ways to end extreme poverty.

Camilla (left), visiting the UPLift team at Wide Horizons Project Management School in February.

We wish to give a warm THANK YOU to U.N. Women Singapore for the grant they have provided us and the time spent working together.  It has been a fantastic collaboration, and we are looking forward to continue making a difference for women in the future.

Integrated Farming Project at Thoo Mwe Khee School

Students taking an active hand in planning the first portion of the project!

UPLift staff had a great time at Thoo Mwe Khee migrant learning center from June 7- June 10 working on an exciting expansion of the natural farming pig project!  With a strong first visit, we are looking forward to the second round of activities at the end of June. (To see full photo album, please click here.)

Thoo Mwe Khee is a primarily ethnic Karen school on the Thai/Burmese border in Tak province, Thailand.  It is home to over 500 students in total, with an estimated 300 students boarding on the compound during the school year.  With support from Spinning Top, a great organization that focuses on effective methods for helping migrants and refugees on the border, the school has put together a fantastic garden program.  With the incoming pig project, they will soon have tons (literally) of compost for use inside of the school itself!

Win Ko, our Agricultral Officer, teaching basic lessons on IMO to the grade-12 students at TMK school

We helped the grade-12 students with three main objectives during our visit: planning and implementing a banana planting project on the school grounds, making eight different kinds of organic fertilizers (or IMOs) for use in the project, and also getting a good start on building the pig litter.

Choosing and transplanting "gluay nam wah" banana trees onto the school grounds from the surrounding forest

The students are motivated, smart and very capable at these types of activities!  They are also not shy to ask questions and have their voices heard.  Throughout ther visit we were able to share a lot of fun times together, and I can't wait to return again!

Stay tuned for our next visit, which coincides with the pigs arriving! :)

New Pig Projects for 2012

The new expanded agriculture area at Hway Ka Loke School

After a successful pilot project that measured the usefulness of fermented banana stalk (FBS) as a pig feed, Khom Loy has had several new project ideas in mind.  We are now working hard to turn these ideas into reality in 2012:

Hway Ka Loke--Project Expansion
After the before-noted pilot, Hway Ka Loke school has expanded their work by building a new complex of agricultural buildings.  This new ag area, which can be seen in this photo album, includes three larger pig pens, a duck-rearing pen, a chicken coop used for egg hatching, a larger work area for making fertilizers and banana food, and a new integrated garden that includes both banana plants and crops usable at the school.

We are excited to continue support of this project in 2012 by testing FBS as a feed for the chickens and ducks, as well as supporting Hway Ka Loke as it transistions its pig-rearing project to a larger scale with the intent to sell finished pigs to Mae Tao Clinic for its food program.

Thoo Mwe Khee--New School Project
Thanks to generous support from Spinning Top, we are working with Thoo Mwe Khee school in Phop Phra, Thailand to begin their own FBS project.  Thoo Mwe Khee is a large Karen school and boarding house that has great education and extracirricular programs for its students.  Last year, Spinning Top worked with the school to launch a fantastic garden program that produced an estimated 5,000 kilograms of yield for its boarding house student meals! 

This is where the FBS pig project and its excellent compost production comes into relevance.  With both pigs (increased protein for students) and compost (improved vegetable yield for students) in mind, Khom Loy is looking forward to spending time with staff and students at Thoo Mwe Khee over the next year.

Nu Poe Refugee Camp--New Community Project
We are also soon to begin collaboration with organizations inside of Nu Poe refugee camp in Umphang, Thailand.  After introductions and discussion with camp leaders, organizations and community members in late May, we will then begin to work on a best-case plan that benefits both the camp members as well as the surrounding Thai communities through the use of FBS pig-rearing, integrated farming and agroforestry topics.

Training System--New Training Project
Finally, we are fine-tuning a training format that can be used directly with community members/adults from both sides of the border.  The ideal format would be simple, use pictures/media, and cover the entire process of raising pigs using FBS, as well as solutions for eliminating very common constraints like flooding, disease and high levels of risk.

Fertilizer Training at Holy Infant Orphanage!

Stopping for a pose after everything was wrapped up!

On Saturday, May 18th Khom Loy staff travelled to Holy Infant Orphanage, a Catholic-run boarding house and school in Mae Sot, Thailand.  Together with several staff members and students we ran an indigenous microorganism (IMO) workshop that gave students the experience and skills to make cheap, effective and safe fertilizers for their new garden.

IMOs all involve the process of microbial fermentation using a number of agents, including sugar, salt and rice-rinsing water.  They are made with materials that are usually cheap and easy to find in the local environment, which dramatically reduces the costs of gardening when compared to using chemical fertilizers.

When made successfully, these IMOs provide useful things like lactic acid bacteria, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium and benefical spores to soil, so that vegetables can grow strong and provide great results.  The overall philosophy behind using IMOs is that one should manage the soil first and foremost, not manage the plants themselves.

Check out our photo album with many pictures from the training, or see a few examples below!

Working on the ingredients for fermented plant juice (FPJ) and fermented fruit juice (FFJ)

Nothing says Christmas like organic fertilizer with tinsel used as rope!

A Dominican sister next to Holy Infant's newest patch of garden!