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| A pair of students in the garden at Min Ma Haw School |
Teacher Preparation Center (TPC) Activities
The Teacher Preparation Center is an adult training
program run by World Education and the Karen Teachers Working Group (KTWG), a
support organization working with hundreds of schools inside of Burma. Khom Loy
will be assisting them with the setup of several training programs for their
participants.
After some shifting of schedules in December, we have a plan
with TPC to set up both agricultural and pig rearing training centers at the
school.
The centers will be used to train TPC’s annual group of
teachers from several border regions in Burma, so that that they can implement
cost-effective programs in their communities that use local resources and
innovative techniques to produce strong results. After initial technical support and training
from Khom Loy, TPC staff and administration will then build their own capacity
in order to train future groups of students beyond 2013.
The garden program, which will consist of Khom Loy’s school
garden trainings and project setup, will take place in early January 2013 and
continue through the month. We have a
tentative plan to spend Jan 2-4 at the school, giving basic conceptual trainings
and also delivering the initial tools and materials needed for setup.
The pig program will follow at TPC later in 2013. Global Neighbors, a Canadian NGO which owns
the land which TPC is set up on in Mae Pa subdistrict, Mae Sot district, Tak
province, has given us special support by agreeing to provide some of their
land near the school to set up a demonstration plot for the KLDF integrated pig
rearing program. We will have further
discussions about this process in late January 2013.
Garden Projects
School garden projects are being designed and implemented
by KLDF at migrant learning centers in and around Mae Sot, Thailand. Funded by
Thai Children’s Trust in the U.K., these school gardens are focused on
producing supplemental sources of nutrition for boarding house students who are
currently feeling the squeeze of departing donor support on the border due to
the transition of leadership inside of Burma.
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| A raised garden bed that displays levels of materials to make strong compost (dry leaves, green grass, topsoil, cow manure) |
Parami – Parami’s school garden has successfully
transitioned to become independent (meaning that KLDF staff will continue to
visit and assist with problem-solving, but only when needed).
Thanks to their strongly experienced staff
and well-managed student groups, they have five different garden areas
operating on their schools grounds.
They are currently having an insect problem in two of their
garden patches involving white grub larvae that bore into roots and plant
bodies, leaving plants to decay or contract different types of rot. We are looking into this now; at the present
it appears that short of expensive solar bed cover equipment or parasitic
nematode supplements that cannot be found in the local area, chemical
insecticide is the best way to proceed.
Love and Care – Great results from Love and Care, including:
a pumpkin patch going down a steep slope, good results from the beans,
cucumbers and radish in their multi-cropped raised beds, a gourd stage in a
tucked-away corner of their teachers’ boarding house, and a newly constructed
raised bed area in the bottom-rear area of their land which is made of old
banana stalk!
The main challenge for Love and Care in December was a
sudden water shortage from their piped water supply. The temple which provides this water source
(further up a hill on the highway leading from Mae Sot to Tak) is having some
sort of problem involving piping that is related to the ongoing construction of
the new highway.
As a result, the school has been depending on a stream
across the highway from their school for their own personal water use
(showering, cooking, etc). Students take
a large plastic barrel suspended on a bamboo pile and run across the highway
several times each morning and evening in order to get their water. We are checking for updates to see if we can
help this situation by speaking with the local Thai government about the issue.
Min Ma Haw – This equivalent of a high school located in
Tong Taung neighborhood (a veritable “Little Burma” in Mae Sot!) made
incredible progress during their first month of activities for the garden
project. Using a squared plot of land
donated for use in-kind by the Thai village headman, they have constructed 20
raised garden beds, a bamboo trellis stage for gourds and vine plants, and are
currently working on a compost building to improve their own local supply of
compost and humus.
Planting has begun in 10 of the raised beds, due to a
shortage of purchasable top soil in the Mae Sot area. Once we can find more topsoil, then the
second batch of raised beds will begin operation. In addition, Min Ma Haw now has 11 new papaya
tree saplings being grown on their school site!
This will provide a steady and nutritious snack for students at the
school in addition to the vegetables they will be producing.
Pig Projects
This program involves the fermentation and utilization of
local materials (like banana stalk and bamboo spore) to make commercial pig
rearing less expensive and more effective, as well as producing large amounts
of organic compost for use in local farming activities. This concept not only reduces debts and
losses for local farmers, but also reduces the amount of chemicals being used
in everyday farming.
Thoo Mwe Khee – The pig program here, originally set to end
in December, is delayed due to low weight gain from the eight pigs being
raised. This is due to several reasons –
three of the pigs seem to be stunted, while the other five did not benefit from
an initial 100% diet of fermented banana stalk (FBS). After having changed our plans in regards to
the amount of FBS being used, the five larger pigs are now on a diet of half
FBS, half store feed and are progressing well.
They are set to reach a target weight of 45-50 kilograms in early
February.
Feed Research – KLDF staff have been looking into the
possibility of testing and using FBS that is treated with dried chicken manure
in order to boost protein content. This
theory has been used in Vietnam, adding chicken manure to fermented sweet
potato vine and other supplements to increase protein by 6%. We are considering running a test with banana
stalk instead of sweet potato vine at Mae Jo University in Chiang Mai in order
to see the results.
Financial Literacy Trainings
Originally stemming from KLDF’s successful USD$10,000
grant from UN Women (Singapore) and Mastercard Foundation, the financial
literacy training program is going into its second year of operations. Using a set of informal trainings that give
Burmese migrant women strong skills in money management and savings, KLDF staff
has created a useful and fun way of tackling the problems involved with savings
for impoverished families.
KLDF kicked off its new round of the financial literacy
training by visiting Wide Horizons, a project management school for talented
young adults from Burma. These 24
students will receive the skills and abilities to serve as trainers in a
Burmese migrant community of women in January 2013.
Ko Lynn, our programs officer, was also able to finalize his
preparation work in choosing a migrant community for the upcoming project. The community is located in a cattle market
that has weekly shipments of stock from Burma that is sold inside of
Thailand. There are two separate migrant
communities living and working in this area: an ethnic Karen group, and an
ethnic Burmese Muslim group. We are happy
to report that we can work with both during the upcoming training!
Good Morning School – Organic Fertilizer Training
On December 4
th, Win Ko and Mark from KLDF
visited Good Morning migrant school in Mae Pa to give a technical training on
producing indigenous microorganisms (IMOs) for use in pig rearing and
gardening.
These IMOs are made from
local materials and can improve pig/poultry health in addition to improving
soil.
Good Morning has been having
issues arising from the smell of their pig pens, and wanted to solution to
these without having to dismantle their existing cement pig shed.
We will perform a short follow-up in January to see how
things are progressing.
Plans for January
-Nu Poe/Bang Kle
visit
- Win Ko
and Mark will visit Nu Poe refugee camp in mid-January to meet with various local
groups inside and outside of the camp. The focus will be to survey and assess a
border town called Bang Kle, to see if it can serve as a suitable focal
point for pig and garden projects in Karen communities on the Burmese side
of the border.
-TPC Garden Training and Project Initiation
-TPC Pig Project setup
-Financial Literacy Training at Wide Horizons, Jan 7-11
-Financial Literacy Trainings 1-5 at Cattle Yard Community,
January 14th to the end of the month
-Continue School Garden Work at Min Ma Haw/Parami/Love and
Care
-Follow Up on Sewing Product Development at Help Without
Frontiers (HWF) clothing workshop
Visitors
David Williams (TPT funding group)
Paul Hancock (Khom Loy founder)
Patricia Solar (Khom Loy founder)
Walter Dewe (Visitor from Australia)
Mark Del Greco (Peace Corps Volunteer)
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