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!

New Staff--Update

We at Khom Loy are happy to welcome the newest members of our team: Win Ko and Ko Lynn.

Win Ko (left) and Ko Lynn, two talented guys on the Thai/Burma border.

Win Ko is attending Global Border Studies, which is a three-year intensive learning program that gives refugee and migrant young adults the skills and abilities to be leaders in their communities and organizations.  Win Ko has a knack for agriculture: he has helped run several intiatives in a refugee camp for growing trees, creating agricultural manuals for schools, and running a soil and effective microorganism training in Karen State, Burma.  He will be responsible for working on (and learning from) animal rearing and agricultural projects while he is interning with Khom Loy for the next year, as well as facilitating agricultural network meetings.

Ko Lynn is a recent graduate of Wide Horizons project management school in Mae Sot.  He is a great trainer and facilitator, as we were lucky enough to observe while he was a financial literacy trainer for women on the Mae Sot landfill as part of Project Inspire.  Ko Lynn will be responsible for program/communications work on the garden project, the pig project, and the small business grant portion of Project Inspire.

So here's to a great rest of the year!  We are excited to have a good core team in place, which will continue empowering Burmese migrants as well as provide new learning opportunities for the team members themselves.

Happy Song Kran

It is April, which in Thailand means only one thing: Song Kran!  The Buddhist New Year in Southeast Asia involves festivals, paying respect to elders, and day after day of water fights.  Being the hottest part of the year, the latter is a great way to stay cool.

Source: Bangkok Post

Now that the splashing and relaxing is finished, we here at UPLift are happy to announce that Ko Lin, previously a Wide Horizons project management student, is starting work with us here in Mae Sot.  Ko Lin also served as a financial literacy trainer with women on the landfill as part of our Project Inspire grant activities, so he has a great deal of experience and know-how for the program.

Ko Lin, the newest member of the UPLift team

During April we will be speaking to the women on the landfill again about their future plans and goals, as well as beginning the process of translating the finance modules fully into Burmese.

Finally, we are looking forward to helping a CBO of ethnic Palaung members conduct their own financial literacy training for their staff.  This initial training is in preparation for future trainings inside of Shan State, Burma.

January Monthly Report

Khom Loy Development Foundation    

UPLift Project

January Monthly Report- 2012 

Pig Project

This pilot project uses natural farming techniques that significantly lower the costs of animal rearing, by using fermented banana stalk as feed and using other fermented inputs that improve health and digestion, particularly nutritional intake.

January was full of surprises for the pig project.  We purchased and began rearing a second round of black pigs, in an attempt to test the effectiveness of a 100% diet of fermented banana stalk (FBS).  This will give us a good comparison to the first round of pigs, which are being fed on a 100-day high-protein diet.  After only three weeks, the new pigs had grown rapidly, and are still going strong!  We are very excited by this development, as FBS is 1/30^th the cost of store feed and can be a great option for schools or communities that do not have high budgets for animal rearing.  We will continue to track the growth of the pigs to see if there are other factors involved.

School Garden Program

It will be recalled that this program started in 2010 with 2 pilot schools, and we are now rolling the program out to another 4 schools with the aid of funding from Vitol/Thai Children’s Trust.

We have four different updates for the Garden Program:

Shwe Tha Zin School—has finished it’s third month of the garden project, with very good results.  We will now compile the results of the vegetable yield and speak with the principal/staff about their next round of activities.  If possible, we want to provide a stipend for seeds and a second batch of indigeneous mircroorganisms (IMOs), which are essentially cheap and effective fertilizers and soil enhancers that are made by fermenting various local materials.

Hsa Mu Htaw School—is helping us to test a new type of garden project that involves urban gardening.  This project, if proven to be successful, can help schools in villages/towns to use their creativity and available strengths to produce large amounts of vegetables.  Some techniques include container planting, village brush collection for a school compost pit, IMO production, and efficient water usage.

Heavenly Home Orphanage—agreed to begin a small-scale garden project.  Home to 39 parentless or disabled children, Heavenly Home has very few existing supporters for food budget, outside of Mae Tao Clinic and Room To Grow Foundation.  With a functional garden, the students and children here will have much more to eat in the future.

Dominican Orphanage (Holy Infant)—agreed to begin a large-scale garden project.  Run by a group of Dominican nuns, and formerly in Umphiem refugee camp, this boarding house has a very big and modern home.  However, the funders who helped cover the house costs cannot help with running costs for food.  With a new 18-inch layer of topsoil to prevent the risk of flooding during rainy season, the staff and students at Dominican are ready and excited to start a garden.  This will be a particularly interesting project, given that the students want to be fully involved (each student will have his/her own plot to manage and grow).

Project Inspire Landfill Project

Project Inspire, a women’s empowerment program founded by UN Women and Mastercard, recently awarded Khom Loy Foundation and Room To Grow Foundation a financial literacy project grant to continue their existing success in assisting women living in a landfill community near Mae Sot, Thailand.

Project Inspire really took off during January—we began by giving a refresh training course to the Wide Horizons students who are serving as trainers for women on the landfill.  After adapting their existing experiences with the training from English to Burmese, the students then split into five groups, introduced the program to women in five different locations on the landfill, and began training!  As of the end of January, three trainings have been completed (Market Session, Money Beliefs and Goals, Savings Plans) with two more to go in February.

Visitors

Global Border Studies (GBS), an advanced education school located in Nu Po refugee camp, were able to come and visit the pig project at Hway Ka Loke.  They are currently learning about practical coursework for environmental sustainability and development work, so we were very happy to see them, hear their well-thought out questions, and spend time with them.  For more information on GBS, please visit http://www.dkit.ie/globalborderstudies/ .

The Wide Horizons students, currently helping with Project Inspire, also visited the pig project after showing much interest in this type of project.  Upon graduating from their studies, several students have asked to learn more about the project, especially fermented banana stalk (FBS).

Challenges

Our agricultural field officer, Kaw Maw Thaw, decided to part ways with Khom Loy in order to pursue his goal of going back to participate in development on the Burmese side of the border.  Best of luck, Kaw Maw Thaw!

Next Month’s Activities

• Finishing financial literacy trainings at landfill, then moving to the next phase of Project Inspire (identifying and working with exceptional women to begin their own small businesses)
• Hosting a visit by Thai Children’s Trust, the generous funding provider for the garden program
• Starting work on the three new garden projects and winding down activities at Shwe Tha Zin
• Continuing work and evaluation of pig project at Hway Ka Loke
• Hosting a visit by members of the Project Inspire team in Singapore

Project Inspire Diary--Parts 3 and 4

Here are two of our journal entries from last month's Project Inspire blog.  Enjoy!

Mya Thin--One of Our Greatest Inspirations

Why is Financial Literacy Important for Women's Empowerment?