This Sunday afternoon I leave on a 5-day site visit to the field with my co-workers Khanh and Phuong. We will travel by car to Nghe An province, located in the impoverished North Central highlands of Vietnam. When I say countryside, we’re talking dirt-floor houses made with mud walls and bamboo supports, and yearly per capita income of just US$ 200! We’ll visit a village called Quy Hop and also three small ethnic minority communes in the Nghia Dan district, where our next program will be implemented. The program will probably be called “Improving Household Income and Living Conditions in Nghia Dan District: An Integrated Community Development Program”. At least, that’s the name I’ve come up with so far. They’re letting me write the concept paper for it, which we’ll submit to one of our major donor foundations next month!
The goal of our visit is to prepare the Program Management Board (PMB) to conduct a planning workshop with the community. The PMB is a five-person executive team made up of village leaders, local Women’s Union leaders and province-level government authorities, and it’s in charge of making all the decisions about development in their community. At the workshop, the PMB and the local farmers will discuss and prioritize what types of development activities they want to implement. That could mean anything — pig raising, fish farming, sloping crop models, sanitation systems, hygiene or reproductive health education, irrigation system improvements, micro-credit savings programs, buffalo breeding, composting, whatever.
The donor provides the funding for trainer compensation, pilot-models, and micro-credit loans, while S-CODE provides the guidance and training for whatever the community decides are its biggest needs. Training might include new agricultural techniques, how to manage loans and household budgeting, and understanding investments and the market economy. The PMB and the local Women’s Unions then organize additional trainings for the poorest members of the communities, and they all implement the activities themselves.
Past projects like this have actually helped whole minority communities up and over the poverty line. An example of the results: The farmer learns how to prevent soil erosion from his fellow farmers at the training and thus can maximize his crop yield. He also has a micro-loan of US$ 20 and with it he applies the new techniques he’s learned. The loan also gives him the ability, for the first time, to repair his water pipes or buy fertilizer. This turns one yearly rice crop into three, allowing him to feed his family, have enough rice left over to sell for profit, buy a new water buffalo, pay back the micro-loan and put some money into savings or another investment. The program busts him out of the poverty cycle.
This entire development model has been working well for S-CODE over the years, and I can’t wait to see it in action. Apparently I might even get to cook with the villagers and ride a water buffalo. Wish me luck!
Ah yes, here’s an interesting news story about a fellow (“a recovering methamphetamine addict and occasional hip-hop master of ceremonies”) from Lawrence, Kansas. Apparently he has an ‘attachment’ to his foot. Hahahaha! One thing’s for sure: I’m glad my name isn’t Ezekiel Rubottom.
