About the organization

Centre for Culture and Development (CCD) is working with the vision to promote sustainable livelihoods for the poor in rural areas in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. The major objectives are: a) Introducing new organic agricultural practices and strengthening the existing practices. b) Promoting multiple livelihood practices by supporting on-farm and non-farm based income generation activities and microenterprises.

The strategy adopted to achieve this goal is through

• Active participation of the local communities and effective use of the natural, and human resources of people with various socio- cultural practices
• Linking and networking with other stakeholders like technical institutions, govt departments, NGOs, banks and other philanthropic partners etc.
• Training and capacity building through the use of folk media based communication methods

In the project interventions, CCD focuses on women, children and socially excluded and economically marginalized Dalits and poor from other communities in the rural areas.

Context

The project activities are being implemented in Madurai district, located at the central part of Tamil Nadu and primarily agriculture based economy. Among the agricultural households majority of them are small and marginal holders. Substantial number of families in the rural areas are landless families. With regard to land utilization the cropped area is around 43.32% of the total area. A significant portion of land 34.6% falls under the category of ‘non available for cultivation’ and ‘fallow lands’. The main rainy season is north east monsoon (Oct- Dec) followed by less rain during south west monsoon (June – Sep) is erratic and undependable. The area receives effective rainfall for farming is only three months. The monthly average rain fall is 78.2 mm. The agriculture systems include wetland, garden land and dryland, the wetland receives irrigation through canals from Periyar Vaigai dam during Oct-Dec in which Paddy is predominantly cultivated. In garden land vegetables are grown using water from wells and in the dry lands millets are often cultivated during NEM season. The farming communities have shifted to capital intensive non organic inputs based agricultural practices for the last three or four decades. Organic practices have slowly eroded from the picture, but many of the farmers are keen to revive the practices. Farmers find extremely difficult to manage their family needs with the meager income they earn from agriculture. Most of them work as labourers in others farm to earn additional income to support their family needs. They also depend on external financial sources to manage capital to invest in their farms. They also need extra amount to meet the annual deficit. With regard to livestock components less than 50% of the households have 1-2 numbers of goat and less than 20% of them have one or two dairy animals.

In general local commercial banks are unwilling to support the farmers, hence they are forced to approach the local money lenders to get loans, for which they pay very high rate of interest (36-120%). The vagaries of weather also make their income uncertain. They need to manage capital to invest in their farms. Poor government extension system, lack of any other extension services which could support the farmers to meet their information needs and help with innovative practices.

In general the employment opportunities in the agriculture sector is dwindling and this affects the livelihoods of the labour families. Opportunities in the non farm sectors is almost nil in the area. Out migration is the preferred option by most of the families who are small holders and laborers. Out migration, women need to take more responsibilities to manage the farms. It affects the children’s education; no support is provided at home or in extreme cases the child move with the parents and resulted in drop out from the school. The average male literacy level is 57.7% and the female literacy rate is 47.8%.

Focus areas

• Promoting livelihood skills for poverty reduction
• Organic farming methods to strengthen livelihoods and achieve food and nutritional security
• Supporting children’s education belonging to poor families

Methodology

Several meetings were held with the partners of CCD and during the field visit interaction were held with men and women farmers, women members who are trained on income generation activities, leaders of the women group, children who are attending evening schools, parents and the teachers. A check list was used to conduct semi structured interviews focusing on question which could help to get the answers pertaining to SWOT analysis. Meeting with the farmers helped to capture the current situation of agriculture and their perception about the future of agriculture.

Also visited the training centre and demonstration gardens/fields that is used to train the farmers. In the demonstration field different millet species were grown to revive its cultivation in dry lands. The seeds harvested from the millet demo fields were used to start a community based ‘seed bank’ in order to help the farmers and also to ensure seed security in the future.

A detailed discussion was held with the village level animators who support CCD to mobilize women in the field, coordinate meeting and support the income generation activities. Mr.Samy, briefed about the objectives and field based activities of CCD and its future direction. At the end of the field visit a de briefing session was organized which helped to share the data collected from the field and also to get many things clarified.

Project interventions

Kalai Gramam: It provides a collective space, which operates with the principles of support the poor and poorest, sustainable natural resource management and gender equity. Generating awareness and building knowledge and skills are the focus areas in relation to the livelihood security of the ‘resource poor sections’ in this region. The Centre also endeavors to undertake eco friendly projects by synergizing traditional wisdom and frontier technology to improve the life conditions of the villagers in the region. It aims to develop village level models on sustainable natural resource management to improve livelihoods. The interested farmers are trained on compost making which helps the farmer to reduce the production cost. Field based demonstrations were organized; training was conducted with the support of experienced external resource persons. To revive the millet crops (sorghum, pearl millet, Italian millet etc) which were cultivated in the region as dry crop, the centre has developed demonstration plots to train the farmers and collect seeds to distribute the local farmers. Many of the farmers reported that due to non availability of seeds they were not able to cultivate crops. Now, seed distribution through Community based Seed Centre has encouraged many of the farmers to revive the cultivation of millet crops in the area. The farmers evolved norms for the management of the seed centre. One of the norm is the farmers are expected to return twice the quantity of seed they received after harvesting of the crop. This is managed by the community with the formation of management committee. Special emphasize was made to target women and the socially excluded in the training programmes.

The centre is setting up a model organic farm to educate the farmers of the region to avoid using chemicals and pesticides with a goal to create of “chemical free villages” by the end of 2015.  In the future it is planned to promote the centre as a regional resource center.

Margarita - Tailoring Institute: With an objective of promoting multiple livelihoods, the centre has started tailoring and sewing to develop new skill for the poor women of the villages. The centre is managed by the women leaders from the same village, the same are the trainers who train other interested women from different villages located in the region. The women learn tailoring and make cloths with a revolving loan fund to market among themselves. The profit is shared equitably between them. They are able to stitch the uniforms and other children cloths and this activity gives them confidence and an opportunity to earn money. CCD has negotiated with a garment factory located in Madurai and helped the women tailors to get order regularly and keep the women engaged all the week days. The centre has plan to further expand the tailoring centre with embroidery units and train more number of women in the coming years and also facilitate the women tailors to have tie up with more number of garment factories.

Arumbugal-Children Center: CCD is running evening schools to the Dalit and poor rural children to continue their education without dropping out due to poverty and other social problems. The organization strongly believes that education is an important means of achieving quality livelihood in the long term perspective. The supplementary coaching by committed local teachers helps the students to improve the standard of the education, otherwise could not get any support from the illiterate parents and siblings to cope up with the regular curriculum. The children are taken to different natural environments in the surroundings to motivate interest to protect the environment as exposure tours. They receive special skill development coaching from volunteers in painting, drawing, clay making, dancing and music during the weekends.

SWOT analysis

Strength	Opportunity
Project objectives matches with the needs of the local community The organization has the capacity to do social mobilization Infrastructure facilities to conduct training and capacity building progarmmes Skill in using folk media for effective communication to reach the rural poor and poorest Working with dalits and marginalized communities Committed local level animators to carry out the project activities CCD enjoys good rapport with the local communities Scope to revive traditional crops and develop seed bank- seed network to support the local farmers	Community’s willingness to work with CCD and cooperate as partners in the project activities Opportunities to develop partnership with other organizations both government and non government which are working in the region Marginal and small farmers are the majority in the region More scope and need to diversify livelihood opportunities in on farm and non farm based
Weakness	Threats
Inadequate revenue  from the on-going income generation activities managed by the women groups Lack of market linkages for the agricultural products Poor linkages with the technical institutions to get need based support Lack of sufficient human resources in the organization to execute the existing projects and plan for the future Micro enterprises activities like tailoring are disturbed during the agricultural season	Policy promotion by the state for commercial – cash crops with non organic practices Continuous depletion of natural resources like ground water, soil health, crop diversity etc. Out migration of villagers especially the youths looking for job opportunities Mindset of the farmers –that agriculture is not profitable venture Mind set for mono cropping irrigated farming system Capital intensive agriculture needs more capital inputs Loss of social capital –which was there as a part of the cultural value system and helped for mutual support during the past

Organizational gaps and areas

The organization is implementing time bound; short term projects hence unable to continuously support the project interventions since poverty reduction activities need consistent efforts. The activities initiated by CCD such as income generation activities and agricultural practices need long term support from the organization. The exiting infrastructure facilities like training centre to conduct training programme may not be sufficient to meet the demands in the future, hence the organization need to plan to enhance the facilities and develop medium and long term projects.

CCD needs deeper understanding of the local economy and livelihood practices, this can be done with a through bench mark survey and application of participatory tools like trend analysis, livelihoods analysis, gender analysis etc.

Need to initiate partnership linkages with the technical institutions which could support CCD’s activities at the local level and regional level. For eg. Krihsin Vigyan Kendra located in Agricultural College and Research Institute; Madurai could be a very good partner for introducing sustainable agricultural practices to the farmers. CIRHEP another NGO working in the same region which promotes organic agricultural practices and already involved in training numerous farmers and developed good training materials in vernacular language can support CCD in sharing their expertise and knowledge on need basis.

Credit support plays a very crucial role to promote rural livelihoods, till now CCD has not made any move in that directions to promote formal bank linkages, which could prevent the rural community from depending on the money lenders who exploit them with nepharious rate of interest. The arrangement would not only relieve the farmers and labourers from the clutches of the money lenders but in the long run could ensure timely credit support with low interest rate. For which CCD can initiate the concept of Community Banking.

The human resource development is a dynamic process; CCD’s staff and village level animators working with the local groups needs to sharpen the skills regularly. It is very important the organization makes necessary arrangement to get the required skills to carry out the project related activities effectively. This would help to guarantee the expected outputs and also the quality of the results achieved.

Conclusions and scope for future actions

CCD needs to concentrate on social mobilization and organization of primary stakeholders in order to institutionalize its activities. The interested farmers in organic farming practices could be brought together and formed as a group. The group can be used as an effective forum to interact and assess the local situations, need assessment, organizing training and capacity building programmes and also to facilitate farmer to farmer knowledge sharing ie. horizontal transfer of knowledge. Similarly the women who are keen on participating in multiple livelihoods could be formed as a group which could help CCD to conduct different suitable skill building programmes and to develop bank linkage and also to take income generation activities individually or as a group.

Keeping in mind of the degrading natural resource condition it is suggested to promote dry land based Integrated Farming Systems in which cropping, stall fed goat rearing, agro-forestry as major activities. IFS could have fodder species especially tree species as a major component which could supply fodder to goats. IFS could accommodate as a system to adapt the risks related to climate change.

A modest initiative to encourage the farmers group to emerge as a savings and credit group and facilitate linkages with bank to solve the most crucial issue credit support. Continuous field based hands-on training programme could produce a set of knowledgeable farmers, who would act as a local resource persons and help other farmers through horizontal sharing of knowledge and practices.

To address the needs of the local communities, like to support the farmers who are interested in organic practices, or the women members to initiate new income generation activities, it difficult to full fill the needs without taking help from external agencies which have knowledge and strength. Hence, it is suggested CCD to start identifying partners in the regional level to take technical support to carry out the proposed interventions. Similarly linkage with the bank is also very crucial in terms of long term perspective to support the livelihoods of the local poor.

It is suggested to plan for a pilot projects to promote organic agricultural practices in the field to cultivate crops and at the back yards to produced vegetables to cater the domestic needs. While executing the projects CCD should explore the possibilities to establish tie with organic markets both for the products and also inputs to support the local farmers who are interested to use organic fertilizers and bio pesticides, growth promoters etc.

Promotion of income generation activities to women members with minimum market risks such as tailoring, metal work to make artificial jewels/ornaments etc. Promotion of leadership skills to women group leaders would enhance the quality and sustainability of the groups.

The evening school effort benefits many children from poor dalit families, to improve the quality of education. To make activity more participatory and develop stake to the community, it is suggested to involve the local communities and share the responsibility, this would also pave the way for long term sustainability of the project. The possible support could be extended by the elected panchayat could be explored, such as providing infrastructure facilities and fund support to the teachers etc.

Gender mainstreaming, environmental concerns, poverty reduction and issues related to disaster risk reduction will be considered as cross cutting themes in the project related planning, execution and benefits received by the community and other stakeholders. CCD should take appropriate measures such as taking the support of external resource persons need based capacity building programmes etc., to ensure issues related to different cross cutting themes effectively in the project implementation activities and to achieve the results.