Support Small Farmers in India

Dear friends,

Hope you are well. Thank you for your continuing support. We are very grateful to you donations and inputs .

Every time with our letter to you, we wish to acquaint you with Seva Mandir a bit more. In this letter, you will get to know about the process of our business planning.

Seva Mandir focuses on communities rather than on individual/s. The belief is that in order to bring about the durable changes in the society; the constructive work involving all the community members is important because social problems are complex. It therefore, takes longer but the outcomes are more sustainable and long lived. Therefore, Seva Mandir has a three pronged strategy –

1)      To create and strengthen institutions for development (at the village, organization and society levels)

2)      To enhance people’s capabilities for self-development (both at individual and community level); and

3)      To create sustainable improvements in the livelihoods base.

Our bottom-up approach allows creating stakes for every section of society to participate in their own development. We very much hope that you will enjoy knowing about our business planning phase that we are going through right now.

It has been a very hot summer here in Rajasthan this year. We are now all prepared to welcome the monsoon which should be here in the next week and half. Gradually it is getting humid day by day and we are trying not to let the rising temperatures effect us and are currently in the midst of the exciting organization wide planning process to develop our 7^th Comprehensive Plan.

The Comprehensive Plan outlines the strategic direction and action-plans for Seva Mandir over the next three-year plan period (2012-2015). 

Seva Mandir has been preparing Comprehensive Plans since 1990 as a way to systematically review and evolve its near-term strategic priorities across all programmatic areas.  The process of putting together the Comprehensive Plan also serves as an opportunity for Seva Mandir to reflect upon the work we have done, examine the environment we work in and evolve our strategies accordingly, within the context of past lessons learnt and the overall long-term vision of the organization.

The process for creating the 7^th Comprehensive Plan began in late 2010 and includes all levels of Seva Mandir’s tiers viz. - from the villages where we work all the way up to the Chief Executive Officer.  The Comprehensive Plan process is consistent with Seva Mandir’s bottom-up approach, with the kick-off meetings taking place at the village level with the Chief Executive present.  After these initial meetings, the staff members at the zone and block offices had an opportunity to share their thoughts, observations and information.  Using the information gathered from the field, the Programs devised their strategies for the upcoming years.  These were presented to the organization as a whole, where debate, discussion, criticism and suggestions took place.

We are now headed into the final stages of this exciting process.  Programs are incorporating the comments and suggestions into their reports, and putting the final touches in to the operating frameworks. This is an exciting time at Seva Mandir and we are really looking forward to the next few years when we can put these strategies into effect and watch the change they make.

The integrated approach allows all our partners, friends, donors and well wishers to contribute to the holistic development of our communities. Any project/program that you support for Seva Mandir is a part of this comprehensive plan. Thank you so much for regularly supporting our cause and making a difference.

We will soon be providing you with an annual report of our programs you are supporting on Global Giving. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

With warm regards,

Dear Friends,

I am so happy sharing this piece of report that my colleague Niranjan has put together for you. It is a great way to end my day here in India today. One it is so very kind of you to consider making a donation to this project. I thank all of you who have just made their contributions to this project in order for it to win the Top 10 Wins challenge on Global Giving UK. We are right now on the fourth position with 13 donors. We need another 12 people to help us out. I request you to please consider supporting this project and please help double our happiness on the festival of Holi (is on 19th & 20th March this year).

The other reason of ending my day with a great reason is to read the report Niranjan has just shared with me. I am just copying his report below my letter and would encourage you to see what great work these farmers have done to deal with their food security issues in their region. It is really surprizing that most of these farmers hold very small pieces of lands but with some support and trainings from Seva Mandir and freinds like you they have made really amazing progress.

Here I end my letter and let you read the report.

Once again for all your support. Please do consider making another donation and help this project win £500 with this Top 10 Wins challenge. We need another £200 only. Please help these farmers a bit more.

With best regards,

Deepti

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Community seed bank

The seed bank program of Seva Mandir aims at improving the “Seed/food security” of the farmers in villages of South Rajasthan. The main idea is that the farmers don’t have to pay for the seeds provided to them by Seva Mandir under this program however each farmer needs to return 1.5 or 1.25 times more seeds from what each of them had borrowed from the seed bank.

From these Seed Banks the farmers are able to receive improved and climate variation resilient crop seeds for all cropping seasons such as kharif, rabi and zaid.

The farmers can have access to maize, wheat, black gram, sesame, rice, mustard, wheat, bengal gram, green gram and vegetable crop seeds. The seed banks once set up are being managed by the village development committees. These committees are being set up by the villagers only.

Each farmer’s share of returned seeds is stored in the seed bank in large metal drums/boxes. To keep the seeds safe some treatment is also used.

Therefore, the villagers are trained to keep records for loaning out and collecting back the seeds, keeping and storing the seeds safely and distributing them at the time of sowing etc. After sometime each seed bank becomes a grain bank due to each farmer returning back their share (1.5 to 1.25 times more) and therefore it ultimately enhances the ‘food security’ in villages.

At present there are 52 seeds bank in all the 6 blocks of Seva Mandir. For example in Jhadol Block the village Kitavato ka vas has a community seed bank. Seva Mandir has provided the village with good quality seeds of Maize (48 Kg), Black Gram (28 Kg), Wheat (150 Kg) and Bangle grane (60Kg)

After harvesting of the both the seasons’ crop the farmers have returned their share of seeds in their seed bank (1.5 times more). The details of which is as under -

• Wheat (220 Kg)
• Black Gram (38 Kg.)
• Bangle Gram (90 Kg.)
• Maize (70 Kg.)

Links:

• how can you help these farmers a bit more

• the community seed bank report (DOC)