By Cristina Garcia Santos | EWB Program Manager
We bring you some exciting project updates! As we shared in our previous reports, the project is currently in its user evaluation stage. Our partner in Nepal has recently spent some weeks in the US attending the Global FEWture Alliance events at the University of Maryland, a program our Biochar project is part of. Global FEWture Alliance is an international alliance based at the University of Maryland that seeks to alleviate food, water, and energy insecurity, protect environmental and global public health and bolster community resilience in a changing climate.
Last week, we had a meeting with our partners in Nepal to discuss the project’s next steps. The partnership is a combination of local partners including Sanskriti Farms and Kathmandu University, together with the support of EWB Ireland as well as technical support from Technological University Dublin. We will develop three main packages for this next stage. The first work package will be to conduct a social survey to collect data about the biochar and the kilns from farmers as well as their insights on use and design. This will be conducted by a Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) survey we have already developed and sent to our partners for review and translation. We have decided to use Microsoft Access as the most suitable tool to conduct the survey and collect the data. The information collected will also shed light on whether farmers consider there is an added value in investing in the biochar kiln to help us assess the viability of creating a sustainable local social enterprise.
The other two work packages will focus on scientific testing and field trials. The characterisation and soil testing will be conducted at Kathmandu University. The field trials will be conducted on our partner’s farm to analyse crop size and quality. The focus of these will be to investigate creating a sustainable food security program also supporting tourism initiatives in the local communities.
For the next few weeks, our partners are working on further developing these three work packages and a detailed budget plan to apply for the funding provided by the Global FEWture Alliance program to conduct the evaluation stage of the project.
We hope to bring more exciting news for our next report. Thank you for supporting our project!
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