Choko newsletter February 2009

We start with some invitations

Choko AGM will be on Monday 23 February 2009 at 7:30pm at the Cholsey Free Church, Honey Lane.
Come and hear about our 2008 successes with fundraising for the Special Needs Centre in Kodumela and the Styleacre house in Cholsey. Learn about our 2009 plans for a water project, where local farmers will be trained to show fellow farmers and villagers the techniques needed to bring water to 850 households in the area.

There will be a chance, over refreshments, to chat to the Choko committee and others planning to visit the project during this year.

Beer Festival 2009
There is an open evening at 7.00pm on Monday March 2nd in the Red Lion Cholsey for everyone who volunteered to help out at the next Beer Festival (Sept 26th). The evening is particularly for those who put their names forward on the day last year, & to see how we can build the festival as an opportunity for businesses in and around Cholsey to be involved. If you haven't yet volunteered and want to come along you are very welcome!

Invitation to Choko dance Saturday 7 March

The Dance will be a joint event with Cholsey 1000+ and the School.

It will be held on Saturday 7 March, when “Shadowlands” will be playing in the school.

Tickets are available from Ray Park Butchers at £8 (including a cold buffet).

Choko Social
A report back session and social will be held in the School on Tuesday 16 June – we are giving you good warning so you can mark it in your diary and plan to come along!

And a reminder about the Choko Games
If you have a team which would like to enter the Choko Games, which will be taking place throughout the summer, please contact Louise Newell louise60@hotmail.com

Special Needs Centre
The good news is that the funding for both the building and the equipping of the special needs centre is complete. A group from Choko will be visiting the project during 2009 and will be able to report on progress first hand at the post-trip social.

Which means we need to consider the next Choko project….


Water Harvesting and Gardening Project
World Vision have identified this scheme as a suitable project for Choko. The goal of the project is to improve the water resources in the Kodumela Area Development Programme (ADP) through improved access to potable and productive water. 840 households will be targeted, equating to over 4,100 people.

The project will appoint 20 Leader Farmers per village (there are 10 villages in the ADP) to establish Roof-to-Garden rainwater harvesting systems. These will be supported with the provision of 20 metres of PVC sheeting and three pockets of cement to construct furrows from their homes to the gardens.

These households will test the trench gardening system of crop production. They will receive basic seeds and seedlings.

A development facilitator will run this project and will be provided with a motorcycle to do his duties.

The leader farmers will each train up other farmers in their village, so the project will cascade, to reach the 840 households and more.

The project is modelled on an existing, very successful system at Hammanskraal.

The project is expected to cost US$50,000. Training of leader farmers and provision of materials can be funded in phases and we are investigating the option to sponsor specific items like training for one farmer or resources for one household.

There is more information about this in the blog entry entitled “Water Harvesting and Gardening Project.”

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Water Harvesting and Gardening Project

Water Harvesting and Gardening Project
Kodumela Area Development Programme
South Africa

Brief Project Description
This project will target 840 households in Kodumela, including about 235 orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). Since the average household within the Area Development Programme (ADP) is 4.9, this translates to 4,116 people. The total budget for this project is $50,000.

The overall goal of this project is to improve the water resources in the Kodumela ADP through improved access to potable and productive water. The project will:
1. Appoint 20 Leader Farmers per village (there are 10 villages in the ADP) to establish Roof to Garden rainwater harvesting systems and these will be supported by 20 metres of PVC sheeting and three pockets of cement to construct furrows from their homes to the gardens.
2. 840 households, including orphans and vulnerable children, will test the trench gardening system of crop production and will received basic seeds and seedlings.
3. A development facilitator will run this project and will be provided with a motorcycle to do his duties.

Project Rationale
The 99,212 inhabitants of Sekororo in the Limpopo Province of South Africa are mostly poor and unemployed. More than 700 are Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs). Most engage in subsistence farming for survival, but rainfall is low and erratic (500 – 600 mm per year). Farm yields are low. Global warming could exacerbate this.

The Kodumela ADP is situated in Sekororo at the foot of the northern slopes of the Drakensberg east of Trichardtsdal between Tzaneen and Hoedspruit. Many farmers produce crops on the upper slopes of the mountain because the mere presence of clouds means that they receive some moisture, while the villages down below might be suffering from drought. These fields are, however, remote and traditional farming methods put soils at risk of erosion while depleting soil fertility.

Where families are totally reliant on farming for their survival, parents virtually live on the mountain slopes, leaving their children in the village to fend for themselves. The area has a high incidence of HIV and AIDS and the number of orphans and child headed households has been increasing. Survival for these children is tough and they are at risk of exploitation and abuse. For survival, many of them engage in practices that increase their risk of being infected by HIV.

Over the past ten years WVSA has erected some 2,000 Ferro-cement rainwater-harvesting tanks to capture water from rooftops in a limited number of Sekororo villages. This has proven to be a Godsend for people struggling to find a drop or two of potable water. As yet, all the villages do not have Ferro-cement tanks, but the Government is putting in place a grant to allow all households in the country to do so.

Description of focal problems
The primary problems that will be addressed by this project are water and agriculture (water for agriculture).
* The water availability decreases towards the east in the ADP, with Enable, Worcester, Ga Fani, Turkey and Butšwana being the driest.
* Villagers get water from rivers. Most of these dry up in the winter and even those that do not dry up, according to the villagers, require digging in the dry riverbeds to form shallow temporary wells. The water is shared with livestock and wild animals and World Vision colleagues have seen a donkey urinate a metre or two from one such water point from which children were busy filling their containers.
* Borehole water in many villages is saline, with laxative properties.

PROJECT FRAMEWORK
Project Description
Geographic areas: The project will cover all 10 villages that make up the Kodumela ADP. The ADP is situated in the Sekororo tribal area running along the northern slopes of the Drakensberg mountain range, within the Limpopo River basin Direct project beneficiaries: 840 Households will participate and benefit directly from this project within the first year.

Indirect beneficiaries: This project represents the piloting of new technologies in the area and participants / direct beneficiaries will be selected according to their profile to ensure that those who are able to implement their new learnings immediately, are chosen. Over time, the later beneficiaries, people who by their very nature wait a year or two to see new technologies prove themselves, are expected to follow their example. This means that most of the people in Kodumela will be indirect beneficiaries over the longer-term.

* The intention is to establish 200 early beneficiary households (20 per village) as examples of the Roof To Garden Rain Water Harvesting system. Firstly, 25 of them will be taken on an exposure visit to Hammanskraal where the system is being implemented with great success. The entire group of 200 will each be given 20 metres of PVC sheeting to line RWH furrows at their houses and 3 pockets of cement each to build reinforcing walls along the sides of the furrows.
* Training will be given to 40 leader farmers on trench gardening, a highly appropriate farming methodology that has proven its worth in a number of WVSA ADPs. The training will be done by the Food Gardens Foundation, a South African non government organisation that is the leader in the field of trench gardening.1 These 40 leader farmers will be early beneficiaries with a proven passion for sharing their knowledge and expertise. Having been trained, each of them will train up another 20 farmers within the first year.
* The 840 farmers will also be provided with limited seeds and seedlings to get them started.

Project Activity around Cross-cutting Themes

1. Christian commitment – addressed through the Channels of Hope programme in the ADP.
2. Disability – nothing pertinent to disability, although children with disabilities are included in the OVCs.
3. Environment - the trench gardening method that will be introduced is an organic farming method. Organic fertilizers and non-genetically modified seeds will be promoted. Also, reducing run-off by increasing infiltration is likely to reduce erosion.
4. Gender – This project is not focusing specifically on gender. However, 211 of 748 households surveyed in May 20052 (28%) are looking after OVCs. Given the gender balance of these orphans (28% male against 72% female), including OVC households as beneficiaries automatically implies focusing on girls.
5. Peace building and conflict resolution - area is particularly peaceful and therefore this dimension was not considered at all.
6. Protection - The issue here is that of child protection: Since the common practice of leaving children unattended for months on end while parents care for their crops on the upper mountain slopes leaves girls at the mercy of human predators and so at particular risk of HIV infection, as the productivity of household gardens and “low land” farms improves this project is expected to have a long-term positive impact on improving their lot in life. (Being long-term, this is beyond the scope of this project to assess.)

MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
This project builds solidly on best practices from other programmes. The trench gardening method is significant in at least 6 of our 15 ADPs, to date. These have been hugely successful.

Knowledge Management
The sharing of learnings has become a standard operating procedure in WVSA, facilitated mainly by the Quality Ministry team, who act as “cross-pollinators” of best practices as new projects and programs are designed and redesigned. Also, as news of best practices is carried abroad, the eyes of the sub-region often get focused on what we’re doing.

In Kodumela, knowledge management takes on a special meaning when it comes to water and agriculture, because of the relationship with the stakeholders and local associations.

SUSTAINABILITY
Two components of sustainability are in question here: Sustainability of the impact and sustainability of the project itself. Firstly, regarding the impact:
* The project is focused directly on introducing imminently sustainable water resource management and farming technologies, making it very sustainable.
* Project sustainability will be ensured through the focus on building the capacity of the community itself to deal with its own vulnerabilities and problems, effectively putting the reins in their hands.

Your support is invaluable to our project work, thank you so much for all your marvellous fundraising efforts for World Vision activity in Kodumela. The impact Choko support is having is truly valued by us and the children and families whose lives you are changing as a result.
Thank you!

Invitation to Choko dance Saturday 7 March

The Dance will be a joint event with Cholsey 1000+ and the School.

It will be held on Saturday 7 March, when “Shadowlands” will be playing in the school.

Tickets are available from Ray Park Butchers at £8 (including a cold buffet).

Choko AGM

You are invited to the Choko AGM at 7:30pm on Monday 23rd February 2009, at Cholsey Free Church, Honey Lane, Cholsey, OX10 9NL.

Come and hear about our 2008 successes with fundraising for the Special Needs Centre in Kodumela and the Styleacre house in Cholsey. Learn about our 2009 plans for a water project, where local farmers will be trained to show fellow farmers and villagers the techniques needed to bring water to 850 households in the area.

There will be a chance, over refreshments, to chat to the Choko committee and others planning to visit the project during this year.

If you would like to become a “Friend of Choko” and receive news updates, please contact newsletter@choko.org.uk