Contact : Ashis Panda On Jhabua- Entire direction with Jhabua is good and should continue and will help understand the issues better given the distance between the project and donor - spirit of process should continue.
- However for the work to be done on the ground, interest alone will not suffice. Now, the efforts should go towards people/institutions on the ground to anchor the work on a day-to-day basis. Group should dwell on the this aspect.
- Review the organizations, their work and all the material collected so far ...
- Check if there is anybody related to Asha who can work in Jhabue ? Can we support a fellow who can work there ?
- Working on Jhabua is largely related to NRM, soil and land research. We have put together a set of useful resources. With that we can sit and assimilate the work of years of work of people. And then we can go back and revisit the jhabua and look into how we want to tackle the issues.
- If at the next, we have questions ,issues , Ashis would be willing to participate in the discussion - but with an action oriented perspective.
: Focus : Sustainable Land and Soil conservation - Work towards solutions to keep the soil and water alive forever
- Work with a community based model and not an NGO model. Don't even want to use the word NGO (accountability is a problem. NGO is required to route money but it can have a community representation ...)
- Focus on "process" oriented and not "project" oriented work. Focus on building relationship, not organizing any meeting, no surveys - just understanding them, learn the language, the subject, invite them home ...
- Working with the partners who also work on a community based model : 1) Sambhaav (water) + 2) OFFER (agriculture) + 3) VMKS (local anchor - farmers association)
- Learning at a personal level and setting up an example on a small scale to get a sense for what works and whats a good model
- Focus on expansion, impact will come later.
- In the village, currently trying out some methods of SRI and organic farming along with a few interested farmers and getting a sense of the network of water streams in the area for future planning.
Visit to one of the villages that Ashis is working with. |
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