Two and a half years on from the tsunami, Sewalanka Foundation's work with disaster affected communities has shifted from emergency relief and infrastructure development to restoring and rebuilding the sustainable livelihoods of affected coastal communities.
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Parents learn how to diversify their families' diets to improve household health and nutrition |
Sewalanka continues to work with groups in all of the tsunami-affected districts to help them improve their assets, capabilities and natural resources.
One example of this livelihood enhancement work is a project based in the southern districts of Galle and Matara which aims to increase the income of over 4000 vulnerable families by 30 per cent. More than half of these households are headed by a single parent or a disabled person. An additional 4000 families will be indirectly supported.
The two-year Towards Sustainable Livelihoods project is being implemented in partnership with the Canadian non-governmental organisation, CHF, and with financial support from the Canadian International Development Agency.
The project design is based on a holistic sustainable livelihoods approach that emphasises the link between micro- and macro-level activities and focuses on enhancing six types of individual and community assets: human assets, natural assets, financial assets, social assets, physical assets and political assets.
The sustainability criteria include resilience, economic efficiency, ecological soundness, social equality and the development of institutional capacity.
Project manager Ms Lakshi Abeyesekera said the project has been designed to work with the aspirations of these extremely poor, tsunami-affected men and women, using their visions of the future as a starting point for further action.
"In the initial planning stages of the project, community members identified coconut and cinnamon production, home gardening, cattle and poultry husbandry, small infrastructure development and health care access as areas that they would like to focus on to improve their livelihoods," Ms Abeyesekara said.
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Community members from Kahawennagama participate in planning for the Towards Sustainable Livelihoods project. |
As one community member stated: "Our diets are low in fruit and vegetables. We don't have the inputs or the experience to design and manage home gardens that produce a year-round supply of healthy food."
A major project activity will focus on providing parents with the capital and training to produce a more nutritious and diversified diet for their families.
Towards Sustainable Livelihoods will build the capacity of Sewalanka staff and the selected communities to increase livelihood options. Community members will have access to vocational training, skills training in agriculture and other income generation opportunities, and microenterprise development support services.
As with all Sewalanka livelihood programs, social mobilisation and institutional capacity building of community-based organisations (CBOs) are considered key to the project's success. Producer groups, community marketing centres and rural knowledge centres will link community members with the opportunities, information and markets they need to manage productive and profitable enterprises
The CBOs also provide an opportunity to increase dialogue, reduce internal conflicts and jealousies, and increase communication and coordination with other villages. CBOs will have the opportunity to participate in exchange visits to share their livelihood development strategies and experiences with villagers in other parts of the country.
Ms Abeyesekera said that although still in its very early stages, progress is already evident, with village members uniting to analyse their current situation.
"This has been done in a number of ways. Economic data on the wealth of local households was collected, along with seasonal data to give a better picture of how the villagers fare over the course of a year," she said.
"In addition, maps were made and villagers came together to openly discuss the broader meaning of wellbeing within their community. Sewalanka then compiled all this into databases, which will now be used throughout the project.
The project will run until 2009
