Sorry for not writing before, this week at work was rather busy. Yes, we will have a chat tomorrow, 12pm GMT. Guillaume will be there (hope there won’t be connection issues), and so will Diana. I’m trying to get in touch with Scott but it seems his email does not work :-S
Tanja, thanks a lot for the congratulations and nice wishes :o) Hope you’ll be able to join us tomorrow.
As for the topics
The goal(s) - I think we should be discussing both short and long term goals (and reformulate them) on a regular basis, to be sure we have a clear goals and to ensure that we work towards them. I think the goals will remain the same for now, but it's good to confirm.
As we said, the first goal is to ensure that every of 20 families receives ownership of one goat and to start growing from there. The long term goal is to involve all 100 families (and to start introducig cows along the way if they decide so eventually). We will also work on forming a small cooperative when appropriate conditions are met.
The main things I would like to discuss on the chat are the next steps to be taken and the plan we should start working on. My idea is that we now start to work on some general aspects of the plan and to wait for the learning farm to be over (which I hope shoud be in the next couple of months) to see if the community wants to proceed with the goats or to change. If we continue with the goats, I think we should try then to get more goats and the material for sheds and other things that we might need, and to estimate how much money we would need for that. Also, we should discuss if we want to lend them our own money or to send proposals to microfin.org.
So, the topics to be covered
* the goal of the project – the current goal and the long term goals
* the next steps and the plan
* the situation in South Kivu (and Walungu) should be calm now, but of course we can discuss with Guillaume about it if you feel so.
I hope we can discuss this all in an hour or an hour and a half, but I think we shouldn’t set a time limit in advance, since we don’t know what connection issues we might have and also we might need some more time to cover these topics appropriately.
If you have a different idea or if you have anything else to add you are most welcome.
Just a general idea of what the plan should contain. Your comments and ideas are more than welcome.
Executive summary
1. WHY
Needs assesment – Why is this project needed; the description of the situation and the problem the community face
2. WHAT
The project goals – What we want to achieve - project benefits, community empowerment, millenium development goals...
Project description – What we are doing, the learning farm, the results, the next planned activities...
3. HOW
The implementation – How we plan to implement the project; the goat breeding, training, assigning ownership, monitoring...
4. WHO
Personnel, short resumes – People involved in the project both online and on the site.
5. HOW MUCH
Estimated project budget
To me, the question WHEN is a bit unclear at the moment, since we still don’t have any result from the learning farm.
Also, I think the document should have between 10 and 20 pages.
Goodmorning neighbours,
I am sorry I had to leave the chat, last Saturday. But the pace was much too high for me. Every time I wanted to make a point and tryed to type it out, the “ discussion” had already changed to another subject. And that is very frustrating. When you decide to use Skype, which gives me a better way to express myself, I will participate again.
Nico
I'm sorry to say that we did not discuss much on Saturday, since Guillaume was late for about 45 minutes, and Diana and Raul had to leave after an hour. Nico, I am also sorry that you decided to leave, but I understand. Tanja, I have seen you online while talking to Guillaume and kept messaging you, but didn't get any response. I also couldn't add you to the group conversation, I guess it's because you use yahoo account :(
I thought to make a summary of all the work by now and to add what we discussed on Saturday. I'll also give some rough estimation of amount of money we would need for the beginning, so we can discuss our way forward. I'll try to post it today or tomorrow at latest.
Hey Tanja, don't worry about that, I just wanted to say I'm sorry I couldn't get in touch with you... It really does not matter.
Nico, it's a very nice idea. Actually, there is a room for social talk called - Meet the Neighbours (in General Discussion). http://www.nabuur.com/en/village/walungu/project/task/meet-neighbours
Several months ago I invited you all for a talk there (and turkish coffee, hehe), so we can start again to talk and to get to know each others better.
I look forward to it! :o)
I thought it would be good to remind what we are doing in this village
ABOUT THE PROJECT:
* We are trying to help the community solve their problem of lack of protein and malnutrition
* After a long discussion it is decided to start with milk goats
* In the short term we are aiming to ensure that every of 20 families receive ownership of one goat and to start growing from there.
* The long term goal is to involve all 100 families (and to start introducing cows along the way if they decide so eventually). Another long term goal is to help them in forming a small cooperative when appropriate conditions are met.
* We found plenty examples of similar projects. Most of them use the similar strategy – goats are assigned to a family which has to give the offspring to another family. The families are also given training in goat keeping and some management practice.
* The founder of local charity Fondamu, Trinto Mugangu, joined our team and offered us partnership.
* We decided to start with learning farm – with a couple of goats and the training, to see how much the community is motivated and capable for a project of a bigger scale and if we should proceed with the goats.
* The learning farm is about to start. Scott provided the plans for sheds. For a couple of weeks the shed construction was stopped because of the security reasons in North Kivu, but the community is now about to continue working on that. When it’s ready, two dairy goats, a male and a female, will be delivered to Walungu by a goat seller from Burundi. Besides, the trainer is ready to hold the goat keeping training as soon as the goats arrive.
* The training will be supplemented with the manuals from South Africa and the graphic manuals Scott is working on.
* The seed that Ken sent was planted in September using organic material and raised bed technique.
* Guillaume was in contact with James, Local Rep of a village in Rwanda, trying to arrange a visit to their village to see how their drip irrigation works and to help implement it in Walungu. Unfortunately, because of the security issues, he is not able to go there, so we could help him by providing him with information about setting up this irrigation system.
ABOUT THE CHAT:
* We gathered for a chat on Saturday to discuss how to proceed with the project. As I said, we didn’t have much time to discuss, so we just started the discussion about what the plan should be for – the short or long term goal etc.
* We also talked about money needed for reaching the first goal and how we should get them – taking a loan from microloan organization(s) or lending our money like Nico proposed. Also, we discussed the possibility of the community saving.
* Guillaume said that the people have been paying for water installation in the village, but that they might be able to save something per month per family (something very little). However, he is concerned that they might think he’s taking money for himself, since recently some guys were arrested for collecting money from another community in a similar way.
Guillaume is willing to start preparing the community, so that they could start saving soon, but we are still to see how it will go.
* Diana believes that we should go with micro financing rather than lending our money for a revolving fund even if that’s only a small amount. She believes that we should rather use that money for covering their debts in the case something unpredictable happens. She thinks they shoud start learning about microfinancing from the beginning.
* As for lending our money, since it was only a general proposal, the question is open for the discussion – should we do that, when, for what, who… and most important – how (I guess we should act something like a microloan institution and form a revolving fund). Let’s discuss more about that and – no need that anyone lends any money if not in a position to do so or simply not willing. I am happy to provide some little funds alone.
Besides, there's still a lot of time before we need funds at all.
* As for the plan, my idea is that we start with these 20 families as a small project. That could be a stage one of the overall project. Maybe the cooperation could start from there too involving those 20. As the second stage the other families could start joining gradually. So the plan could include those 2 stages.
Besides, since we still don't have any result, I thought about writing some general parts of the plan, like the needs assesment etc, so that it takes less time once we get to work on the most important parts.
For the learning farm the plan is that we buy a couple of dairy goats to start with training. The funds for that are provided. Of course, the doe should get pregnant as soon as possible (still don’t know when exactly that can be, but probably very soon since an average doe should get into heat regularly throughout a year).
Second, the domestic female goats will be bought later to be crossbred with dairy male. We have 120$ more to send as a bonus, so my idea is to encourage the community to contribute in one way or another (to save a little for example), and then when we see the result, we would send it.
As far as we know now, a domestic goat costs 30$, so if the prices don’t go up, 4 more goats could be bought for that money. And of course, the new goats would get pregnant asap too.
That’s what we already have prepared.
From there, the community should start breeding. A goat can deliver 1, 2 and sometimes 3 (even more but very rarely) kids in one kidding, in approximately 5 ½ months.
I have read about goat project in Tanzania, and based on their research in 3 villages I concluded that the average number of kids is 1.5 per one kidding (around 150 per 100 does).
So, if we count 1 dairy doe plus 4 additional domestic does, times 1.5, we get
5x(1+1.5)+1(male)=13.5 - total number of goats 5 to 6 months from the moment the goats get pregnant
Also, based on the same research I concluded that the mortality rate is 10-20%, so if we substract 20%
13.5x0,8=10.8
Thus we get an approximate number of 10 goats that can be obtained in the beginning without additional funding.
To reach the number of 20, we would then need 10 additional goats, which would cost 30$x10=300$.
Of course, this number is only a very very rough calculation; there are many “ifs”, so we will have more exact numbers in some next period when we see how the things go.
Another possibility to get more goats is by offering dairy male for insemination to other villagers who have goats (if they get interested, of course) and to ask for one kid in exchange for that service, when the serviced goat delivers.
Guys, I'm looking forward to your comments, and please, let me know if I make you confused with so much talking.
I like your approach. My personal preference- I would like to see the numbers for worst case scenario (vs averages)and may be to have discussion with the people on the ground explaining that these numbers are just numbers ( not guarantees).
I think it's a bit difficult to have either worst or average scenario at this moment, since the goats are not there yet.
But what I forgot is that the newborn kids cannot be further mated among themselves, i.e. the female goats can't be mated with their father or a brother. Which would mean that they actually should sell the kids (I guess when 1-2 months old), buy female domestic goats for that money, and crossbred them with the dairy ones.
But since a milk goat costs at least twice the price of a domestic one (even more actually), they probably could get twice as many goats as they sell. Also, they could buy a bit older (7-8 months old) female goats that could be mated immediately, instead of waiting for several months for the kids to grow...
Just some thoughts...let me know what you guys think.
Sonja
A quick update from Guillaume - the sheds are almost built and a couple of milk goats are ordered about a week ago. They should arrive in a week or so, and the trainer is ready to give a two days training when the goats arrive. In the meantime, Roger and Manu, Walungu volunteers, are reading the manuals from South Africa, to help when the training is over.
Your help is needed. Guillaume says that during rainy season the community often has problems with cholera. It's so sad that they have problems with something that is rather easily avoided in more developed countries :(.
We could help them by educating them about importance of hygiene and how the disease is actually spread. Maybe we could look at the possibilities for them to act on a community level as well.
We would need to get some info/docs about cross contamination and good hygienic practices, so that Guillaume can talk to the community about that and help them avoid the disease as much as possible.
Scott says that chlorination of water would be easy and inexpensive; I’ll check with Guillaume how much that is actually available for them.
You can help with searching for the documents about GHP (good hygiene practices) and cross contamination, as well as with your suggestions and ideas on other ways to deal with this problem. It would be good to have a discussion about it, to try to find the best way how to help them out with this.
I am a bit confused. Earlier in the SWOT analysis Guillaume mentioned that there was no problem with fresh, clean water supply. But if we are talking about cholera- there must be a problem with the water supply. Besides chlorination we have to look at a map of the village water/sewer system -if there is such infrastructure ...Or even a map of local water resources and latrines? Is it possible to hear from Guillaume what is the reason for the outbreak and how the transmission happens according to the community?
Hello everyone,
Sorry for not writing before, this week at work was rather busy. Yes, we will have a chat tomorrow, 12pm GMT. Guillaume will be there (hope there won’t be connection issues), and so will Diana. I’m trying to get in touch with Scott but it seems his email does not work :-S
Tanja, thanks a lot for the congratulations and nice wishes :o) Hope you’ll be able to join us tomorrow.
As for the topics
The goal(s) - I think we should be discussing both short and long term goals (and reformulate them) on a regular basis, to be sure we have a clear goals and to ensure that we work towards them. I think the goals will remain the same for now, but it's good to confirm.
As we said, the first goal is to ensure that every of 20 families receives ownership of one goat and to start growing from there. The long term goal is to involve all 100 families (and to start introducig cows along the way if they decide so eventually). We will also work on forming a small cooperative when appropriate conditions are met.
The main things I would like to discuss on the chat are the next steps to be taken and the plan we should start working on. My idea is that we now start to work on some general aspects of the plan and to wait for the learning farm to be over (which I hope shoud be in the next couple of months) to see if the community wants to proceed with the goats or to change. If we continue with the goats, I think we should try then to get more goats and the material for sheds and other things that we might need, and to estimate how much money we would need for that. Also, we should discuss if we want to lend them our own money or to send proposals to microfin.org.
So, the topics to be covered
* the goal of the project – the current goal and the long term goals
* the next steps and the plan
* the situation in South Kivu (and Walungu) should be calm now, but of course we can discuss with Guillaume about it if you feel so.
I hope we can discuss this all in an hour or an hour and a half, but I think we shouldn’t set a time limit in advance, since we don’t know what connection issues we might have and also we might need some more time to cover these topics appropriately.
If you have a different idea or if you have anything else to add you are most welcome.
Just a general idea of what the plan should contain. Your comments and ideas are more than welcome.
Executive summary
1. WHY
Needs assesment – Why is this project needed; the description of the situation and the problem the community face
2. WHAT
The project goals – What we want to achieve - project benefits, community empowerment, millenium development goals...
Project description – What we are doing, the learning farm, the results, the next planned activities...
3. HOW
The implementation – How we plan to implement the project; the goat breeding, training, assigning ownership, monitoring...
4. WHO
Personnel, short resumes – People involved in the project both online and on the site.
5. HOW MUCH
Estimated project budget
To me, the question WHEN is a bit unclear at the moment, since we still don’t have any result from the learning farm.
Also, I think the document should have between 10 and 20 pages.
Looking forward to chatting tomorrow.
Have a nice day,
Sonja
Guys, sorry I just relized I made a mistake - the chat will start at 2pm Holland time, which is now 1pm GMT.
That should be 8am New York, 8pm Hong Kong, 11pm Sydney, and 1pm Kinshasa.
Sorry again.:-(
"See you" soon
Goodmorning neighbours,
I am sorry I had to leave the chat, last Saturday. But the pace was much too high for me. Every time I wanted to make a point and tryed to type it out, the “ discussion” had already changed to another subject. And that is very frustrating. When you decide to use Skype, which gives me a better way to express myself, I will participate again.
Nico
Hi there,
Sorry I missed the chat, I did not notice Sonja's message with the new time on time. Looking forward to read the summary.
-Tanja
Hi guys,
I'm sorry to say that we did not discuss much on Saturday, since Guillaume was late for about 45 minutes, and Diana and Raul had to leave after an hour. Nico, I am also sorry that you decided to leave, but I understand. Tanja, I have seen you online while talking to Guillaume and kept messaging you, but didn't get any response. I also couldn't add you to the group conversation, I guess it's because you use yahoo account :(
I thought to make a summary of all the work by now and to add what we discussed on Saturday. I'll also give some rough estimation of amount of money we would need for the beginning, so we can discuss our way forward. I'll try to post it today or tomorrow at latest.
Have a nice day,
Sonja
Hey Tanja, don't worry about that, I just wanted to say I'm sorry I couldn't get in touch with you... It really does not matter.
Nico, it's a very nice idea. Actually, there is a room for social talk called - Meet the Neighbours (in General Discussion).
http://www.nabuur.com/en/village/walungu/project/task/meet-neighbours
Several months ago I invited you all for a talk there (and turkish coffee, hehe), so we can start again to talk and to get to know each others better.
I look forward to it! :o)
Hi guys,
I thought it would be good to remind what we are doing in this village
ABOUT THE PROJECT:
* We are trying to help the community solve their problem of lack of protein and malnutrition
* After a long discussion it is decided to start with milk goats
* In the short term we are aiming to ensure that every of 20 families receive ownership of one goat and to start growing from there.
* The long term goal is to involve all 100 families (and to start introducing cows along the way if they decide so eventually). Another long term goal is to help them in forming a small cooperative when appropriate conditions are met.
* We found plenty examples of similar projects. Most of them use the similar strategy – goats are assigned to a family which has to give the offspring to another family. The families are also given training in goat keeping and some management practice.
* The founder of local charity Fondamu, Trinto Mugangu, joined our team and offered us partnership.
* We decided to start with learning farm – with a couple of goats and the training, to see how much the community is motivated and capable for a project of a bigger scale and if we should proceed with the goats.
* The learning farm is about to start. Scott provided the plans for sheds. For a couple of weeks the shed construction was stopped because of the security reasons in North Kivu, but the community is now about to continue working on that. When it’s ready, two dairy goats, a male and a female, will be delivered to Walungu by a goat seller from Burundi. Besides, the trainer is ready to hold the goat keeping training as soon as the goats arrive.
* The training will be supplemented with the manuals from South Africa and the graphic manuals Scott is working on.
* The seed that Ken sent was planted in September using organic material and raised bed technique.
* Guillaume was in contact with James, Local Rep of a village in Rwanda, trying to arrange a visit to their village to see how their drip irrigation works and to help implement it in Walungu. Unfortunately, because of the security issues, he is not able to go there, so we could help him by providing him with information about setting up this irrigation system.
ABOUT THE CHAT:
* We gathered for a chat on Saturday to discuss how to proceed with the project. As I said, we didn’t have much time to discuss, so we just started the discussion about what the plan should be for – the short or long term goal etc.
* We also talked about money needed for reaching the first goal and how we should get them – taking a loan from microloan organization(s) or lending our money like Nico proposed. Also, we discussed the possibility of the community saving.
* Guillaume said that the people have been paying for water installation in the village, but that they might be able to save something per month per family (something very little). However, he is concerned that they might think he’s taking money for himself, since recently some guys were arrested for collecting money from another community in a similar way.
Guillaume is willing to start preparing the community, so that they could start saving soon, but we are still to see how it will go.
* Diana believes that we should go with micro financing rather than lending our money for a revolving fund even if that’s only a small amount. She believes that we should rather use that money for covering their debts in the case something unpredictable happens. She thinks they shoud start learning about microfinancing from the beginning.
* As for lending our money, since it was only a general proposal, the question is open for the discussion – should we do that, when, for what, who… and most important – how (I guess we should act something like a microloan institution and form a revolving fund). Let’s discuss more about that and – no need that anyone lends any money if not in a position to do so or simply not willing. I am happy to provide some little funds alone.
Besides, there's still a lot of time before we need funds at all.
* As for the plan, my idea is that we start with these 20 families as a small project. That could be a stage one of the overall project. Maybe the cooperation could start from there too involving those 20. As the second stage the other families could start joining gradually. So the plan could include those 2 stages.
Besides, since we still don't have any result, I thought about writing some general parts of the plan, like the needs assesment etc, so that it takes less time once we get to work on the most important parts.
Let me know what you think guys
For the learning farm the plan is that we buy a couple of dairy goats to start with training. The funds for that are provided. Of course, the doe should get pregnant as soon as possible (still don’t know when exactly that can be, but probably very soon since an average doe should get into heat regularly throughout a year).
Second, the domestic female goats will be bought later to be crossbred with dairy male. We have 120$ more to send as a bonus, so my idea is to encourage the community to contribute in one way or another (to save a little for example), and then when we see the result, we would send it.
As far as we know now, a domestic goat costs 30$, so if the prices don’t go up, 4 more goats could be bought for that money. And of course, the new goats would get pregnant asap too.
That’s what we already have prepared.
From there, the community should start breeding. A goat can deliver 1, 2 and sometimes 3 (even more but very rarely) kids in one kidding, in approximately 5 ½ months.
I have read about goat project in Tanzania, and based on their research in 3 villages I concluded that the average number of kids is 1.5 per one kidding (around 150 per 100 does).
So, if we count 1 dairy doe plus 4 additional domestic does, times 1.5, we get
5x(1+1.5)+1(male)=13.5 - total number of goats 5 to 6 months from the moment the goats get pregnant
Also, based on the same research I concluded that the mortality rate is 10-20%, so if we substract 20%
13.5x0,8=10.8
Thus we get an approximate number of 10 goats that can be obtained in the beginning without additional funding.
To reach the number of 20, we would then need 10 additional goats, which would cost 30$x10=300$.
Of course, this number is only a very very rough calculation; there are many “ifs”, so we will have more exact numbers in some next period when we see how the things go.
Another possibility to get more goats is by offering dairy male for insemination to other villagers who have goats (if they get interested, of course) and to ask for one kid in exchange for that service, when the serviced goat delivers.
Guys, I'm looking forward to your comments, and please, let me know if I make you confused with so much talking.
Take care,
Sonja
Hi Sonja,
It souds good to me.
Raul
Hi Sonja,
I like your approach. My personal preference- I would like to see the numbers for worst case scenario (vs averages)and may be to have discussion with the people on the ground explaining that these numbers are just numbers ( not guarantees).
Have a great day everybody!
-Tanja
Hey Tanja,
I think it's a bit difficult to have either worst or average scenario at this moment, since the goats are not there yet.
But what I forgot is that the newborn kids cannot be further mated among themselves, i.e. the female goats can't be mated with their father or a brother. Which would mean that they actually should sell the kids (I guess when 1-2 months old), buy female domestic goats for that money, and crossbred them with the dairy ones.
But since a milk goat costs at least twice the price of a domestic one (even more actually), they probably could get twice as many goats as they sell. Also, they could buy a bit older (7-8 months old) female goats that could be mated immediately, instead of waiting for several months for the kids to grow...
Just some thoughts...let me know what you guys think.
Sonja
Hi guys,
A quick update from Guillaume - the sheds are almost built and a couple of milk goats are ordered about a week ago. They should arrive in a week or so, and the trainer is ready to give a two days training when the goats arrive. In the meantime, Roger and Manu, Walungu volunteers, are reading the manuals from South Africa, to help when the training is over.
The seed is growing fine, no disease as of now.
Sonja
Dear neighbours,
Your help is needed. Guillaume says that during rainy season the community often has problems with cholera. It's so sad that they have problems with something that is rather easily avoided in more developed countries :(.
We could help them by educating them about importance of hygiene and how the disease is actually spread. Maybe we could look at the possibilities for them to act on a community level as well.
We would need to get some info/docs about cross contamination and good hygienic practices, so that Guillaume can talk to the community about that and help them avoid the disease as much as possible.
Scott says that chlorination of water would be easy and inexpensive; I’ll check with Guillaume how much that is actually available for them.
You can help with searching for the documents about GHP (good hygiene practices) and cross contamination, as well as with your suggestions and ideas on other ways to deal with this problem. It would be good to have a discussion about it, to try to find the best way how to help them out with this.
Looking forward to your contributions
Sonja
Hi Sonja,
I am a bit confused. Earlier in the SWOT analysis Guillaume mentioned that there was no problem with fresh, clean water supply. But if we are talking about cholera- there must be a problem with the water supply. Besides chlorination we have to look at a map of the village water/sewer system -if there is such infrastructure ...Or even a map of local water resources and latrines? Is it possible to hear from Guillaume what is the reason for the outbreak and how the transmission happens according to the community?
Best,
Tanja