I will be sending seed and just yesterday [off this site] I learned where the village is. I want the seed delivered by a friend going to that area and delivered by a friend to the village. the cost of airmail is prohibitive and mail service to the village is bad I am told.

Napier grass is a good forage but do not forget that the cows must have protein and it supplies little. They need a legume. For the three months dry season, use bucket drip irrigation for forage production. You will have to carry the water but it is worth it for the forage. I can tell them how to do this. Just need to buy black poly tubing. Sudan grass might give more tonnage per acre than Nappier. They can make hay by drying the Napier grass to feed during the dry season. Try to grow all the feed and not buy anything. The amount of milk produced depends directly on the quality of the feed provided. Poor feed; poor milk yields. High quality forages; high milk yield.

Cow health is not a problem with good forages provided.

Send any questions.

Dear neighbours,

I hope you all got our first newsletter. I'm attaching it here in PDF form, in the case you have problems with downloading or running it in PPT.

Hope to hear your feeback.

Sonja

WALUNGU NEWSLETTER no1.pdf

Guys, I think we are ready to start looking for templates and to define the main elements of our project plan.
Do you think we need to activate a new task for it, or you prefer to continue on this one?

Sonja

Thanks Sonja,

I enjoyed reading the newsletter.

In regards to what to do next, I would go with any way you think might be better. I believe starting a new task form scratch to continue the discussions could be a good idea and maybe we can start defining some areas together with Guillaume with things that can start happening there. Would be great not to lose the momentum.

Maybe a discussion with Guillaume could be good to get his thoughts on the things the village think could be good to continues. It is always good to hear how they react to the different things that are spoken here.

I am happy also to provide the project plan we developed in Menengai.

Let me know if that could help.

All the best,

Raul

I am very happy to hear from you all.
The community had warmly appreciate the first step of getting seeds to cultivate.They are preparing land to grow them Even some walungu neighbourgs villages are interesting by this initiative.

A bout Manengai experience,I would like to remind each of us that,context in the two villages could be consider in part in the discussion.Walungu is from a war and ownership destroying situation.Means that If community had a startup nuccle of livestock.Naturely the area is potentially fare.soil is fertile.People are from desplacement area,means they are returnees.The condition of vulnerability of beneficiaries must lead a kind of intervention.People are in alow income generating and malnutrition situation.
Good cultivation technique,seeds,nuccle of cow,livestock breeding technics constitute the way of fighting this overlap
At the same we do consider how the project in had contribute to resolve problem in Manengai ,strategy,context and results achieved and impact.

Raoul I thankyou for all your contribution.I'm still open to anny question or preoccupation further.

Guillaumekahomboshi

Hi Guillaume,

I was also part of another project in SIerra Leone where people were in a similar situation returning home from refugee camps.

Important lessons from there were:

- COmmunity involvement from day one was crucial

- If any funding was given was to buy materials not to get anything built up

- Community contribution was really important even when their contributions were small

That is why I am really for an approach where:

- Everything starts with the community putting some money together and beginning to take some steps towards the reaching their goals and dreams

- Also to use the seeds and to start getting things happening from there

- Start diversifying even more the farms with the different types of seeds.

In the meantime, we can continue analysing what other needs are appearing and what knowledge needs to be transfered so we can continue the process. Eventually if there is a clear need to raise funds we can look into it but only after all other options are evaluated. We really want to look for empowerment rather that for dependency. What are your thoughts Sonja?

All the best,

Raul

Dear all,

I think this project is rather ambitious - the pilot project aims 20 cows, whereas the ultimate goal is cows for 100 families and eventualy setting up a dairy cooperative.

I believe we would all agree that no donation is possible to get for such a huge demand. Even if we follow the "growing into the dairy business" strategy like Ken suggested (and as far as I know that is actually the plan of the community), we still need either huge donations or microloans. The second problem is that it would take really long time and that would slow down the project.

I am affraid of two things:
1) If we aimed for donations or loans (and I'm talking here only about pilot project - 20 cows), it would take too long (if not never), that probably both the community and the volunteers would loose their motivation (I'm also afraid here that the people of Walungu could get disappointed if they waited for so long), and the failure would be hard to avoid

2) As I already said, I don't think that we can get donation(s) for all 20 cows And even if we get them there is a threat of insufficient motivation for care for the cows by the community (just like in Khunti when the donated cows died for the same reasons.
And if the community takes the loans that will certainly bring dependency. And if the aim is to establish a cooperative - then how would the community get out of the loans for the cows and save money for buying machines and other stuff necessary for such an enterprise?

On the other hand,

1) although our goal is ambitious, I believe we can achieve great results, but we have to go step by step - small achievements mean a lot. (Just like with the seeds now - I'm sure that the community is happy that something's going on)
Both the people of Walungu and the neighbours would feel that something's moving forward. I'm sure we all would become more enthusiastic with small results at a time.

2) if the community saves some money to by a cow (doesn't matter how little that can be), they will feel proud of their achievement and look better after THEIR cows. And the first cow would be probably bought much earlier than we (the volunteers) could get them.

As you guys always emphasize, the community involvement is crucial. If they are interested, they will go for it. And I'm sure they will, Guillaume ensured me that the people want to be independent and to get on their own feet. And I'd like them to know that we will be with them.

Sonja

Sorry if this post is a bit confusing, please let me know if there's something unclear.

This is an excellant posting. Since they have cows already, breeding them to a dairy breed bull would get them a pretty good milk cow in two years when that offspring begins to produce. Then breed her to a dairy breed and that offspring is 75% dairy breed and so on. No fund raising; the villagers do it themselves. If the family does not take care of the cows, it will cost them dearly!!!!

Do I remember correctly that the village already has livestock? I hope I am not confusing Walungu with another village. We are working on getting seed to delivered.

Guys,

I don't know if you read this already, so I just wanted to copy/paste it here, to remind us on the experiences in other villages on NABUUR

It's about featured villages and the conlusions made (you can read it here http://www.nabuur.com/modules/villages/featured_villages.php )

"Based on the feedback of the Local Representatives, the following conditions seem to be good indicators for success:
- In order to achieve results a project should have a clear focus and small, concrete steps;
- There should be a local team in place;
- Specific activities attract more volunteers than planning issues;
- Finding funding or sponsors is still a difficult issue that many villages encounter;
- Being featured attracts Neighbours but visible community involvement is crucial;
- Regular discussions and updates are necessary to maintain an active group."

I just thought it would be helpful since it's closely related to what we just discuss. We should bare this in mind.

Just something to add. We gave one cow to the community of Menengai. The cow died after a few weeks and it was a high quality cow. Ws the only one that was funded.

I thought it was important to add.

Very good postings Sonja.

I'll be waiting for your instructions on the how to discuss they way forward.

Raul

Guys,

I have some problems with website administration. I created a new task, so I thought we could discuss the plan there. here we could search for some more examples, to try to find some projects with similar circumstances...

What do you say?

Please let me know if you have some wishes and ideas on how to structure the discussions. I added wiki to the new task as well, and I thought to move there the information we collected about Walungu, so we would have two parts in wiki (in "project plan" task)
1)to define current situation in Walungu and
2)to define actions to be undertaken

Do you think we should have a chat session with Guillaume soon? For now I'm available every working day after 4.10 PM (Holland time)and at the weekends.

Pleae let me know what you think.

Take care,
Sonja

4:10pm and until around 5pm is good for me too.

Just let us know if something can de set up with Guillaume as well as a date and I will be there (Not next week from Wednesday until Friday)

Regards,

Raul

I think Chats are a good way to start getting consensus into actions to undertake.

Hi all of the neighbourgs,
I'l be available to attend the chat starting friday march,7th 2008 at the time scheduled by sonja.
let's chat.

Guillaume.

Dear all

I would propose to have chat on Friday, March 7, at 4.10PM, Holland time ( I think the time zone is GMT+1)

Hope you all could attend. Let me know if the schedule is ok for everyone. Ken, would the time be suitable for you to join us?

Looking forward to meeting you :)

cheers!
Sonja

For me it works.

What method should we use Sonja?

Raul