Message from the Country Director
The country is going through an important transition period, unstable political circumstances and negative economic trends are aggravating the situation to worst. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has reported decreasing trend on Nepal's GDP growth from 5.3 per cent to 4.7 per cent in the last fiscal year. The GDP growth is well below than required rate of 6 per cent in reducing Nepal's high levels of poverty, especially while average annual population growth is increasing rapidly at the rate of 2.3 per cent over the past decade.
Due to high inflation (13.2 per cent in 2009), and declining remittances, exports and reserves, Practical Action realises the urgency to concentrate its focus in more remote areas, where over 80 per cent of the economically active population live and depend upon subsistence agriculture.
Despite the challenging situation in the country, we believe that Practical Action has made impacts in its working areas. In line with its three major thematic areas, (i) reducing vulnerability, (ii) markets and livelihoods and (iii) access to services, Practical Action through the local partners helped the communities to overcome various barriers to improve their lives.
We are particularly proud for being able to help the communities in building resilience to fight against different natural and manmade adversities, such as food insecurity, disaster risks and negative impacts of climate change. In selected VDC's of Doti, Surkhet, Kailali, Banke, Rupandehi and Nawalparasi Districts, we provided support to the socially excluded and disadvantaged communities to fight against food insecurity using land leasehold approach, on and off farm skill building and market linkages. We are convinced that the land leasehold concept can address immediate need of the communities and ensures long term access to land from the earnings. Based on our lessons on food security issues, we launched HELP Food Security Project in January 2010 with financial support of the European Union's Food Facility Programme. Likewise, early warning systems together with preparedness for possible disasters, and diversification of livelihood options for communities provided through our SEWIN and DRR Projects have saved lives and assets, and brought positive impacts on poor people's lives in Chitwan, Nawalparasi, Banke and Bardia Districts.
We feel satisfied with the ways we have been able to help the conflict affected poor communities in building their confidence and entering into the local economic activities by gaining knowledge and skills on off seasonal vegetable farming and markets linkage. SABAL Project has brought about a positive impact in 26 VDCs of Achham, Doti and Kailali Districts. These positive changes have been possible due to introduction and application of different kinds of technologies, such as multiuse of water systems for enhancing productivity, notice board services for market price information of different commodities and so on.
There have been significant works on improving poor people's infrastructures during this reporting period. The communities of selected VDCs in Gorkha, Tanahu, Achham and Kalikot now have better access to nearby market facilities with the installation of six new gravity goods ropeway systems. Similarly, five improved tuins in these districts have helped the scattered communities to significantly reduce their travel time to the markets and service centers. We expanded our Renewable Energy Village concept in other wards of Bhumlichowk VDC in Gorkha and Devchuli VDC in Nawalparasi District targeting to the poor and marginalised communities. The infrastructure support has been extended not only to scattered rural communities but also to the urban poor. During this reporting period, communities in Bharatpur, Butwal, Gulariya and Tikapur Municipalities, and other emerging towns were supporter for safer drinking water and sanitation facilities and improving indoor air quality leading to better health.
Last year, we piloted a new concept on creating local technical contents and disseminating those using MP4 devices. The trained Local Resource Persons are using this concept to provide knowledge about different technologies to the local communities. These kinds of innovative ideas have been integrated with other projects to ensure sustainability of the initiatives.
Besides implementing the regular projects, we worked closely with central government institutions, notably, the Ministry of Environment in preparing National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) and Department of Local Infrastructure Development and Agricultural Roads (DoLIDAR) in developing technical guidelines for Gravity Goods Ropeways to standardise and scale up the technology.
I express my gratitude to all the funders who believed on us and supported our project work. Likewise, I thank all our partner organisations for their continued support in field delivery of our work and closely working with the communities to make them understand about the approach we wanted to put forward. Similarly, I would like to thank the government institutions both at local and national level for encouraging us and supporting our approach. Last but not the least, I would like to thank the people in the communities who saw hope for the future in us.
Achyut Luitel
Country Director