Where Most Needed

Blog Post:  Posted June 8, 2009, 11:42 am by Angela Owen

Nineteen: The Lives of Jakarta's Street Vendors

We've recently added a special report to highlight the publication of Nineteen: The Lives of Jakarta's Street Vendors. There are links to videos and some great photos.

It's a whole lot more than just a pretty coffee table book though; it brings the vendors' tales to life and connects the reader to their powerful stories. You can visit the new addition here: http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/indonesia/15715.

Regrowing the Land:

Posted January 23, 2009 by Bob Ham

Running Water Uphill

Country: Afghanistan

Topics: Agriculture

Following Agha Mohammad up the steep slope behind his family farm is not an easy task. While the lean 25-year-old glided up the well-worn path, his hands locked calmly behind his back, I had to stop at least twice to catch my breath.

This route is second nature to Agha. Nearly every day, he follows his flocks of grazing sheep and waters the array of pistachio trees that are scattered along the hillside.

"We had to fill up big plastic containers with water," he remembers, "and strap them onto the backs of my donkeys to irrigate these plants. We lost a lot of water along the way."

Keeping his pistachio trees freshly watered is much less of a chore these days, thanks in part to Mercy Corps. The destination of our steep climb was the eight-foot-square concrete reservoir near the top of the hill. Filled with 20,000 gallons of water, all Agha has to do now to water his plants is to turn a small tap at the base of the reservoir.

By the time I reach the top - about 400 feet up and a full five minutes after Agha - I find him crouching on the edge of the reservoir, idly picking leaves and bits of cotton out of the water while marveling at the very idea of storing water at such a high elevation.

"When they told me about this," he remembers, "I thought it was ridiculous. 'What do you mean you're going to take water from down the hill and bring it up here?'"

What Mercy Corps meant was to install a hydraulic ram pump. It uses the pressure produced by a fast flowing nearby stream to send water from the stream up the hill through a series of plastic pipes buried in the ground, feeding the reservoir.

Mercy Corps has installed three of these water systems in Taloqan as part of our Catchment Development Programme, an effort designed to solve irrigation and water-management issues in five impoverished districts of northeastern Afghanistan. The pumps were donated to the farmers as long as they were willing to provide 50 percent of the labour needed to install them, such as laying the reservoir foundation and doing some stone masonry work.

This construction also included another 20-foot-long reservoir to help collect water from the stream and siphon it to the ram pump. Initially, though, Agha thought he was being set up for another venture. "When I saw the plans for this," Agha says, "I though it was going to be used for a fish farm. Even after it was done, and I saw what it was for, I thought eventually this is going to be for fish."

The reservoir at the bottom of the hill is also but helping generate energy for Agha's other home business: a small mill that sits in a room connected to his home. Agha charges his neighbors a small fee to use his mill. Villagers stop by throughout the day to grind up their wheat stores for flour as well as to extract a spicy cooking oil from seeds and other grains. It is a modest but welcome addition to the meagre income he earns from the sale of sheep's milk and wool from his small flock.

Someday, Agha hopes to earn as much as 7,000 Afghanis for a good pistachio harvest, enough to buy better food for his family and higher-quality clothes for his young daughter and son. There's still a great deal of time before that happens, though: pistachio trees don't reach their full potential until seven or eight years after they are planted. Agha still has about three years to go before he will be able to get a full harvest of nuts.

As you can imagine, it took far less time for us to climb down the hill than it did to climb up. But as we reached the bottom, and I looked back up the hill, I realized that our trek was a perfect metaphor for Agha's future. He has a steep hill to climb. But with Mercy Corps' help, it'll be a little easier to reach the top.

Reinterpreting Tea Leaves:

Posted April 10, 2008 by Roger Burks

Unity Takes Root in Darjeeling

Country: India

Life isn't easy for tea pickers in northeast India's Darjeeling District. Workers scale the unbelievably steep slopes of famed tea estates for eight hours a day, hauling massive baskets brimming with plucked tea leaves. But, at the end of each day, they have barely enough money to live on — and, with the seasonal nature of the work, a steady income is almost impossible.

This system has held sway in Darjeeling for at least 150 years. But today, with help from a partnership between Mercy Corps and Tazo Tea Company, former tea pickers are creating a system of their own — one which involves their own tea fields and wages that can support their families.

Their idea is called Organic Ekta. The word "ekta" means "unity" in the Nepali language — and that unity is transforming the way of life for small tea farmers in Darjeeling's lofty hills.

Small fields, big dreams

After a couple of hours driving from Darjeeling town on steep mountain roads with multiple switchbacks and some white-knuckle drop-offs, we arrived in the village of Ranibun — a hamlet situated thousands of feet above sea level with astounding views of the Himalayan foothills. We were greeted by a couple dozen tea farmers and a Mercy Corps project manager, 27-year-old Srijana Darnal. Ranibun is one of eight communities connected by the promise of self-sufficiency — and a better standard of living — that Organic Ekta offers.

The farmers are proud of their work and eager to demonstrate what they're doing. Most of them have labored in the surrounding tea estates for years, turning over what they've harvested for the same tiny wages day after day. Now they're picking their own tea from their own small fields.

When Organic Ekta began, Darjeeling's tea estates were resistant to the notion of buying tea from small farmers operating outside of their confines. For more than 150 years tea estates have had strict control of the industry: they have grown, plucked, processed, labeled and sold their own teas. They even lobbied the local tea association to pass a law to stop these small farmers from selling their crops.

Mercy Corps stepped in to advocate for farming families.

"Our deputy director, Sanjay Gurung, took their case to the heads of the tea industry in Darjeeling — not an easy thing to do," Darnal says. "Before you pass a law, it's important for those affected to be informed of what's going on. That didn't happen.

"The large tea estates think that small farmers don't exist. But together, they have the power to do a lot."

That power, channeled through Mercy Corps and its local partner, Darjeeling Earth Group, won the day and gave farmers the right to sell directly to tea estates. They now make 28 rupees per kilogram of harvested tea, up from the 10-18 rupees they once made selling their teas to middlemen.

And their sights are set higher still.

Good for nature and the community

True to its name, one of the biggest goals of Organic Ekta is to have all members' fields certified organic. This commitment isn't only good for the local environment — one of the most biodiverse areas in Asia — but also helps command higher prices for harvested tea.

All of Organic Ekta's 216 farmers are in the organic certification process. Most of them have never used any kind of chemical fertilizers or pesticides, but they still must get certified, which can be arduous.

"The farmers must first register with the land reform department, at which time they submit maps and soil samples," Darnal explains. "After this, they prepare a report or the tea board. In all, the process takes at least a year and costs 6,000 rupees (about £92)."

Tazo Tea is funding the entire process — providing office space, conducting soil testing, surveying and setting up plant nurseries — for Organic Ekta's farmers. There are currently more than 120,000 high-quality organic tea seedlings in four local nurseries, waiting to be planted in newly certified fields.

When the farmers achieve organic certification and are able to sell at even higher prices, they will pool a large portion of profits and invest it back into their communities.

"This will foster self-sufficiency," Darnal says. "They will take responsibility for things like road repairs, school upkeep and other infrastructure. The farmers will transform their villages at the same time they're transforming their own lives."

Even after all of the certification is complete, Mercy Corps and Darjeeling Earth Group plan to stay involved in an advisory role, supporting linkages between Organic Ekta's farmers and the tea board.

Refusing to be pushed around

One of Ranibun's most active tea farmers is 45-year-old Sushila Chhettri, a firebrand with a jade-green bindi on her forehead and a wild red streak in her hair. She insists that her tea field will be the one we visit this afternoon. No one argues, so Sushila smiles and leads us down a steep, shoulder-wide dirt path.

Sushila has picked tea for the last 25 years in local estates and often felt marginalised by management. She can remember a few occasions when she and other tea workers were forced to a different part of the estate when foreigners visited; she thinks this was because management wanted to hide the grim realities of daily work on the estates. As a result, she's not used to being photographed.

But when my colleague Thatcher Cook takes out his camera to capture Sushila picking leaves in her own field, she is in her element.

"I want to take you two to the tea estate and show you off to my friends," Sushila exclaims. "And then I want to go up to my old managers and tell them, ‘These are my guys — you can't push me away any more'."

Organic Ekta is giving more than 200 small farmers like Sushila the confidence to challenge a long-entrenched system, and to claim part of the profits from the worldwide appeal of Darjeeling tea for themselves. They're not ruling anything out; they're even thinking about building and opening their own factory for export-quality Darjeeling tea that they can sell directly to tea connoisseurs around the world.

Organic Ekta's undeniable spirit and unity are shaking up the status quo — and promising a better life for those who've had to live far too long for just over a dollar a day.

Posted March 5, 2007 by Dan Sadowsky

Crossing the Bridge

Country: Colombia

Topics: Economic Development

Cartagena, Colombia — White-sand beaches and teal Caribbean waters draw thousands of sun worshippers to the nearby Islas de Rosario, but no tourists have ever stepped foot in the neighborhood locals call "Isla de Leon."

There is no ocean here. Nor is there a single tree providing shade, or any sign of a café offering cold gaseosas or a respite from the blistering sun. Even the weathered-wood homes, however colourful, are unfit for the most rustic beachfront resort.

But the worst part about living on this desolate spit of land, says 36-year-old Felicity Losada, is the soil. On hot summer days like today, it is dried and cracked like a parched tongue. During winter rains, it is so impervious to water that floods force the island's 100-or-so families to evacuate. They cross a rickety footbridge to get to the other side of the 20-foot-wide ditch of greenish sewage that separates Isla de Leon from roads and services, and stay in a nearby school for as long as two months.

The land is so inhospitable to gardening that Felicity has no hope of planting tomatoes, yucca, garlic or mango — all of which she used to cultivate on her modest ranch in the country. "The land there was productivo," she says, nodding her head for emphasis. "We grew enough to buy or trade whatever we needed to eat. I had everything I needed in life there."

Tears wells in her eyes as she explains what brought her family of six to Cartagena in 2002. The country's decades-long armed conflict had come to town, and neighbors started receiving threatening letters. Leave within 24 hours, they said, or else. "We don't know if they were guerilla or paramilitary. But many people lost their families," Felicity says. "We didn't want to wait around for the letter."

Officially, there are 10,000 households of internally displaced people living in Cartagena, but a Colombian human-rights organisation that tracks "desplazados" estimates there are seven-and-a-half times more. Most of Isla de Leon's families fled homes in the countryside, as did most of the 450 Cartagena families participating in Mercy Corps' programme. The agency is helping them to move beyond their past tragedies and to establish peaceful, productive lives.

The programme, funded by the European Union and administered by Mercy Corps' local partner Volver a la Gente, features a series of trainings and workshops, including courses in conflict resolution, human rights, sex education, and how to participate in the city's planning process. Life counselling is also offered, as are weekly trainings to become a conciliador, a kind of small-claims mediator that is recognized by the Colombian justice system. Felicity is one exam away from becoming certified as one.

Two upcoming phases of the project offer Felicity more tangible benefits: she will have the opportunity to start her own backyard hydroponic-gardening operation — growing vegetables in a substrate of rice hulls and coarse sand so that they grow faster, attract less pests and use less water. She'd also been recently interviewed by project staff about her work history, educational background and job skills — information that will be used to help Volver a la Gente refine its upcoming vocational-skills training and its efforts to assist the desplazados in forming small enterprises.

Felicity looks forward to these income-generation projects; she says her economic situation hasn't changed much in five years. She scrapes by on housecleaning jobs in other parts of town, plus what little money her estranged husband sends from his odd jobs in another city. What has changed, she says, is that she now has greater peace of mind.

"The trainings you've given us — about our rights, the sexual revolution — have improved our self-esteem. When I arrived, I had nothing, and no sense of how to provide for myself," she says, sitting outside in the sliver of shade provided by her corrugated-metal roof. "I didn't know how we were going to survive. There were times when we didn't know where our next meal was coming from. The uncertainty was mentally debilitating."

Felicity's house isn't much. Inside, it's essentially two tiny bedrooms and an open kitchen, and in the afternoon it can be downright sweltering. Many of the studs are made of driftwood, and the foot-long floorboards creak and bend with every step. Drinking water comes out of a hose from across the river, which fills a large black tank on a table in the kitchen.

Still, the living conditions are better than what they were. Soon after arriving in Cartagena, Felicity and her kids left her mother's increasingly cramped home, also on Isla de Leon, and took over a plot on recently vacated land. She put up a shelter with sacks of rice, then made something sturdier from cartons and plastics, then finally erected her current structure with what looks like leftover wainscoting, donated by a construction company.

Felicity says she's not sure whether to make more improvements or try to find better housing. "I'd like to find steady work," she says, if only so her kids, who range in age from 4 to 11, wouldn't have to survive on a diet of rice and eggs in lean times.

She won't venture back into the countryside — she doesn't know what happened to her land, and she says conditions there remain perilous — so her future is in Cartagena. As she leads her visitors back to the footbridge, kids in tow, she flashes a weary smile, slightly embarrassed by her impoverished surroundings. But her spirit is unbowed.

"Don't forget us," she says. With our help, she's determined to cross that bridge, too.