Category: Livelihood Projects

Last week a Goducate team visited the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia to explore the possibility of making its capital, Manado, a hub for the deployment of our community development workers to help needy Asians in eastern Indonesia help themselves. North Sulawesi has four regencies and four independent cities. According to its latest census, it has a population of 2.3 million, with the Minahasan being the largest ethnic group. Manado itself has about 450,000 inhabitants. It is partly surrounded by mountains, and it has a tropical rainforest climate, with average temperatures of 24-30C.

The outcome of the visit is that Goducate will supply consultants and workers trained in agriculture and English to a local organization that is trying to alleviate poverty there. Through our partnership with this organization, Goducate has already been training farmers in Java, Sumatra, Bali, Kupang, Sumba, and Nias islands in emerging sustainable agricultural technologies.

While we were there I conducted a seminar for a group of 125 women in the town of Tondano on food security. The topics included Moringa production, processing, and utilization; container gardening; and systems of rice intensification.  The last topic, which highlighted rice ratooning, direct seeding, and rice-fish integration, was included because of the vast ricelands surrounding the 4,278-hectare Lake Tondano. Ratooning is a method of harvesting a crop such that the roots and lower parts of the plant are uncut, to give the ratoon or the stubble crop. This technique enables the crop to mature earlier in the season, and can reduce the cost of preparing the field and of planting, but it is a technique that cannot be used perpetually because the yield of the ratoon crop decreases with each cycle.

More than 250 women in East Java attended the training on Moringa and container gardening conducted a couple of weeks ago by Goducate agricultural consultants from the Philippines. The lectures were held in the morning, and all hands-on activities were done in the afternoon of the same day. Most of the attendees were from Kota Kediri, whereas the rest came from six other towns in East Java.

Like many Indonesians who had attended past agriculture trainings held by Goducate, it was the first time that the majority of the participants learnt of Moringa as God’s Miracle Tree. While some had heard about container gardening as a means of using recycled materials for growing vegetables, most were unfamiliar about companion planting, site selection, crop-care activities, and proper harvesting.

The participants were very appreciative when shown how to prepare a healthy tea drink by combining 1 cup of Moringa leaves, 1 cup of lemon grass, and 1 cup of ginger in 4 cups of water, then bringing them to a boil and simmering the concoction for only 2 minutes. They were also impressed by the simplicity of preparing Moringa capsules manually with the use of a capsule-filler device. One highlight was the cooking demonstration on Philippine chicken tinola with Moringa leaves. Although the participants found it odd to think of Moringa as a leaf vegetable, they liked the taste of the soup and the native chicken.

Those who joined the container-gardening hands-on session learned how to prepare the ideal soil medium containing a ratio of 1:1:1 rice husk, garden soil, and compost, respectively. They also learned about the preliminaries involved in the planting of small and big seeds and how to ensure the growing of pesticide-free vegetables.

Having Moringa in the backyard or in a container garden is a low-cost, low-tech, high-impact strategy for improving the health and nourishment of people in needy communities. Goducate hopes to be able to introduce this strategy to many other needy communities.

About a year ago, the needy village folk in Lau ban-Ban, Kota Binjai, North Sumatra, sought assistance from Goducate on how they could successfully raise pigs both for consumption and income. After several consultations, it was decided that the relevant strategy was the raising of superior breeds through a natural farming system (NFS). Instead of a concrete floor, a dug-out of one meter depth is backfilled with rice husk for natural bedding. After four months, the substrate is used as organic fertilizer.

The NFS approach, as validated by the village folk themselves, also eliminates the irritating odor from swine production; is 90% less intensive than the prevailing practices; optimizes water usage; and can be easily handled by women and children.

Five families recently became recipients of the swine-dispersal program. Five more households will receive two female piglets each in the next few days since some of the sows which were initially group-raised had already farrowed. Each recipient is expected to breed the pigs successfully and return four female piglets to the local association later on so that the piglets could be dispersed to two other identified families.

By helping each other through this scheme, all the 80 households in the village will hopefully have their respective swine-raising projects within the next two years thereby meeting their protein needs and earning additional income from sales.