Transforming 8 Communities in the Pamirs

‘Participation’ – a word that often gets banded around in international development circles. For our projects it is fundamental to seeing the people in the eight communities navigate their way out of poverty. Participation by the community in identifying the challenges they face and the assets available to them, participation in the analysis of this factors, participation in the dreams of a better future and the road to get there, and participation in the change.

Community Health

The health project has been using tools to maximise participation for a number of years and these have led them for district level nurses. From the tools we discovered that in order for our work at the village level to be really sustainable and effective, the district level health workers must be part of the journey. The head nurse and other nurses told us that this was the first time in ages that anyone had seen them as important enough to give them a training. They were excited that this information is easy to learn and implement.

One nurse shared with us that: “We did our learning long time ago and we didn’t know about the new information.” They said they will explain the information to the patients first, and share with family and friends. They went back to their work full of hope that we will be back to them with new topics very soon.

Another nurse shared: “After the anaemia lesson, learning about the symptoms of anaemia, I started to think I have all of them. I decided to take my Hbp level and take iron tabs. And have everyday food with product that contains iron.  I set that as my goal to achieve between lessons.”

One of her colleagues mentioned that she and many women she knows have habit of eating coal, soil, cardboard, dry rice, and other things to reduce anaemia. She said after this lessons she stopped eating the coal. "I will share information about the anaemia to the women and friends that I know that have this habit."

High Altitude Agriculture

On the greenhouse project we have completed two new designs of greenhouse we hope will greatly reduce the costs for local people to complete their own, using their own funds. These greenhouses are currently harvesting the last of their cucumbers and tomatoes. It is really exciting to see the hope in these communities as they can grow fresh vegetables at these altitudes for the first time.

This is also the first year that four of the schools we have been working with have been able to get a crop from their new greenhouses. We have been supporting them with training on growing vegetables and are looking forward to reporting on their total yields in the next report.

Orchard Improvement and Fruit Processing

The fruit project continues to support the juicing businesses through business training and mentoring as well as a loan for packaging. Staff absences have meant that the orchard training plan has had to be scaled back this year and the project continues to work with local people to assess the best way forward to help our communities make the most of their much loved and needed fruit trees.