From separatism to SADP!

Monday, 29 July 2013 00:22 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Nisthar Cassim in Kilinochchi

Having survived the brutality of a deadly separatist war, a pilot community of 1,000 families in Kilinochchi, the home base of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), are finding a new lease of life – one that promotes sustainable livelihood. Spearheaded by Ceylon Tobacco Plc (CTC)’s special CSR arm Outreach Projects (Guarantee) Ltd., the selected families who are among the poorest of the poor but with a demonstrated commitment to perseverance have been nurtured and supported to improve their livelihood. The Daily FT recently toured Kilinochchi and met with several participants of the initiative. With one year passed in a two-and-a-half year support program, the catalyst initiative has already borne fruit. With the end of the conflict in May 2009, over 130,000 former Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have been resettled in three Divisional Councils of the Kilinochchi District, spanning 1,894 square kilometres. Given SADP’s success in other parts of the country since 2006, with peace returning to the north, CTC was requested to explore the option of introducing its flagship CSR initiative in Kilinochchi as well. Committed to improve sustainable livelihoods, CTC undertook the project one-and-a-half years ago, with the assistance of military and civil authorities in Kilinochchi. The families were selected by the Grama Niladharis and Samurdhi Officers. However, given the dynamics of the SADP, families needed to possess a minimum of 20 perches of land with a supply of water. The SADP works on the philosophy of “helping those who are willing to help themselves”. Some of the salient features of SADP are voluntary registration, no cash handouts and the increment of input, based on the commitment of the beneficiaries, to rise above poverty. SADP’s vision is to reach out to rural villages living below the poverty line in lagging regions of Sri Lanka and guide them to achieve self-sustenance, by creating a paradigm shift in thinking through the imparting of knowledge and resources. Once the families are identified, they are given an orientation program and SADP is trialled for three months. This phase according to CTC officials was necessary for families to demonstrate their commitment to undertake the formal SADP, which lasts two-and-a-half years. Once onboard on a fulltime basis, the families are provided with knowledge on sustainable agricultural practices and skills development as well as inputs on a staggered basis. During Stage One of SADP, families are registered and taught to develop their own parameter fencing and compost pits, educated about vegetable and fruit cultivation and handed plants and seeds to begin their own home gardens. In Stage Two, families are additionally introduced to poultry farming, adding eggs – a much-needed source of protein – to their daily meals.

During Stage Three, families are introduced to goat raring, for milk and other dairy-based products. Here, families are also exposed to mushroom cultivation, to increase their income. Once families successfully complete these stages and reach self-sustenance, they graduate from the program. Post-graduation, SADP officers continue to visit families to ensure the continuity of their agriculture learning and practices. No cash hand-outs are given to the families at any stage. CTC, via its CSR arm Outreach Projects (Guarantee) Ltd., is replicating in Kilinochchi the highly-effective and independently-audited SADP initiative, which has created vast benefits since 2006 to thousands of families. In essence families are voluntarily enrolled in the program and introduced to home gardening and animal husbandry during a period of 30 months, as a means to improve their livelihoods, nutrition levels, empower women, enrich the environment, encourage maximum land utilisation, gain economic independence and ultimately achieve self-sustainability. CTC Managing Director and CEO Felicio Ferraz who hails from Brazil said SADP was one of the greatest-ever CSR initiatives he has seen in his professional life. “What SADP does is not giving fish to the poor, but teaching them how to fish,” he said, adding that the initiative gives a sustainable future to those who didn’t have hope previously. SADP was first launched in Mahiyanganaya and today operates in 16 districts covering 16,000 families. Via successive programs, the total beneficiaries since 2006 are nearly 60,000 whilst CTC has invested Rs. 279 million to date. Since its inception, over 8,600 families have successfully graduated from the SADP program. A unique feature of the SADP is the organic cultivation of fruits and vegetables as pesticides or chemical fertilisers are not used. The program endeavours to achieve the following broader objectives:

Provide a balanced meal and improve nutritional intake
Increase levels of agricultural knowledge
Provide an additional source of income
Empower women
Enhance land utilisation and productivity
Promoting organic farming

CTC said that an independent study on SADP done by Ernst & Young in early 2013 revealed that on average, a SADP family’s monthly income level increases by Rs. 7,744 during Stage 01, Rs. 11,180 in Stage 02, Rs. 14,134 in Stage 03 and maintain a post-SADP income of Rs. 11,912 per month. In the Kilinochchi program and among the families which the Daily FT met was a rehabilitated former LTTE combatant. The 34-year-old P. Selvakumar was previously a beneficiary of the SADP LITE program, which the CTC introduced in 2010, to assist ex-LTTE combatants, by imparting agriculture-related vocational training at the request of the Ministry of Rehabilitation and Prison Reforms. This program was conducted in the Kandakadu Government farm in the Polonnaruwa District for a period of one year. Having moved back to Sandapuram in Kilinochchi, Selvakumar, who is now a father of a seven-month-old baby, along with his wife, S. Suhandi, has demonstrated grit as well as equal success in the SADP. He borrowed his sister’s land to cultivate more crops and has obtained loans from banks to construct a well. His fulltime job with the Civil Security Division in the area helps him to repay the Rs. 150,000 loan, whilst income from selling his produce from SADP program gives him a livelihood. Another SADP family in Kilinochchi’s Santikulam area is that of 50-year-old Kamala Devi, who has four children, of whom two are married. She runs a very successful SADP initiative giving her on average Rs. 1,500 per day income. Previously she cultivated seasonal single crops and has expanded to multiple crops with SADP. Kamala Devi said she did not have a regular income before, but thanks to the SADP project she now has a consistent income. She said she received money to build a house through a housing project and now can afford to make the balance payment to complete the house for her family via the SADP project. The 53-year-old T. Arumugam with five children has also begun to repeat benefits from SADP for his family. He has four schooling teenage boys and the youngest is a five-year-old daughter. He said that he now receives a good income thanks to SADP and he only has to spend money to buy meat or fish from outside. He hopes to further develop his cultivation and provide a good education for his children. CTC said Arumugam’s farm is the perfect example that meets all of SADP’s objectives. SADP stages SADP over the years has evolved to meet specific demographic requirements, resulting in hybrids of the original program, namely SADP PLUS, SADP LITE, SADP MEGA and SADP ULTRA. SADP, launched in 2006, has an active base of 16,000 families registered under the poverty alleviation program, where they are provided with the required input to become self-sufficient through home gardening and animal husbandry. SADP PLUS, an expansion of SADP, launched in 2009, focuses specifically in the Trincomalee and Kilinochchi Districts where farmers are from previously war-affected areas and have access to more land than their SADP counterparts in the south. It so far supports 2,700 families. Therefore, in addition to the program’s home gardening practices, cash crops such as maize and ground nuts are introduced to them. SADP LITE was initiated at the request of the Ministry of Rehabilitation and Prisons Reforms to assist the Army in the rehabilitation of 1449 ex-LTTE combatants through agriculture at the Kandakadu Farm run by the Army in the Polonnaruwa District. This project was completed in 2011 with 1,449 beneficiaries. SADP MEGA is a 12-acre organic model farm in Sooriyawewa that was set up to share and exchange agricultural expertise and best practices with interested parties in the south of Sri Lanka. SADP ULTRA was initiated to improve the crop diversity of tobacco cultivation fields and introduce Social Responsibility in Tobacco Production (SRTP). Further, it helps to adopt Integrated Pest Management (IPM) at the field level and reduce the dependency on the agro-chemicals. Contributions to national food production, supply of own vegetable requirement and possibility of generating additional income by selling the surpluses are other expectations of the project. This project was launched in 2013 and is spread across seven districts, benefitting 4,100 farmer families.