Demonstrating technologies that work in trasnforming rural agriculture for sustainable development
Esta presentción ha sido seleccionada como finalista del desafío
Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities .
URDT together with the farmer scholars mutually developing technologies for transforming farming systems, improving livelihoods and increased household income
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Ubicación
Project Street Address
Kagadi-Mubende Road
Project City
Kampala
Project Province/State
Kibaale, Midwestern Uganda
Project Postal/Zip Code
P.O.Box 16
Project Country
Uganda
tu idea
Country your work focuses on:
Uganda, Kibaale
Website URL
YouTube Upload
¿En qué fase está el proyecto?
Operando más de 5 años
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
<$100
Name Your Project
Demonstrating technologies that work in trasnforming rural agriculture for sustainable development
Describe Your Idea
URDT together with the farmer scholars mutually developing technologies for transforming farming systems, improving livelihoods and increased household income
Innovación
Describe your idea in fewer than 50 words.
URDT together with the farmer scholars mutually developing technologies for transforming farming systems, improving livelihoods and increased household income
What makes your idea unique?
98% of the farmers in Kibaale district are small scle producers. They have been bypassed by services offered by the state agents including extension and education and research and left to use their weather beaten wisdom. They were made to believe that their wisdom is not good and only western based reseach was useful in agriculture. this created dependence on instituions which were not responsive and information not very relevant. However, URDT recognized the traditional methods of preserving seeds, protecting the environment and managing water and soils and decided to revive these and other technolgies in collaboration with the farmers. The participatory action oriented research makes the farmer a researcher and user of own technolgies hence the principle of ownership which ensures sustainability.
What is your area of work? (Please check as many as apply.)
What impact have you had?
1. By using alternative energy like biogas and improved stoves like rorena, there has been reduction of stress on environment for fuel wood
2. Removal of garbage and refuse from townships and homes for making organic manure has ensured environmental health sanitation
3. Improved nutrition and food security in 80% of the homes
4. improved household income by 20% per annum
5. Improved soil productivity and farm yield
6. Good animal husbandry practices have increased supply of animal proteins
7. farmers reconizing and living a sybiotic relationship with nature
8. Increaesd on farm research and local technology exchange
9. High farmer confidence and self esteem
10. Technologies have reduced women's workload hence time for leisure and relaxation
Describe the primary problem(s) that your project is addressing.
1. Poor and unreliable extension services from state agents
2. Information flow to and from research stations for improvement in agricultural systems is very weak and in some instances non-existent
3. Low levels of technology transfer and adption
4. Environmental degradation due to poor farming practices like continuous monocropping, slash and
burn
5. Marginalization of endogenous knowledge and wisdom in agriculture
6. single issue based technologies rather than integrated technologies
7. Low or lack of appreciation of value addition chain
8. Low innovations due to dependency on other institutions
9. Optimization by the practice of economy of utilization of resources
10. Low appreciation of interdependence of systems in nature i.e crop, animal, wildlife and humans
Describe the steps that your organization is taking to make your project successful.
1. Mobilization of scholar farmers
2. vsioning what they want out of agriculture
3. identifying needs in their farming practices
4. recognizing the gaps between what they want and what the situation they practice their farming is
5. Designing interventions
6. Identifying technolgies needed to make work easy and improve on their production
7. Concdect training and research on the field
8. Raise funds for procurement of resources not locally available
9, Strengthen systems for good governance
10 Documentation and accounting for resources used
11. Ensure ownership of the projects at the farm level
12. Prepare for technology difusion
Impacto
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Success in Year 1:
1. To make a survey in the communities to identify technologies that have been successful and document for difusion
2. identify technolgies that have not worked to ascertain why they did not work so that together with scholar farmers develop strategies to address this short fall
3. organize resources for this survey
4. Publish the findings
Success in Year 2:
1. Identify new communities where successful technologies can be demonstrated
2. Further study on the technologies that are not working for redesign
3. Mobilize resources for strengthening research and extension services from URDT staff
4. Documentation for sharing with other interested parties including sponsors
5. Organize exchange visits for scholar farmers to see what fello famers in other communities are doing
6. Enable farmers to participate in national and local events like Environment and World Food days and national agricultural exhibitions.
7. Application of experiences
Success in Year 3:
1. Linkage and interactions between the URDT demonstration and family farms mutually generating lessons and documenting experiences
2. The how- to manuals in different technolgies published for use at all levels
3. Self evaluation for creating a system of receeding roles of URDT and the emerging responsbilities of the scholar farmers
4. More capacity building scholar farmers in documentation and other areas of strategic management and planning
5. Ensure linkages and networking with other players in the system: procurement, processing, marketing and distribution
Do you have a business plan or strategic plan? (yes/no)
Yes! URTD has a three year strategic plan
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 1:
The demonstrations at the URDT campus and farm families levels are on going concerns. URDT intends to carry out a community survey to document the type of technologies and innovations that have influenced change in the farming and livelihood systems.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 2:
URDT in partnership with the successful farmer scholars will organize exhibitions to demonstrate to the commnuties that have not developed or adapted the existing technologies their workability and usefulness documented up that time.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 3:
URDT uses a visionary approach to human and rural development. Consciousness raising using the principles of the creative process is important as it lets people know what they truly want, know what they have and develop the want-to desire. By unlishing the human spirit and potential based on people's aspirations is the fundamental strategy in sustainable development. URDT will continue training the scholar farmers and their household members in this area
Describe the expected results of these actions.
1. The community suryey will have data showing and vindicating that endogenous knowledge and technolgies of the rural people actually work. This will enhance confidence and self esteem among the farmers
2. Exhibitions create a demonstration effect for farmers to adapt innovations voluntarily based on conviction rather than competition.
3. Training in the visionary approach will enable the farmers to create and hold clear visions of what they want to create or innovate, sustain enthusiasm and commitment as they work individually or collectively toward their goals.
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
URDT came to Kibaale in 1989 (then part of Hoima District). it was recovering from the 5 year war and state sponsored extension services were poor and linkage with research stations was weak or in some cases none existent. For many years the farmers observed their soil degraded, farm yield detoriarating and farm incomes falling as they waited for state intervention. This dependency created a sense of powerlessness and in many cases apathy.
URDT in recignition of the history of farming systems and the resilience of the people carried our a survey that indicated there was tremendous wisdom that was not being utilized. On that basis comminities were mobilized to identify different people with unique gifts from who whom they could tap. That is how the concept of farmer scholar was developed. They were invited to come to URDT where some technologies were developed, tested and disseminated for trrials at the farmers level. The follow up has been to work with them on their farms through the participatory adaptive research methodology.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
The soscial innovator is Mwalimu Musheshe,( Ashoka Fellow). He was nominated as the first of the two members in the East African region. He is the founder of the Uganda Rural Development and Training programme, an NGO founded in 1987 and involved in human and rural development. It uses the visionary and systems thinking approach in enhancing empowerment. He has initiated innovations in education (founded awomens education system from primary to university at the URDT campus, an institutte for vocation and youth leadership studies, a community radio and engages in humanand land rights, rural technolgies and civil society capacity building. All these innovations are ins support of sustainable agriculture and rural development.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Mwalimu Musheshe is a changemaker and has been following the emergency of new intiatives in Ashoka. At the Fellows' Ms. Victoria Nyakundi the Outreach Marketing Coordinator introduced the initiative and URDT seized the opportunity
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Sustenibilidad
What would prevent your project from being a success?
the project has stood the test of time. it is real in the communities although difusion is slow, the technolgies developed have deen instituionalized except for biogas due to lack of complementary technologies. for example, biogas need plenty of water and the terrain is hilly restrictying use of carts. Besides, where the farmers are practicing free range grazing, collecting cow dung is tidiuos and needs a lot of labout. other technologies are doing well. there is need for improvement, a requirement of some funding.
Fuente de financiamiento
If yes, provide organization name.
Yes! The Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme, URDT
How long has this organization been operating? (i.e. less than a year; 1-5 years; more than 5 years)
The organization has been in existence for 22 years. it serves the district and other parts of Uganda.
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
it has a Board of Directors and has operational lisence renewable every 5 yrs.
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs? (yes/no)
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses? (yes/no)
Yes
La historia
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government? (yes/no)
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
They provide fora for information exchange, networking, collaboration in lobbying and advocacy, legitimization and tax breaks/exemptions.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1. demonstration farm at URDT-1000
2. farm families-1200
3. Community Radio-2,500,000
What is the total number of employees and total number of volunteers at your organization?
1. Staff-50
2. Volunteers-72
What is your organization's business classification?
Non-profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Have you received funding from any of the following groups? (Please check as many as apply.)
Rockefeller Foundation , United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) .
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Comentarios
Great that URDT acknowledges the relevance of indigenous knowledge of farmers. In my exprience they have a lot of wisdom and amazing technologies that are getting lost in the name of 'modernization'. Also in the development of new energy saving technologies the relevance of their input is often not appreciated or gender aspects are not taken into consideration. I am looking forward to read about your findings. I will also dig into my network and literature for any relevant information that can contribute the success of this project.I sincerely hope you are going to be amongst the final finalists!
These folks have cracked the nut of how to do rural devlopment right. Two key ideas underlie their work:
1. Development must be INTEGRATED, addressing each of the issues that can block it: sanitation, health, education, vocational and entrepreneurship training, political participation, agricultural methods, land rights, human rights, gender issues and more. URDT has established branches to engage each of these, and those branches reinforce one another. URDT turns out social and business entrepreneurs: job creators, not job seekers.
2. Development must be FROM THE BOTTOM UP. The greatest impediment to development is fatalism, the sense that "nothing I can do will make a difference." Much well-intentioned "aid" perpetuates this sense of powerlessness. As Musheshe has said, "No one can develop you but you yourself". URDT has developed very effective techniques to energize, educate and empower individuals and communities to envision in precise detail what they want, and then to take the steps needed to make their vision real. URDT's motto says it all: "Awakening the sleeping genius in each of us."
Two amazing stats:
1. In the area served by their community radio station, voter participation has increased from 45% to 80%. Where else have you ever heard of such a gain? And people in URDT's area are steadfast in their opposition to corruption.
2. Family incomes of students in the URDT Girls School increase by 20%. Not years later, but WHILE THE GIRLS ARE IN SCHOOL, the result of URDT's two-generation educational approach, with its novel "back home projects."
Think about what that means: all over the world, kids drop out of school because they and their families cannot take the income loss that staying in school entails. But instead of a loss, URDT induces a gain of 20%. What family would NOT want their kid to go to such a school? And what kid would not want to go to a school offering that kind of empowerment?
URDT's excellent results need support. Here is rural development done right. The world needs to hear more about it.
Tom, I fully agree that the world needs to know more about URDT and how its unique home-grown institutions produces a different breed of leaders in Africa.
URDT’s emerging African Rural University (ARU) for women is another amazing strategy of URDT to developing a pool of value driven, focused and competent rural transformation agents. This emerging institution is to bring a systemic change in the education sector as well as a paradigm shift in rural transformation approaches and technologies. ARU aims to develop female leaders who are not only academically trained in rural transformation but also i) willing to actively participate in socio-economic empowerment of the marginalized and ii) capable to provide a rigorous scientific input in the design and practice of rural development processes grounded in the belief that participation and involvement of rural people in local governance is key to self-generating development and leads to sustainable development.
For example, ARU students learn i) theories and techniques to empower the communities in a holistic way towards self-reliance and self-help; ii) practical skills like the HRB approach to programming vs the traditional needs based approach; iii) the application of systems thinking and the principles of the creative process in the design and implementation of integrated development programmes.
Uniquely, the rural communities of Kibaale District are committed to act as social laboratories for collective learning. Therefore, ARU can offer academic education in a rural setting. This set-up promises that ARU graduates can be employed to both support district government and other development agents like CBOs to play their respective developmental roles.
I have seen presentations on URDT work for many years and met the executive and a woman who is the key planner. They have novel and effective methods of human development, that is, developing humanity, that we in the US could learn from. They value and empower the voice of girls, boys, women, and men. The community has many many results and new skills. I love this project.
The most critical and innovative aspect of the URDT programme, and which contributes to its success, is the fact that it did away with old fashioned and widely used problem solving (you remember the problem trees?) and uses a visionary approach to plan intervention with farmers. By using visionary and systems thinking, URDT mobilises the positive energy in communities, helps them to analyse the resources at their disposal, and behave pro-actively rather than re-actively, The emphasis on what can go right rather than what has gone wrong, empowers farmers and holds them responsible for their own development.
Secondly, URDT integrates their outreach programme with a wider formal education effort, and thereby fuses in the farming community indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge. This is in recognition of the fact that in light of the rapid changes in rural communities in Africa, indigenous knowledge alone cannot take the farming community forward.
The URDT programme is innovative and unique in Uganda and is widely appreciated. It deserves all the support it can get to widen its impact in the region and to disseminate its approach across the world
URDT is doing much more in the area of technology development and rural transformation. For example, it has trained 20 female rural transformation specialists at academic level in Technologies for Rural Transformation and over 1000 women specifically in the area of gender, development and rural technologies. It has a demonstration farm, develops and disseminates appropriate technologies like solar panels, solar dryers, low cost water jars, drip irrigation and fuel wood saving stoves to rural communities.
Over the years, URDT has established several educational institutions grounded in URDT’s values, believes, mission and 20 years of rural transformation experience. The URDT Girls’ School, the community radio, KKCR, the URDT Institute for Vocational studies and the emerging African Rural University (ARU) for women have proven to be effective strategies to developing a pool of value driven, focused and competent rural transformation agents that impact positively at issues related to health, peace, prosperity, happiness and freedom at individual, household, community and district levels.
I have been privileged to know the leaders of this organization for over two decades and to witness the growth in Kibaale catalyzed by their commitment to a Ugandan people who can create for themselves: peace, prosperity, health, freedom and happiness.
Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme (URDT) has spent over 20 years cultivating strong relationships with the people of Kibaale district, western Uganda, at all levels of society -- farmers, police, business people, clergy, political leaders, etc. To empower the local people, URDT develops education, training, information sharing, organization structures, and infrastructure like roads, schools, and their very popular community radio station (KKCR).
In this project to make scholar farmers and their successful farming practices more visible and repeatable, KKCR, the community radio, will be a big asset. Over 2 million listeners appreciate KKCR for its information, educational programmes, and microphones that give voice to the unheard. Scholar farmers can speak (in their local language) on this radio station, encouraging other small plot farmers, and bringing dignity, interest, and improvement to their endeavors.
The URDT proposal gives details of their intended work. However, I wanted to highlight this great benefit of the community radio, KKCR, that resides on the URDT campus and serves the whole district.
One of URDT's innovations that is most exciting to me is the way they have altered the promise of education for young women. Rather than focusing on getting an education so that they will be able to get a job when they grow up, the girl and her family acquire the knowledge and skills to lift the entire family out of poverty while she is still in school. In the process each student becomes an agent for change in her village/community.
I've had the privilege of volunteering annually for three to eight weeks each year, working and consulting at URDT for the past ten years. Ten years ago the estimated population of the Kagadi Sub-County was 2,500. The population two years ago was estimated at 30,000. This fantastic growth from a rural crossroads trading center to a vibrant learning center of rural Uganda is due to the many training programs of URDT. The URDT Vocational Institute produces young craftsmen and craftswomen with skills and craft-ship relative and critical to making the rural areas attractive, not only sustainable but profitable. Kagadi town has many new streets lined with new and vibrant businesses providing all goods and services as a result of URDT training.
The URDT Girls School is a full board and dormitory facility for 250 exceptional students that are challenged to take what they have learned and apply it to impoverished locations from which they come. Housing and farming improvements are evident everywhere in the Kagadi Sub-County.
Women farmers and their families have learned to form cooperative savings and credit societies as safe places to save, and to provide low cost credit to each other to start their own businesses, such as restaurants, or small shops, or purchase land, or animals to expand their farm. These S & Ls also make loans to parents for school fees, books and uniforms so their children can go to school.
URDT's African Rural University for Women expands the vision for the Girls School graduates to get a degree in Rural Development that would never be available to them if they were economically forced to migrate to the larger cities for work or training.
Within the last two years the Government of Uganda has recognized Kagadi's growth by adding Kagadi and URDT to the national power grid.
URDT's methodologies and successes need to be supported, encouraged, and copied throughout the developing world.
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