Goats, manure, small businesses, and more

During my time in India with CRED Partner FIAM (Faith in Action Ministries), I was able to catch up to some degree with all of the programmes that they have on their books. The big two for them at the current time are St Joseph’s school which I have blogged about elsewhere, and church planting with associated church leader training.

But that does not mean that the other smaller projects have been forgotten, and it was lovely to be able to visit all of them.

The elderly community that they support comprises 18 older members of society who would otherwise be living alone and abandoned by their wider family. Instead, these 18, along with another 12 who are supported by a partner source of funding, live together under the one roof, sharing meals, conversations, group activities, and just enjoying living out their dotage with others. The lifestyle is simple, but it is communal, and basic daily needs are met, as well as spiritual and emotional support.

In a similar vein, the community of individuals who have had leprosy is another example of simple but supportive cooperative living. In this community, each of the members has some degree of physical limitation due to the affect of leprosy, mainly seen on fingers and or toes. However they are all living independently within the community, and have their own rooms including space to cook alone if they prefer. Communal cooking also takes place, as arranged between themselves, and there is a central ‘day room’ for group activities, including their weekly church service.

Two things stood out in particular to me on this visit. First was the joyous and enthusiastic welcome that I got. I had been to the community about 10 – 12 years back, and remember sitting with the residents and taking part in some singing and very simple conversations (due to lack of language overlap). On this visit, the residents remembered me from back then, and so welcomed me like an old friend – very special. The second thing was the location – I had forgotten that this little haven is situated right next to a rubbish heap. This in part due to the stigma associated with leprosy, and so the local authority weren’t willing to give any prime land for use by the residents. Instead, they got a piece of land that, back in the day, was near to a small piece of wasteland. Now, that wasteland is covered with waste – making it smelly, fly-ridden, and generally not very nice to be near. It’s a sad reminder of how these beautiful people are viewed by the wider society, and I give thanks to God that FIAM are demonstrating an alternative way of viewing and interacting with them – as beloved children of God.

The third project that I visited is the goat farm, or should I say goat sub-farm. FIAM currently own over 400 goats and have been gradually building this number over the years. The goats are all traditional breed, and spread between 7 farming families who are given a small salary for looking after a group of the goats in an organic and humane way. The prime age for selling a goat is between 1 and 2 years old, and the prime time for selling a goat is wedding season, because the main use of goats in India is for meat rather than for milk. So, selling goats at times of celebration is the way to go, and by having the goats split across 7 locations, not only is there less pressure for a big piece of grazing land, but there is also an increased reach out to families who are celebrating in some way. The goat project is primarily seen as an income generation scheme for FIAM, and their aim is to increase to 1000 goats in total which will provide an ongoing level of income to support some of their other programmes.

Another income generator that FIAM has set up is their compost business. A generous landowner had some farm buildings that he no longer wanted to use, and these buildings had a bunch of very long compost making troughs in them. FIAM now rents the buildings at a low cost and has set up an organic compost business. They employ a cooperative of 10 families, and between them, these families collect buffalo and cow manure from neighbouring areas (and trust me, there are a lot of cows and buffalo in this area, so that’s a lot of manure available!), bring it to the site, load it into the troughs, water the manure, add the worms, and generally tend to it for a month until ready to sell. The manure is really good quality stuff, is much liked by the farmers (especially those who are working big fields of crops) and it fetches a very good rate. The families get a good and reliable salary from the work, and all the profit goes towards the cost of some of the other FIAM projects.

Talking of income generation schemes, one other project of FIAM that is going well, but that I wasn’t able to visit an example of is the small business programme. This programme is a bit more ad-hoc but still very effective, and is essentially a micro-loan scheme whereby FIAM gives seed money as appropriate to help a family start a new business or boost an existing one. In so doing, the family, who will have been identified by church and community leaders as suitable for a loan will be enabled to climb out of a precarious financial situation. Sometimes the new business is to help grow a tiny little endeavour into something that makes money – eg progress from selling a few home-grown products at the side of the road, to having a handcart that allows them to reach more customers. Sometimes the new business replaces a previous form of income generation that failed through no fault of their own. This is often the case with farming, and the seed money can help the farmer begin a new line of farming so that not all the focus is on one endeavour. Once the small business is bringing in some income, the family start making contributions to repay the loan, and so replenish the pot to allow another family to be helped. So far in this way, FIAM have supported 276 families, and all are now in a much better financial place than they were.

It's been such a joy and delight to visit all of these FIAM projects over the past few days, and I am very grateful to Janaki and the team for showing me round. Creativity, community, hope and resilience are 4 words that sum up the visits, all underpinned by an unwavering degree of faith in God. A very good recipe for life!

 

St Joseph’s school – a wonderful place to be

St Joseph’s school in Nallajeerla was set up in 2008 by Janaki Menni, her wonderful father (now sadly died), and others within the FIAM team at the time. Over the years that I have known it, the school has grown impressively from a small-ish facility comprising just one class per year group. Now, there are 23 classes, an impressive school building, and next year it will go up to 24 as the last year of single form entry passes through, and all year groups are double form entry.

It is a wonderful, colourful, joyous place to be, and despite the fact that there are over 800 children on roll, it very much has a family feel to it. It has Christian values at its heart, and although faith issues cannot be shared explicitly in the national current educational system, and although the staff come from a range of different faith backgrounds, still those values are a golden thread that winds through all aspects of school life. Spending a week at the school has been a truly memorable and delightful experience, and I thought that I would share a few of my favourite memories with you to give you a flavour of the St Joseph’s way.

The children arrive at school over a staggered period. 7 school buses bring in a large majority of the students, and each bus has 2 school runs. So, the first group of students arrive early enough for the buses to then go off and get the second group of students. And whilst the first group wait for the start of the school day, they sit and do homework, chat quietly and prepare for the day. And all the while, the local students turn up on the back of motorbikes, or walking, or in tuc-tuc’s. It’s a very gentle start to the day.

Once all the students have arrived, school assembly takes place. For this the children stand in parade-ground precision, and it really is very impressive to watch them getting themselves sorted out. School assembly is a daily occurrence, and each day a different group of students (pre-selected and at least one per year group) stand at the front to assist with leading the variation components of the assembly.

These components include (not necessarily in this order) – school song, school prayer, school motto, national song (different to the national anthem), and headlines from the newspaper (a student picks out headlines each day from the newspaper relating to local, national, international and sport). Then there is a little talk from a teacher, or visitor, before the assembly ends with the national anthem. Everyone takes part in the group responses and songs and recitations, although as with all schools, the littlest ones were sometimes more interested in the world around them!

One of the things that has really struck me during my time at the school has been the politeness of all the students. Whether just in passing on the stairs or when walking along a corridor – always there is a hello and a wave. Doors are held open, and the students quickly help out if any assistance is needed. And there is a lovely level of interaction between the older students and the younger students – on the buses, in the playground, and moving around in the school generally.

Lessons have a stronger level of learning by rote than UK students would be used to, in part due to the limited amount of school resources available. But having said that, the quality of education is high, and this is shown by the scores of the students at a national and state level, and the number of parents who are wanting their children to come to the school based on those scores.

My role this week has been one of observing, sharing a ‘moral message’ in assembly each day, doing English conversation sessions with the older children, interacting with the younger ones in different ways, and doing two blocks of teacher training each day on a range of topics, including trauma, mental health and how to be a trauma-informed school.

This school might not have the biggest income, nor the most up-to-date resources, nor the most well-to-do students. But what it does have in shedloads is love for the students, wanting the best for them, and a determination to give them a really high quality and holistic education. It is true to say that they are walking a tricky line on the faith front regarding what they can and cannot say and do, but they are walking it with wisdom, humility, and a big dose of God’s favour, and the outcome is beautiful to see. It has been such a joy and pleasure to journey with the school this week, and I am so grateful to each of the staff and students for their welcome.

 

 

Elderly support programme

One of the other programmes supported by FIAM is providing support to 18 elderly people, each of whom is widowed and essentially abandoned by their family, leaving them with nowhere to call their home. The 18 live as part of a larger community of 30, and it was a delight to visit them all today. The residents all live together and have a live-in carer who is there for them and oversees the running of their home. They are also supported by a lady who comes each day to cook the meals.

It was humbling to be able to greet the residents, and help with serving lunch of rice, banana curry, and a local orange for afters. The residents age from 60yrs up, so it was also poignant to recognise that in another life I might soon be taking my place as a fellow resident.

Accommodation is simple and very communal – one of the bedrooms had about 8 – 10 single beds in it, and the others looked similar. Cooking is just on gas hobs, and it is all ground floor. But there is a sense of camaraderie between the residents, and a definite sense of family, which was so lovely to experience.

What a blessing to be able to go and spend time with these lovely souls in their later years, and to give a little love back to a generation who have gone before.

 

Church in India

It’s Sunday, so naturally it’s church day, and today I’ve had the pleasure of accompanying Janaki to two churches here in her part of India. They’ve been really wonderful visits, and I had the honour of being able to preach at both of them as well as pray with church members afterwards. The worship was as you’d expect for an evangelical Indian church and although I didn’t know the translation of the words, the spirit of the singing crossed all language barriers and was wonderful to be part of. But, the context against which the Christian church is living here in India is one of increasing persecution by the majority Hindu religion. The ruling party in government is also Hindu, and so laws are increasingly being passed that make it harder and harder for churches to exist, and for Christian organisations to function. The level of persecution varies between states, but no state is completely free of it. Arrests, church attacks and all sorts of harassments are becoming increasingly frequent, with church leaders in particular finding themselves in jail, or beaten and attacked in the streets. The impact: a church that is growing, with more and more people coming to Christ. As I saw today, the prayer lives of the Christians is fervent and passionate as they cry out to God for their country, for their community, and for their families – for protection of those who are Christians, and for those who have Hindu family members that they would see the light and convert across. With the increase in numbers of Christians, more churches being planted – including in communities that have never had a Christian church in them before. In many cases the church plants are in the form of house churches, as it is becoming too dangerous to meet in the open in community buildings, and a church leader will often have 3 or 4 house churches that he is overseeing. These will all be in neighbouring communities, and their service times will be coordinated to allow the church leader to travel between all 4 churches every week to oversee the services. As well as the obvious challenges of persecution, other challenges that the church is facing include the training of new leaders to serve in the new churches. Because it is so difficult and often dangerous for the leaders to travel too far to join with others, it is hard to deliver leadership training in a collaborative and meaningful way. There is also a need for more leaders, in response to the increased number of churches, and a need for increased funds to help cover the costs of the leaders. In the past, the church leader would have been paid through financial and food gifts from the church members. But with the churches moving to house church status, the churches are becoming smaller in size (cos they’ve got to fit inside someone’s house), and so the money that comes from those congregations is smaller, which impacts on the stipend of the leader. But despite these challenges, the over-riding theme is one of hope in the power of God to do the impossible, and to speak into the life, politics and religiosity of the country. There are new elections in May 2027, so the prayer is that things will change for the better at that point, but for now – the prayer is for the spread of the gospel now, and for the hearts of the Hindu leaders to be impacted – that they will move from persecuting others, to living in harmony with them.

360Life training in Nepal

As well as visiting various of the projects that are overseen by CRED Partner PSD-Nepal, and journeying through some stunning scenery and along some tortuous pot-holed roads along the way, the other reason for my visit to Nepal was to deliver 360Life training to teachers in one of the municipalities here.

The training was in Kathekhola rural municipality, just outside Baglung, and must rank as one of the most beautiful settings that I have delivered training in. 35 teachers were in attendance, and between them they represented at least 20 schools. It was due to be more, however, a combination of landslides, the gen Z protests, and some additional public holidays together resulted in a mix that meant that some teachers were unable to return from visiting their traditional home villages in time for the training. The dedication of the teachers who did participate was impressive to say the least, with some travelling up to 3 hours on dirt tracks to get to it, and along routes that included altitude gains of 1500m or more.

But no matter, the training went ahead, and it was very well received. The focus of the training was particularly on the role of the teachers in providing a trauma-informed approach within their schools, and within the Nepalese context. And within that brief we looked at how the brain works generally, how to use that knowledge to encourage a good learning environment, the impact of trauma on the brain, what is ‘trauma’ in the Nepalese context, childhood trauma, personal preferences and their role in our natural behaviours and choices, and how to be a good listener when taking on a more pastoral role with the students. One difference for this training compared to many others that I have delivered was that this time my audience was a mixture of Hindu and Buddhist. Thus I was delivering to an audience that had a very different religious outlook to me, and that led to some adjusting of my responses, especially those parts that normally include Biblical references.

The break-out sessions and small group discussions allowed for further contextualisation and application conversations, and the questions that resulted gave insight into some of the challenges that Nepalese teachers are facing. These ranged from young people struggling with mental health, to lack of motivation by parents for the young people to attend school, to parental absence as they seek overseas work resulting in abandonment and neglect issues. Plus, the trauma of the range of natural disasters that has beset Nepal recently, and a sense of ‘doom’ amongst the young adults as they look to a bleak future.

Some of these questions were way out of the remit of the training, and I didn’t pretend to have all of the answers by any means, but there were some good times of discussion and processing that took place. It also demonstrated the huge range of challenges that Nepalese teachers are facing (as are teachers across the world), especially in rural and remote areas. This remoteness was one key reason for the lack of opportunities here for teachers to have facilitated conversations, with external input and perspectives, as part of their means of processing and trying to overcome the challenges. To be entrusted to provide that space for the teachers during the training was both an honour, and a big responsibility, but based on the feedback, the participants and the organisers seemed to think that I fulfilled my role.

Overall it was a very good two days of training, and my prayer is that, as the teachers return to the classroom this week, and take part in staff meetings, the learning will spread wider and impact more children and staff in a positive way. We are exploring options for conducting more training – both online for those who attended, and also train-the-trainer so that there is a small team of well-equipped ‘ambassadors’ who can take the training out into the further parts of Nepal, and instil a trauma-informed approach into more schools, communities and lives. 

the view through the doorway at the training

 

 

 

 

 

Two more Nepalese projects to round off my visit

 As I prepare to fly to India in the morning, here are quick insights into two projects that I visited today, both of which are overseen by PSD - Nepal, the CRED Partner that I am visiting.

The first project was an urban primary school where they run a school garden project. The school is in a very poor area of the city, and on very sloping land, so not easy to find flat areas. But through the project, there is now lots of greenery everywhere. This includes a veg patch (although it was  currently looking empty as they had just harvested), and trees everywhere (for fruit, shade, and culinary uses), including in pots. The crops from the garden (including maize, onions, greens, carrots) are used in the school canteen, so fork to plate type approach. The children all play a role in looking after the shrubs and trees and they also get to be involved in tending to the garden, so they are learning skills to use at home, even if just about container growing if living in slums where no land to cultivate (which is the case for most of them).

 

The second project was the Learning Centre project which provides a learning space for 20 children whose parents work as waste pickers on the rubbish dumps. I've heard about this project before and it was good to visit and see it in person, as well as meet the kids and the staff. Solita is the teacher at the centre, and she and her husband are so passionate about it all. They really care for the kids, and clearly give lots of support over and above, despite both also having full time jobs that they work before going to the centre. The centre, which is open for the children to attend from 4.30pm - 6.30pm each weekday is in two ground floor rooms of the house of Solita's parents-in-law, and all the family live above. Her husband’s parents are also involved in the programme – dad gives general oversight and community liaison, and mum does cooking so that the children have a cooked meal every day. The children range from age 3 to 16, and between them come from 10 families. As well as the time at the learning centre, the children also get their school fees paid for, new clothes for the festival season, an annual health check up (including eyes and teeth), and other bits and pieces if needed. So, it really is a holistic project that is meeting a big need for a group of very marginalised families. 

 

 

The Himalayan Life Plastic story - bottles to bottles, and so much more

 Having visited the plastic bottle collection site in Langtang district of Nepal recently, it was wonderful to later be able to visit the first PET recycling centre in Pokhara where all of the bottles are processed and turned into pellets that can then be transformed into new products.

Himalayan Life Plastics is the social enterprise business that runs the PET plastic recycling processing plant, but our visit there proved that it is so much more than a Profit earning  business. It is a company that has positive ethics at the very heart of all that it does – ethics that don’t just relate to environmental issues, but ethics that also impact the lives of all who are associated with the company.

Set up 13 years ago by a Swiss-Canadian investor and a team of Nepalese folk, the first plastic bottle collectors were the street boys of Pokhara. The team always had recycling of plastic bottles as their main focus, to reduce the increasing problem of plastic waste across the country, and provide an alternative to the toxic practice of burning the bottles as part of waste management within local communities. But right from the start, the team also wanted to impact some of the other social challenges that they were seeing, and one of these was the number of children living on the streets.

Some of them had been abandoned by parents who had gone overseas to seek work, others might have run from poverty, or abusive home situations. But whatever the reason, they were on the streets, and they didn’t know how to get off.

So, Himalayan Life Plastics (HLP) started tasking the street kids with collecting plastic bottles, and they would then pay them for the amount collected. HLP also gave mentoring support, helped with ensuring that they had ID cards (without an ID card there is no access to any formal support), and set up vocational training so that the young people not only earned some money from the bottles, but also had the opportunity to get a new trade. Street to school, and girl to school were two other programmes that HLP ran to help get the young people off the streets and into more positive and empowering life trajectories. HLP was the family that many of these young people didn’t have, and they also set up a drop-in centre so that there was somewhere for them to go at any time, and get help, encouragement, rebuild their self-respect, and know that there were people in whom they could trust.

In all 35 young people graduated from the vocational training, and many more passed through the programmes set up by HLP, earning money and regaining a grip on life. Even now, some of those young people who were living on the streets continue to work for HLP. They are married, they have their own families, and their kids go to school and live healthy lives – all things that seemed so out of their grasp just a few years back. In essence, they helped the street kids go from ‘no life to new life’.

I asked Prakash Bharati, the general manager of HLP, if there are still street kids collecting bottles in Pokhara. He replied that there aren’t, and when I asked why, he replied that there are no more street kids in Pokhara, as they have all been found homes, and if a new one appears, there are systems in place to help him/her straight away. What an impressive set of additional outcomes for a company that is primarily focused on recycling bottles.

HLP’s philosophy has always been ‘PEOPLE  first, PLANET  second, PROFIT third’, and this shows not just in the examples given of the street kids, but also with all those who are involved in HLP in any way. There are 56 employees at HLP. These include all those who work on the various stages of the processing lines – bottle cap removal, delabelling, sorting the bottles, loading the conveyor belts, overseeing the crushing and pellet cutting machines, and many other stages that I have probably failed to remember properly. Whilst there is a preferred minimum level of daily achievement re bottles processed, and pellets produced, the workers are still paid their basic wage whatever, and this is higher than the standard basic wage in Nepal. Health care contributions are also covered and as a result, HLP has a very good reputation as an employer, the work force enjoy coming to work, and they often meet over their quota as the working environment is so positive. HLP also seek to provide employment to widows, ex-street kids and other vulnerable community members where possible.

Plastic bottles are collected by communities around the country and trucked into Pokhara. CRED Partner PSD – Nepal oversees the collections from Langtang, but the collections also come in from all the mountain trekking areas, the cities, and beyond. All employees are paid at a good rate, such that an individual collector could expect to earn around 1000 rupees per day if they spent their whole day collecting bottles in their area.

Most of the bottles collected are recycled back into plastic bottles. This is partly due to technology available, but mainly because a plastic bottle can be recycled and recycled and recycled whereas once it is turned into something it’s recycling potential ends and it could end up as microplastics instead. The bottle caps however are recycled into new products – flower pots, pegs, key-rings etc, and HLP are now investigating the production of plastic yarn in response to a demand for it from overseas.

The challenges that HLP faces relate primarily to the tax system in Nepal that results in them having to pay more than one set of taxes. As well as VAT they have to pay a waste tax even though as a company they are running a business that is reducing the waste problem in Nepal. This double taxing is impacting their profits which in turn could impact wages, although at the moment they’ve managed to avoid that.

They are also finding it harder to recruit skilled workers for the more technical roles, as there is a tendency for young adults to be moving overseas in search of better paid work. As one person described it – there is a brawn drain to the Middle East, and a brain drain to the West and to Japan and SE Asia.

But despite all of that, there was still a definite sense of positivity in the air during our visit to HLP, and we all came away really inspired by all that is being achieved. The mountain of plastic bottles is evidence not just of the mountain of waste that was on the real mountains, but also of the progress that is being made in cleaning up those mountains and restoring them to their former beauty.

www.himalayanlife.com