A DEVELOPMENT PROTOTYPE FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION – ON THE MILESTONE OF THE 2015 UNITED NATION'S MDG

Our approach is entirely sustainable and aims to work in harmony of supporting development goals as set forth by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
Written by  Dennis Ramdahin, Founder, Vihara Foundation posted by Ron Blankenforth as the Project Manager, Agriculture Green House Gas Reduction

POVERTY UNDERSTANING AT THE 2015 MILESTONE
The World Bank qualifies it as one of the most poverty stricken regions of the world. It looks at times as a step back into time, to the days described in story book of Jesus Christ (donkeys, bull carts, straw houses, peasant women, and place rich in culture, but short of modern technologies and amenities).

Behind closed doors at night fall, children tuck themselves to sleep inside their grass huts, on many occasions hungry stomach with no food, out-wrenching the pain of hunger as if this is the norm of the world they live in. Their malnutrition can be seen in their usually frail and meagre built, and with nutrient deficiency evident in their skin, mouth, teeth, hair and ability to learn.

It is a place where people still practice open defecation (in spite of a population boom and a government with a robust space program), and high incident of waterborne diseases are prevalent due to poor hygiene and contaminated water.
Children born here silently in these grass homes in these poor villages boast not of having a birth registration or certificate, let alone the understanding to seek necessary immunization. Girls are married off at latest 18 (with no parental desire to encourage marriage postponement for education, if any), and subject to childbearing and field labouring. Life in this harsh environment sees babies in the fields, subject to snake bites, mosquito infestation and disease, and other brutal elements as freezing winters and sweltering summers.

This is the price of food production, some of which ends up on our very own tables and in our stomach. It is a dark world of abject poverty, which we in the well fed developed world find hard to properly pictorialize, and which in the underdeveloped world, the word “development” itself cannot even be conceived or conceptualized. On many occasions, women have never even been outside of their village confines to see what the outside world looks like. It is a world of illiteracy also, where billboard hoardings carry “messages from the West” least understood, and newspaper’s only useful purpose is for wrapping.

Desperation of the poor and marginalized farmer sometime pushes them to the brink of survival, as at time, farming lands are mortgaged and mined of its fertility for brick making, lands are sold, farmers and farm labourers flee the hardship to urban slums dwellings, or suicide is the last option.

SUSTAINABLE INTERVENTION ON THE EVE OF THE 2015 MILLENIUM DEVELOP GOALS
These are the challenges of the poverty stricken sector of rural India, which are associated with the poorest of the poor or the landless farm labouring communities. It is this which is the real priority of the international observatories concerned on poverty alleviation, and that of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to half poverty of the 2 billion people trapped in it by the year 2015 (a far way from achieving this goal on such an 11th hour time line).
But fortunately, helping this sector of society overcome their hardship to escape poverty underpins the work of the Vihar Project, a massive poverty alleviation undertaking being pursued by the Vihara Foundation. While the problem itself from a global standpoint may seem like a massive undertaking for the international community, every bit of innovation counts to making a difference, and this is the focus of the work the Vihara Foundation has been doing in India to support the global agenda.

Taking a scientific and structured business approach to achieving specific development objectives that support poverty alleviation is the focus of the Vihara Foundation. For the last 8 years, VF has been working at the international policy level and in the fields of Ballia, Uttar Pradesh, India, on developing a business model for addressing poverty alleviation. Its approach took a holistic outlook of the total dynamics keeping the region entrapped in underdevelopment, and which is the basis of the resultant prevalence of poverty accustomed to by the people.
Its success in this “prototype” development (having taken an approach outside the norm) is finally being recognized and valued by the concerned development stakeholders commissioned to steer the action on poverty and development of the region (International and Indian national stakeholders).

Furthermore, is the emergence of a recently elected new government in India that is pro-development and sees a need to take serious action on the long standing poverty problem (at the eve of the 2015 milestone marker).

BREAKING THE POVERTY CODE
Such development model (the Vihar Project) takes a holistic look at the multitude of integrated sustainable development parameters associated with optimizing the economic performance of the underlying base activity (agriculture investments). This (the model) supports measures to empower the farming communities (both landowning and landless), and mitigate risks affecting its vital environmental support system (soil, water, biodiversity sustainability), and eventual human and support social and cultural systems (cohesiveness of the farming community, willingness, value, and collective participation in food production for national food security).

The Vihar Project aims to go above and beyond the definition of the poverty understanding, i.e., raising the income of the poor above the threshold measure of US1.25 daily. The vision of the outcome is to substantially surpass this low target and singular definition through giving the people and the communities much broader alternatives - a sustainable livelihood base that supports sustainable abundance in basic needs (food, clothing, housing, employment and savings) and significant improvement in quality of life both at the macro-economic and micro economic levels (health and hospitals, transportation, access to education, social safety nets, women empowerment, and more).

SPECIFIC SCIENTIFIC AND BUSINESS MECHANICS
By this is meant shifting the random assortment and distribution of small and competitive farming into structured farming-and-energy cooperative that will be more conducive to support broad based strategies to achieve high measures of sustainable planning underpinning development. Specifically, these include, high measures of water conservation and ground water recharge, phase out of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to natural farming and permaculture approach, greater and diverse production output and subsequent greater carbon sequestrations (via biomass and soil carbon sequestration and capture), ability for the farming communities (as an energy cooperative) to generate renewable energy (and biofuels) for grid and village use, structuring of market cooperatives to allow small farmers to enter the processing and value added reign (dissolving the producers and processors divide).

The Vihar Project in essence aims to benchmark all underlined technical and business inefficiencies in the poverty stricken economy and communities, and turn these into positive modes of operando using the process of sustainable development. Doing so will harness previously unrecognized benefits and values supportive of economic empowerment and development that will serve as vital to aiding the upliftment of this most poverty stricken regions of the world, and promoting it as a global benchmark.

And while the Vihara Foundation along with its international consortium of participating organizations is steering the course of economic development and community empowerment to alleviate poverty, it does not discount the fact that embedded in the total project design and execution are an array of commercial enterprise investment activities.

From the irrigation systems, dairy and milk investments, bio-fertilizer production, fisheries and farm harvest, processing and packaging, branding and marketing, and the spinning off of value added products, energy and fuel production, each piece of commercial activity supporting the overall enterprise will demand appropriate equity investors and technical specialists. In this regards, the Vihara Foundation has teamed with project experts from around the world and are currently and aggressively looking to source potential investor.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE INVESTING
There is absolutely nothing wrong with investing in commercial activities today that support global mandates to help improve the state of people and planet. All over this is happening as it is the “new trend”.

From the investors’ standpoint, it is worthy to note that the Vihar Project has a targeted project dimension of 50,000 hectares (500 sq.km.) with an estimated base production economic turnover of 3 billion USD annually (base agricultural production increase, energy production, market and value added derivatives, and notwithstanding the costs offset of internal inefficiencies (water and irrigation, chemical fertilizer and pesticide dependence, diminishing soil fertility, climate risks carbon value gains, and energy efficiency offset values).

These couple well with the unique value traits (or assets) possessed by the communities, that are the precursor of effective social business development – hard working people with good and positive attitude, community and cultural cohesiveness, value to others, uniformness and low risk farming land, availability of natural resources, and democratic stability and government support.
Beyond the boundaries of the Vihar Project, it is also the intent for the success of this work to be replicated to other needing sectors throughout India and the world. Already, key component of the Vihar Project are being scoped out for adoption to other areas of in India and into the Caribbean.

We are constantly look for volunteers and donations. We can all make a difference and one way is through Staged Music Concerts.

For more information go to www.viharafoundation.org

Thank ronb