Project Manager: Gawangjyid (Maybelle)
To improve Yehe villagers’ living conditions by supplying purchasing 8 threshing machines for 64 households.
Funds needed: $6, 419(43,870 rmb )
Gawangjyid is from Yehe Village, Cuozhou Township, Jiantsa County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. China. She started learning English in September, 2003, and graduated from the English Training Program, Qinghai Normal University in January 2008. Currently she is working in Shokay(Ventures in Development)
Project Location
This project will be located in Yehe Village. Yehe village is located in the north of Maketang (County Town), Jiantsa County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, and People’s Public of China. It is about 180 kilometers away from Xining City (the capital city of Qinghai). Yehe is an agricultural and nomadic village with 70 families (all Tibetan). 50 families are located at the foot of mountain in the valley, where they farm, and 20 families are located on the mountain-side, where they herd livestock.
Population
Out of the 490 people in Yehe village (70 households), there are 171 women, 165 men, and 154 children. 350 people (50 households) are located at the bottom of the mountain and 140 people (20 households) are on the mountainside. This project will benefit 64 households from both the top of the mountain and the bottom of the mountain. 14 households out of 20 who are on the mountainside will also receive some land to plant some barley and wheat from the rest of the village (i.e., those who are living at the foot of the mountain). Therefore, 6 households from the mountain do not have land and will not directly benefit from the project. 50 households from the bottom of the mountain, plus 14 households from the mountain top, 64 households in total, will benefit from this project.
Education
Very few of the adults and old people have had an education because there were no schools when they were young. Even if there had been schools, they wouldn’t have had enough money to pay for tuition. In the 1990s, parents started to send their one child to school because they thought children should be educated in a developed society. As society continues to develop, and modern technology is rapidly imported, people know that they shouldn’t lag behind if they want to survive. They know that their children have to attend school and study. Therefore, among 154 children, there are 6 university students (2 girls and 4 boys); 14 middle-school and high-school students (9 boys and 5 girls); 32 primary school students (15 girls and 17 boys) in Yehe village right now. Usually only one child can attend school even though families usually have more than one child, because they don’t have enough money for tuition. Moreover, some families even don’t send one child to school because they need them to help work in the fields.
Cash income
Yehe village people usually earn money by digging caterpillar fungus in the nomadic area during the summer. Caterpillar fungus is a kind of plant and medicine that grows in nomadic areas; we can sell it for around thirteen yuan per fungus. However, Caterpillar fungus is difficult to find in the forest or on the grassland, and villagers have to pay 3,000 rmb per person to dig for caterpillar fungus on others’ grasslands. Hence after they pay the landlord fee, some people have only 800-900 rmb to take home - this is not quite sufficient enough to buy clothes, salt, tea, medicine, and pay for electricity. In total these expenses come to above 1,000 rmb per year, but local families can only earn seven or 800 rmb for a whole year for per family. Still, some unlucky people don’t have any income, because digging caterpillar fungus is difficult and they can’t find any sometimes. Also, some villagers can’t afford the landlord fee. On average there will be one person to dig caterpillar fungus per family. While some families don’t have any cash income, they do have wheat to eat. Since 2007 some of the villagers have started to do construction work outside the village, and they were paid 30 rmb per day. In conclusion, Yehe villagers have great difficulties generating adequate financial income.
Agriculture
Yehe villagers plant wheat, barley, potatoes, and beans. The richest families have 5-acres of fields to plant those crops (just enough for a year’s worth of food without surplus). Each year they can produce 600 jin of barley, wheat or potatoes per acre. However, the poor families only have 2 acres of fields, which means 2 acres to feed all members of the family. If one year has less rain, those poorer families have more difficulties because they don’t have money to buy food. Sometimes the government might give one or two sacks of flour to the poorest families, but this is not sufficient.
Herding
On average, those 50 families located on the bottom of the mountain only have one acre of land for each family, and those families located on the mountain have around 20 sheep or goats and 6-7 yaks for each family. As you see this is not a big number of livestock, so they only have around one hundreds jin of yak hair and sheep wool together to sell for a year, which warns around 300 rmb.
Project goals and benefits
The overarching goal of the project is: to improve Yehe villagers’ living conditions by supplying a threshing machine to them.
The immediate goal of project is: to purchase eight threshing machines for 64 households, and let eight households share one threshing machine.
Problems
Destruction from rain: After they carried the grain to the threshing ground, then they thresh the grain by beating it with long sticks or by leading a pair of donkeys to pull a big stone threshing ball. (You can see from the picture at the end of proposal). To thresh and winnow all the grain takes about one month to finish. Therefore, during this one month, rain falls from time to time, which may cause the crops to germinate again and thus be wasted. So, on average thirty percent of their grain is destroyed by rain.
Attack from birds: At this time, the crops should be stacked in a pile in the family’s threshing ground. The threshing ground is fenced off to prevent animals from going in, but this does not prevent the birds from eating their grain for this one month’s threshing time; usually the villagers say that at least two hundred jin of wheat are eaten by birds.
Prevent the children from school: Families normally tell their children to stay home and help during the threshing time, which means they can’t go to the school for one month. Some school aged children stay at home for other reasons, such as they cannot pay for tuition, but threshing grain is another reason for children to miss school.
Prevent the villagers from other work: They need to do the threshing for such a long time, hence they can’t do some work to earn some money to make their living condition better, such as construction work.
Health and safety: During this one month, half of the family members have to sleep on the pile of grain, because it is possible that people from other counties or neighboring villages would steal their grain. No matter if it is cold or raining, they have to sleep on the grain to protect it. As a result, sometimes they get terrible colds from the cold weather. In addition to raining from time to time, the pile of grain can become unstable and it can fall down when people are sleeping on it. Moreover, when women are winnowing the grain in the cold wind after they finished threshing, the sharp chaffs will some times blow into women’s eyes, which is harmful to women.
Benefits
Prevent the destruction from rain: If they have the machine, they can do the threshing on a sunny day and the harvest will not be destroyed by rain.
Birds don’t have time to eat the grain: all of the grain that they harvest will not be wasted, because the threshing machine will thresh all the grain in one day and they can collect them into their house. Birds also will not have time to eat the grain.
Students can improve their marks: the students don’t need to miss any classes during threshing time and those school aged children will have a higher possibility to attend school.
Save time: the villagers have more time to do some work to improve their living condition economically.
Health and safety problems during the fall will be reduced: the villagers at least won’t get cold from rain at this time by protecting their grain in the threshing ground. If this project succeeds, they will not have to sleep on the pile of grain and they will avoid safety hazards from sleeping on the grain.
Gender equality
This project mostly focuses on women, because women do most of the threshing jobs in Yehe village. Because of this, women are also involved in the planning of this project. We had a meeting with both women and men from the village, and they will be involved with the implementation and sustainability of the project. Older villagers and I chose two men and two women to take responsibility for the whole process of the project, and chose ten men and ten women to carry the machines to the village and set them up in each group. Women will gain the most benefit from this project because they are doing the most difficult job of threshing. Also, in Yehe village, people have an idea that women are not capable of anything. So, if a woman gives birth to a girl, the family would complain about it. After I’ve done my solar cooker project in December, in 2006, the villagers’ idea toward girls had changed, and they started to saying “actually to have girls and boys are the same.”
Government support
Gawangjyid talked to one of government leader Namlah February 5th, 2008, who is the Education leader of Jianzha County and has the most power in the Jianzha area. He gave enthusiastic consent and said that he would appreciate it if the donors realized our difficulties and funded the project.
Steps of the project
- Have a meeting with the family leaders (men and women) to collect information of their urgent needs or biggest problems. (Done)
- Choose four people to take responsibility for any kind of work related to the project. One person is our village leader, named Aldan. Another is a man named Lorwang. He often takes care of the village and villagers respect him. Two other are village women named Tseringzhoma and Donbi. Choose another eight men to carry the machines to the village and settle them up.(done)
- Find the threshing machine company selling the cheapest and best quality machines and make sure we know how much each threshing machine costs. This step has already been completed, and we contacted Guide Threshing machineThreshing machine Factory because of their great reputation and history of success. (done)
- Write project proposal.(completed)
- Find a Donor for funding and send the proposal.
- Hold a meeting with villagers (men, women and children), and discuss each person’s contribution of labor (e.g. carry threshing machinethreshing machine to the village, unload them from the truck and set them up for each group, take responsibility for not damaging the threshing machine.)
- Have a meeting with Lorwang, Dorjay, Tseringzhoma, Dobi and other ten men to arrange a time to carefully carry the threshing machine.
- Purchase the cheapest, best quality threshing machine and carry them in those eight people’s hand truck to the village.
- After setting them up for each group, teach them how to use it, supervise the process of the project with four people, who are already chosen.
- Complete project.
- Interview villagers (men, women and children). August, threshing time is the best choice.
- Take pictures.
- Complete the final report.
- Send final report with all pictures and receipts of implementing the project.
- Send the pictures of threshing the grain with new threshing machine in the future.
Time frame
This project will take a total of 30 days from the time it is funded.
4 days: Go back to the village and have a meeting with the villagers and make sure those ten people we chose before to carry the machines to the village are available. And emphasize to Aldan, Lorwang, Tseringzhoma and Donbi their responsibility. (Choose some other people to help if some of those eight people are missed.).
10 days: Purchase threshing machine and transport them to the village.
2 days: Distribute threshing machines to 8 groups
2 days: Interview residents and take pictures.
12 days: Complete the final report and send to the donor with receipts and pictures.
Detailed Budget
|
Item |
Price per |
Number |
Donor |
Local |
Shem Contrib |
Total
|
|
Threshing machine |
2,500 |
8 |
13,600 |
6,400 |
|
20,000 |
|
Winnowing machine |
1,500 |
8 |
10,720 |
1,280 |
|
12,000 |
|
Electromotor |
2,300 |
8 |
16,480 |
1,920 |
|
18,400 |
|
Transportation |
400 |
8 hand |
2,560 |
640 |
|
3，200 |
|
Management expenses |
|
|
510 |
320 |
|
830 |
|
Management Payment |
|
|
0 |
0 |
500 |
500 |
|
Total |
|
|
43,870 |
10,560 |
500 |
54,930 |
Sustainability
This project is a sustainable project. As I mentioned all the villagers (men, women, and children) are involved in planning and implementing this project. And also they are the indigenous people, so they are clear about the difficulties that I mentioned in the ‘problem’ part. Therefore, they will recognize the benefit of threshing machine and take care of them as if they are treasures. This project will be sustained for at least ten years because the threshing machines that we will buy are of good quality. Also, the neighboring village is hiring a threshing machine from an individual who is driving around the area to do the threshing and making money. I spoke with that man and he said he bought that machine from Guide Threshing Machine Factory and he used that machine for six years and it does not have any problems yet. The factory said that if we found problems of machine in one year, they will change it for a new one. Moreover, the villagers use the threshing machine once a year, after they use the threshing machine in fall, they will carry them to their households and take care of them, no raining and sunshine on it, not damaging at all.
Photos
Xia wu is driving two donkeys with the ball of stone to thresh the wheat.
Sonam Jyid, her brother and her daughter are threshing the wheat by hitting them with sticks.
Xiawu drove these two donkeys for a whole day’s time, finally the wheat was threshed.
Map of the project location
Here is the project site with Xining city, the capital of Qinghai Province, and Yehe village.