Projects

This project is to build two enclosure brick fences for Rega and improve Rega Village people’s living conditions, including reducing the heavy burden of women’s tasks.

Funds needed: $10,615(72,760rmb)

Mehla is from Rega Village, Qiongxi Township, Hongyuan County, Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. She is currently working for Yothok Yoden Gopo Medical Association in Chengdu City.

Project Location
This project is located in Rega Village, Qiongxi Township, Hongyuan County, Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, PRC. The village is about 1,000 km away from Xining city. To get to Rega Village from Xining, it takes three days by bus. Rega Village is 5 km away from Hongyuan County town.

Population
There are approximately 29,819 people in Hongyuan County. In the county, 20% of people are official workers and 80% of people are nomads and farmers. The county population is 74.54% Tibetan, 23.09% Han Chinese, and 2.3% other ethnic groups. There are 175 households comprised of 790 people in Rega Village. There are 300 women, 230 men, and 260 children in the village.

Education
There are about 200 school-aged children in Rega Village, but only 115 children attend school (71 female students and 44 male students). Currently, 100 of Rega Village’s students study in Hongyuan County Chengguan Elementary School. There are 14 middle school students in Hongyuan Tibetan Middle School (8 boys and 6 girls). Only one female student graduated from college and no women have government jobs. Traditionally, women must work at home and have less of a chance to attend school than boys. In addition to struggling with school fees, many families think that sending children to school is less useful than having them work at home.

Cash income
All of the Rega Villagers make their living through animal husbandry. Villagers can earn up to 900 rmb per family per year from selling yaks, horses, butter, and cheese.

Some poorer families work for more prosperous ones and rent their own grassland to others. In these situations, the men herd the wealthier family’s livestock; the women milk the cows, collect yak dung, and do housework; and the children herd and cook. Working for a rich family provides a poor family with enough income to purchase food (rice, barley, noodles, and vegetables), medicine, clothes, milk churn and transportation. Recently, the government has started giving 600 rmb to the poorest families each year. Rega Villagers don’t dig caterpillar fungus or medicinal herbs during the summer, (important supplements to household incomes in other Tibetan areas), as there are not enough of these things growing for people to dig. If people go to another area to dig for these things, first they must pay a large fee, which they usually do not have.  On average, most rich and middle class families’ excess income is 600RMB, per year after paying for neccessities. Poor families make about 200 rmb per year in excess of their expenses by working for wealthier families.

Herding
Rega Village is a nomadic area so families breed their livestock, usually yaks and horses, in the mountains and pastures. On average each family has 80 yaks and 3 horses, which they can graze on their 1,500 musquare kilometer) of grassland. If a family has more livestock, they must rent another family’s grassland, paying 150RMB for each 1,000 mu (0.667 square kilometer) of grassland.

 

Agriculture
There is no agriculture in Rega Village due to the cold weather and its high altitude of 3600m. In addition, there is no open farmland in Rega Village because all of the grasslands are used for an open yak enclosure. Any crops and trees that villagers attempt to grow in Rega Village are destroyed by animals.

Project Goals
The overall goal of the project is to improve Rega Village people’s living conditions, including reducing the heavy burden of women’s tasks, increasing numbers of girls and boys school enrollment, and protecting the Environment. The immediate goal of the project is to build two enclosure brick fences for Rega Village.

Problems
There is no brick fence for Rega Village. The lack of a good fence causes many problems, the top five being: wasted time, destruction of environment, wasted money, threats to health and safety, and children losing their chance to go to school.

1.  Wasted time
The current system for taking care of yaks is inefficient due to not having a good fence to hold the yaks in. Each year, all the Rega Villagers cut their yaks’ hair, feed them medicines, and give them injections. If one family has 100 yaks, then they have to spend at least two weeks on cutting yaks’ hair during the summer time by both men and women. Some families make a fence with tree branches to hold the yaks while they are being taken care of. Unfortunately, the tree fence is easy for yaks to break and wastes local people’s time spent on cutting trees, Getting medicine/injections to the yaks is essential as there are many diseases that will cause the yaks to be sick and die, thus removing the main source of income for the village people. On average, both men and women must spend at least one full month each year on both cutting the yak hair and feeding them medicine. Without a fence to collect all the yaks at once, the villagers must work together to catch each yak individually for treatment, wasting lots of valuable time.

2. Destruction of environment
Rega village people usually cut trees for making fences as mentioned above. The work is easier for local people with yak enclosures while they are cutting yak hair or feeding them medicine/injections, but chopping down trees can cause environmental destruction. If people continue doing this, it is possible that erosion, desertification and floods will occur in this area.

3. Wasted money
When people cut yaks’ hair and feed them medicines and give injections, they have to spend money to buy ropes. On average, each family spends at less 200RMB each year on rope. Also, lots of medicine goes to waste as the yaks are difficult to control in the open space. Sometimes animals pull away before getting a full dose and spill the medicine. This forces nomadic people to spend more money on animals’ medicine.

4. Threats to health and safety
People’s lives are in danger when they catch yaks. The yaks are very strong and often injure people while they try to catch the yaks; this is more dangerous for women who are pregnant. Moreover, if people do not give medicine and injections on time, then there is high possibility that the yaks can get a disease and also it is possible for people get the same disease from the yak.

5. Children lose their chance go to school
The children of this village rarely go to school because their parents didn’t go to school and they don’t realize the value of education. In addition, most nomadic families need their children to help with livestock, especially when they are cutting yak hair and feeding medicines. Without a good fence, children are needed to help to keep the yaks in the area to be worked with. Girls are especially helpful, as they must collect the yak hair after a cutting, so that their mothers can cook for all the workers. Due to the need for their help at home with livestock, most Rega Village children lack the chance to enter school.

Benefits of new brick wall

1. Save time
If Rega Village has a brick fence, then the villagers can save lots of time that is currently spent on cutting trees to make fences, thus saving time for cutting yak hair and feeding the yaks medicine. With a good fence, less labor and time will be needed for taking care of the yaks because they are unable to run away.

2. Protect the environment
If the Rega Villagers have brick fences then the villagers no longer need to cut trees to make fences. Therefore the trees can grow lushly without devastation and the environment will become more beautiful.

3. Save money
If Rega Village has a brick fence then people can save money by not buying ropes and not wasting medicines on animals that are running away. So the villagers can use the saved money for buying clothes and food instead of spending on ropes and extra medicines. Moreover, they can use the money for their children’s school tuition fee.

4. Reduce threats to health and safety
The villagers can easily and safely catch and hold the yaks to feed medicine and cut the yaks’ hair without injury when working within a fence. If they can feed medicine to the livestock then it makes less possibility for the villagers to get disease from the livestock.

5. Increased opportunity for children’s education
With a brick fence it will create more time and money for village families, more children will be able to attend school, especially girls. The girls will also have time to study because they will not need to help parents when they cut the yak hair and feed the medicine to animals. With more time, children will be allowed to attend school and study. After several years, if some students graduate and get jobs or do something valuable, that will affect Rega villagers to continue to send their children to school. This is a high possibility for increasing school enrollment and attendance in Rega village, thus improving their future opportunities.

Beneficiaries
This project will directly benefit approximately 900 people from both Rega Village and Rega village’s neighbor- Amu village. Amu Village will also use the fences, because the neighbor villagers and Rega Villagers always help each other. Rega Village will let their fences sharewith their neighbor villagers for cutting yaks’ hair and feeding medicine to yaks when they ask.

Gender equality
There are several gender equality issues involved in the brick fence project. With a brick fence, people in Rega Village will have more time in their day to accomplish their tasks. Moreover, this time will allow women to have more time to complete their chores or relax. It will reduce women’s burden as they don’t have to participate in cutting yak hair and feeding them, they can use this time to get more rest, especially for pregnant women. Also it will be possible for local men go outside and work to earn income. The extra income will improve the family’s living condition and increase the opportunities for children in Rega Village to attend school.

Governmental Approval
On May 30^th, 2007 the village leader, Tsezen and I discussed the Rega two brick fences project with the township leader, Garma. Both leaders are agreed of the need and usefulness of this project, and provided their full support.

The steps of project

1.      Discuss the problems of poor fence with Rega Village, and decided what can be done to solve these problems. (Done)

2.      Interview Rega Villagers and get information about the project from them. (Done)

3.      Take pictures related to brick fence projects.

4.      Discuss with village leaders where the fences should be built, because there are seven groups in Rega Village who will use the two fences. (Done)

5.      Write the proposal.

6.      Receive Funds

7.      Contact Lao Zong Brick Factory which is in Hongyuan County, and investigate quality and price of the brick, also looking for skilled workers.

8.      Build fences.

9.      Write final report.

10.     Send final report to donor with receipts and picture.

Detailed Budget

Item	Number of items	Price per item in rmb	Donor Contribution in rmb	Local Contri bution in rmb	Shem Contri bution in rmb	Total cost in rmb
Cement	12tons	720/ton	8,640	0	0	8,640
Iron	3.4tons	5,200/ton	17,680	0	0	17,680
Stone	160 tractors	40/tractor	0	6,400	0	6,400
Transportation fee of stone	160 tractors	25/tractor	4,000	0	0	4,000
Wood	2 meters	1,500/m	3,000	0	0	3,000
Brick	8,000bricks	2/brick	16,000	0	0	16,000
Transportation fee of brick	6 times by tractor	435/tractor	1,600	1010	0	2,610
Sand	80 tractors	50/tractor	0	4,000	0	4,000
Transportation fee of sand	80 tractors	30/tractor	0	2,400	0	2,400
Skilled Workers Payment	26people* 12 days	70/person /day	21,840	0	0	21,840
Project management expenses			0	500	0	500
Project management payment			0	0	500	500
Total			72,760	14,310	500	87,570

Notes

#1 Local contribution: It is hard for Rega Village people support this project with cash, because of the low income levels and poor conditions in Rega Village. However, they can contribute local labor for the project, as well as transportation and purchasing of the sand (80 tractors),  and collection of 160 tractors of stone.

#2 Sand should be purchased rather than dug from the immediate area because there are many people building houses and it may  impact the environment if too many people dig too much sand.

Total project cost: 87,570RMB

Donor contribution: 72,760 RMB

Local contribution: 14,310RMB

Sustainability
Because there will be one village implementing the project, this brick fence will be built by Mr Liu’s group (a group of skilled workers with an engineer, Mr Liu). Rage Village leader Garling knew him well, since Mr Liu’s group built 15 houses in Rega Village, so he guarantees the brick fence for ten years. Also he promised that he will repair the fences for free if it has any future problems. Moreover, all the people in Rage village will be responsible for taking good care of the fence and they also can repair it if gets some small problems.

Past Experiences
On May 19, 2007, Mehla did a solar panel project for Rega Village, which was funded by the Canada Foundation.

On March 24, 2008: Mehla completed solar panel project for Rega village, which was funded by New Zealand Embassy.

Pictures

Kandi is trying to tie the yak with rope and preparing to cut the yak’s hair.

The villagers are catching the yaks and feeding medicine to then.

Map of the project location