Projects

This project is to purchase 30 solar panels and distribute them to 30 households in Tsha Ra Village; and the overarching goal of this project is to provide light for all the villagers and to reduce women’s heavy workloads by eliminating the need to make butter lamps for use at night.

East Timor Women Australia funded this project

Xiangba Lacuo is from Tsha Ra Village, Mkhar Sgng Township, Ganzi County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, PR China. She is currently working towards an associated degree in the English Training Program at Qinghai Nationalities Teacher’s College, Qinghai Normal University.
Project Location
This project is located in Tsha Ra Village, Mkhar Sgng Township, Ganzi County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, and PR China. Mkhar Sgng Township is located 30km away from Ganzi county town and Ganzi County is located in the northeast of the provincial city of Sichuan. It is about 745 km away from Chengdu City. Chengdu is about 1,388 km away from Xining.
Population
All the people in Tsha Ra Village are Tibetan. There are about 151 people living in 30 households; 60 women, 46 men and 45children.

Education
In Tsha Ra Village, 70% of the local people do not know how to write and read even not their own language, Tibetan. The 5% of the villagers can read and write Tibetan and they are monks and nuns, who learned Tibetan from the monastery or nunnery. Ten percent of people who are literate are old people even though they received a poor education when they were young because of poverty and because education was often seen as a waste of time. The left fifteen percent of literate people are young villagers and current students. Some of them went to primary school for almost five or six years. After primary school many parents withdraw their children from schooling because the family needs more income.  Moreover, most parents cannot afford senior middle school tuition. Therefore, many students are not able to continue their schooling. At present in Tsha Ra Village, 29 students are receiving education: 2 students are in college (1 boy and 1 girl), 4 students are in high school (3 boys and 1 girl), 2 students are in middle school (2 girls), and 21students are in primary school (10 boys and11 girls). In primary school students do not need to pay school tuition, because it is a private school in my home area. All together about 30% of people are literate in Tsha Ra Village. There are about 9 children staying at home because their families can not offer the tuition after they graduated from primary school. The rest about 7 of them are staying at home because their ages are not suitable to go to school.

The majority of people in Tsha Ra Village have a low expectation for schooling. They think that if they send their children to school, it just wastes money and time. They fear that their children will not obtain official jobs after they graduate from college. Therefore they withdraw their children from school in order to earn money instead.

Cash Income
In Tsha Ra Village people can earn money in two ways. The first one is doing construction work. Usually people do construction work for about four to five months per year.  Every year villagers go outsides to do construction work and physical labor. Each person earns about 2500 RMB per year.

If a family has two or three working members then they can earn 4500 RMB or more per year. Thus, a family’s income is highly dependent on the number of working members it has. Construction work is usually available during the summer, from June to July.

In addition, adults leave their families and walk for two or three days in order to gather caterpillar fungus, a kind of medical herb that is very expensive and very difficult to find. Usually caterpillar fungus can be found at the top of the mountain and in the grasslands. Each caterpillar fungus sells for around8-10 RMB. People often go to dig the fungus at the beginning of May and come back home at the end of June. Each person can earn roughly 2300 RMB from caterpillar fungus but they have to pay 1000 RMB landing land tax.  Thus, in total, each person earns 1300 RMB per year from caterpillar fungus.  Good seasons for caterpillar fungus are happening less and less frequently.

Tsha Ra village’s total cash income is approximately 201,400 RMB a year. People spend about 1500 RMB on food and 500 RMB on the clothes. Each month a household spends another 1000 RMB on other essentials such as salt, tea, rice, noodles, kerosene and candles. Also in one month each household spends another 100 RMB on telephone bills. Moreover in the summer, villagers need to buy fertilizer, which costs about 400-500 RMB.

In total, the average family earns 4300 RMB in cash income per year and spends, on average, 3,700 RMB per year. This leaves families with 700 RMB as extra money left over each year. If the family has children who are going to university (each student’s tuition costs around 6,000rmb per year) or middle school they have to borrow money from others or take out a loan from the bank.
Agriculture
All the people in Tsha Ra Village are farmers. People grow barley, wheat, beans and potatoes on their land, five mu (1mu=0.066 hectares) per family on average. The lands are fertile with plenty of access to water. Each family grows approximately 1000-1500 kg of grains (barley, wheat and beans) and 10 bags of potatoes each year. This crop is just enough to live off of and there is seldom excess food to sell for cash income.

Herding
All the people in the Tsha Ra Village are also herders and each family has an average of six to seven livestock such as yak, horse, cow, sheep, and pig. Yaks and cows are used for milking to produce products like butter, cheese and yogurt from those animals. Usually people do not sell those productions to earn money, because they need it to sustain their families. . Yaks, cows and horses are used for farmwork, especially during the autumn days when villagers load bunches of barley, wheat and beans on the back of horse, yaks and cows for collecting their annual harvested crops. And Villagers use sheep’s wool to make warm clothes-such as jackets and socks for children-in preparation for the harsh winter.

Project Goals
The immediate goal of this project is to purchase 30 solar panels and distribute them to 30 households in Tsha Ra Village. The overarching goal of this project is to provide light for all the villagers and to reduce women’s heavy workloads by eliminating the need to make butter lamps for use at night. Reducing the use of kerosene lamps, candles, and butter lamps will also improve villagers’ helath by getting rid of the smoke from these sources of light. Additionally, during the night time, women will also be able to do the housework conveniently by the bright light, without straining their eyes.

Problems

Not enough electricity for villagers
There is a river near the Tsha Ra Village (about 200 meters from the village) and there is a small hydroelectric station on the river. This hydroelectric station generates electricity for 42 different villages including Tsha Ra Village. However, the river has been receiving very low flow in recent years and receives almost zero flow in winter because the water is frozen. Tsha Ra Village receives no electricity from this plant in winter and only intermittent supply during the summer.

Lack of electricity reduces cash income
Ganzi County Town is 20 kilometers away from Tsha Ra Village, and the villagers have to go to the county town in order to purchase candles, kerosene, and butter for light at night. One candle costs 2 RMB, one jin of kerosene costs 6 RMB and one plastic bag of Beijing butter (a kind of butter which is not made from milk and which is not good for eating) costs approximately 13 RMB, people spend 450 RMB on kerosene, candles and butter per year. If villagers go to county town, they have to buy around 10 jins each of kerosene, butter, and candles because the distance between the village and the county town is too great to allow villagers to buy these goods as they are needed. The villagers have to go to the county town about 10 times a year to buy kerosene, butter and candles; in this case the villagers spend time, energy and money on buying candles for light. Sometimes, they are not able to save up enough money to buy in bulk and must go without light.

Lack of Electricity Affects Children’s Study
During the evening children currently study and finish their homework by the dim and flickering light of candles, kerosene lamps, or butter lamps. This harms their eyes.  Sometimes, children do not want to study because it is so difficult in this poor lighting and they do a poor job on their homework. If they do not finish their homework well they are punished by their teachers and score lower on their exams.

Lack of information
Because of the shortage of electricity in Tsha Ra Village, villagers cannot obtain information or news from television or radio. Even if we can use battery to play radios, batteries are very easy to use up and cost 3.5 yuan per pair. That’s why they have no idea about what is going on outside of the world; they just like birds in the cage. What they could see and what they could listen are always the same thing, there is nothing special and nothing fresh will occur in their view. Sometimes, they don’t have much work to do, at that time if only they have interesting TVs shows to watch and some music to listen for enjoying and relax and release their tiredness as well. The local villagers can watch and listen anything from the TV and radios.

Less safety and health assurance
The people in the village strike matches or use a lighter to light candles, kerosene lamps, and butter lamps. This has caused several severe fires in my home area.  Often these fires are caused by children playing with matches and lighters, so sometimes the children get hurt by playing light and matches.  Village adults would like a safer way of receiving light.  It also may brings some kind diseases such as lung cancer to villagers from burning smoke especially for women, who keep staying in smoking kitchen for a long time.

Increased women’s labor
Usually, it is women’s job to do all the housework in Tsha Ra Village. Especially in the night time they have to go to bed late in order to finish washing utensils. Also they have to melt the butter for evening light and make preparation of kerosene and candles for each night. It is difficult to finish all this work without electricity. Electricity would also obviate the need for melting butter lamps.

Benefits
By buying and distributing 30 solar panels we will be creating safe, clean light and electricity for each household in Tshha Ra Village.

• Villagers will have bright lights during the nighttime and they do not need to use dim light from kerosene, butter, or candles. Families do not need to worry when electricity light will run out as they do with kerosene and candles..

• Villagers do not need to purchase candles, kerosene and butter. Instead they can use their cash on basic necessities such as food and clothing.

• Children can fully concentrate on their study and finish their homework efficiently under the bright light. They can improve their Mandarin listening and understanding by listening to the radios and watching TV.

• While the villagers have sometimes to take some rest. All of a family’s members can watch TV, listen to music and have a lot of fun. Both old people in the village and students can get a many information and news from television and radio. It can make their life more interesting and they can enjoy with various things which are related to their real life through the TVs and radios.

• Villagers do not need to worry about fire caused by the matches and lighters that they currently use to light candles and lamps.

• Women would not hae to do so much work. Especially at the night they can finish cooking and washing utensils conveniently because of the bright light. They would no longer need to stay up late to melt butter for butter lamps.

Beneficiaries
This solar panel project will directly benefit about 151 people in Tsha Ra village.

Gender equality
If this project is accomplished, this project will mostly benefit the local women in Tsha Ra Village. In my home community, women have lower position than men and women have to do all the housework. Especially during the night time women have to stay late and finish all the housework, such as cooking food and serving their family members warmly. After meals women have to clean and wash all the utensils. It’s very difficult for them to do all those work without lighting. Generally women do not have much time to rest. Moreover, only a few girls are sent to school in my home area, because people have lower expectation of females’ education than that of males.  Families also need women to stay home and work in the household. If I can accomplish this project, then people will see women also can do such big work as men and people’s attitude towards women will be change.  This project will help to raise women’s position in the local society and reduce the amount of time that they must spend working around the house.  This will allow more girls to gain an education. Once this process is started, women will be more respected as people will see that they too can do well in school.
Governmental support
The project manager, Xiangba Lacuo has discussed this project with the Mkhar Sgng township leader, Ze Jia Luo. He discussed with local Township members and they had fully permitted me and encouraged me to lead this project in my village. Because they knew that this project will help poor families in an important way.

Project Activities

1.      Firstly, discuss the problems with villagers and see what can be done to reduce those problems.   (done)

2.      Talk to village’s leader about the community’s most important needs and discuss how the electricity problem can be solved.    (done)

3.      Try to collect all the information about the project.   (done)

4.      Find out the price of the materials for the project (solar panel).   (done)

5.      Start to write proposal.      (done)

6.      Receive the funds for the project.

7.      To implement the project.

8.      Hold a meeting with the villagers

9.      To purchase materials solar panels from Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Ganzi county.

10.  Transport the solar panels to the project location.

11.  Distribute the solar panels to the village.

12.  Take pictures about the project.

13.  Finish the project completely.

14.  Write the final report.

Time Frame
This project will take 20 days to complete.

Five days: Go to the project location, Xining–Chengdu–Ganzi

One day: Hold a meeting with the villagers

Two days: Collect local contribution

Four days: Ask the ‘Mtho Sgng Gi Ni Aod’ company (which is in the Ganzi county Ganzi prefecture and Sichuan Province) get ready for the materials and check and see if everything is fine.

One day: Purchase the solar panels.

One day: Transport the solar panels to the Thsa Ra village.

One day: Distribute the solar panels to each household.

Two days: Take photos and interview the beneficiaries

Three days: Complete the final report

Detail Budget

Item	Price for per item in rmb	Quantity	Donor Contribution in rmb	Local Contribution in rmb	Shem Contri bution in rmb	Total Cost in rmb
Solar panels	1,500/solar panel	30	40,500	*4,500	0	45,000
Transportation fee (Ganzi County to Tsha Ra  Village)			115	0	0	115
Project Management Expenses)	(Phone call , internet, ticket  (Xining to Ganzi)		340	200	0	540
Project Management Payment			0	0	500	500
Total			40,955	4,700	500	46,155

Total requested from the Donor is: 40,955rmb

Local contribution: 4,700rmb

Shem Contribution: 500rmb

Total cost: 46,155rmb

* The project manager is going to collect 157rmb from each household. There are 30 households in Tsha Ra village.

Sustainability
Solar panels will be purchased from ‘Mtho Sgng Gi Ni Aod’ company which guarantees battery life for one year and guarantees solar panel guarantee for ten years to fix or repair any damages. The company will exchange the solar panels in a month if there is any problem. If the solar panels have any problem, villagers will contact the manager of the company for repairs or replacement and villagers will pay the cost of the repair by themselves.

Past experience
During 2007 winter holiday, Xiangba La Cuo taught English for around two months in Ganzi Tibetan Middle school, teaching 114 students for 4 hours per day. In addition, she has successfully completed a book project for a primary school located in Ganzi County, Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province to which the donor contributed 5,000 RMB.

Map of the project location