Projects

This project is to buy 20 threshing machines for six villages in Jialaxi Township to alleviate the village women’s workload and furthermore to improve family living condition.

Funds needed: $7,863 (53,700rmb)

Tashi Hlamo is from Jialaxi Township, Xinlong County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province. She graduated from Qinghai Normal University Nationalities Department English Training Program in January 2008. Now she is one of the program officers of Shem Women’s Group in Xining City, Qinghai Province.

Project Location
This project is located in Gere Village, Rala Village, Regan Village, Gagandi Village, Walo Village and Niuri Village in Jialaxi Township, Xinlong County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, PRC. The six villages are perched on high slopes of two big mountains. Niuri and Walo villages are on a same mountain slope and the distance between the two villages is about 3 km. The other four villages are perched on another mountain slope that is opposite of the mountain where Niuri and Walo village locate. The villagers sometimes can call each other when they lose their livestock. The villages are about 18 km from Xinlong county town and about
700 km away from Chengdu City, the capital of Sichuan Province.

Back ground
The project is located in a very rural township called Jialaxi Township. There are about 35 villages in Jialaxi Township; about 7 villages are located at the foot of the mountains and other 28 villages are perched separately on high mountain slopes. There is no road, even for motorcycles, for all the villages on the mountain slopes. There is a hand tractor road for only Walo Village and another village called Gere. The other villages on the mountain slopes don’t have a road for vehicles. Therefore, the villagers have to carry every thing on their backs to transport goods (e.g. crops, water, supplies) to their homes.
Also the land on the mountain slopes is not arable to grow barley and wheat well. The villagers can not grow vegetables on their unfertilized field lands without water. The villagers have difficulties with water and electricity. In the Jialaxi Township, the biggest village has 17 households and the smallest village only has 3 to 4 households. According the education level of Jialaxi Township, there were only 6 people who received government jobs in the whole township. Only about 40 children are going to school among 480 school-aged children in the Township. Most parents keep their children at home so they can help do works such as herding and fetching water. Some villages are very far away from the school and their children can not go to school on time and they can not return home before dark.

Population
61 households make up 6 villages in Jialaxi Township. There are approximately 453 people in the six villages and they are 165 men, 151 women and 137 children.

Education
Besides the monks almost all the elderly people are illiterate in the six villages. There is only one man who has a government job and his name is Zeweng Rizi. He is a Tibetan teacher in Jialaxi Primary School. There are about 65 school-aged children in the six villages, but only 11 children are going to Jialaxi Primary School and 2 children are in Xilong Middle School in Xilong County Town. The other 42 children stay at their home to help their parents herding livestock and fetching water. Some parents of the villages also say that nowadays it is difficult for the children to get an official job. They believe that to send their children to school just wastes their children’s lives and family’s money. Some parents cannot deal with outside and indoor works, such as fetching water, household chores, herding livestock, threshing barley and wheat, without their children’s help. Therefore, the children have no time to go to school. Girls are especially asked to stay home to thresh barley and wheat. In this area, threshing barley and wheat is traditionally only done by women and girls. The few girls who are going to school take days off from school to help their mothers to thresh barley in autumn.

Cash Income
The six villages are farming villages and they are perched separately on slopes of mountains. On average each household has 10 acres of land.The other 7 villages are at the foot of the mountains (in the valley), where the land is very fertile. Each acre of land can produces about 200-300 jin (1jin=0.5 kg) of barley. But the six villages are very different from the villages in the valley. Each acre of land can only produce about 100 and 90 jin of harvest. Because they are perched on the mountain slopes, the land is not as arable as the land in the valley. The villagers can not grow vegetables on their unfertilized land without water. The fields on the mountains slopes are arid and they cannot produce a lot of barley and wheat. Therefore the barley and wheat that produce from the villagers’ lands is not enough for them to eat during the year. Villagers from these places need to buy barley and wheat from other places such as Ganzi County which is 100 km from Xinlong county town.
Four years ago, the villagers had three ways to get cash income; one way was to sell lumber to other cities, another way was to dig caterpillar fungus and sell them, the third was that the villagers went outside their village to do construction work to earn money. At that time, the villagers survived well by those three ways.
However, two years ago, Xinlong government enacted a policy “No cutting trees”（”禁止伐木”) and the villagers no longer can cut trees for earning cash. Therefore now the villagers have only two ways to earn cash income.
One way is that the villagers dig caterpillar fungus (medicinal herb) and each caterpillar fungus costs about 12 rmb. In total each family can earn about 3,000 rmb..  Another way to earn cash income is that villagers go out to do construction work in summer and spring.  A man can earn 35 rmb and a woman can earn 30 rmb per day from construction work. On average each household can earn about 1,500 rmb per year. Each family spends at least 6,000 rmb on their clothes, food, medicine, and the celebrations such as New Year. Sometimes the villagers have no money to celebrate New Year and they have to borrow some money from other people for the New Year’s celebration and could not pay the debt back until they earn cash from digging caterpillar fungus.

Agriculture
The six villages are agricultural villages, and the villagers grow barley, wheat and potatoes. Each household averagely has about 10 acres of field land. The fields are on the mountain slopes and they are terraced fields. They can not grow vegetables without water in their fields, and the fields can not produce the barley well in the villages on the mountain slopes because of dried land. In the mountain side villages each household can produce about 500 jin of barley, 300 jin of wheat, 150 jin potatoes and 100 jins of beans for per year from their land and that is not enough for them to survive for a whole year. So they have to buy barley from Ganzi county town for every year and l00 jin of barley cost 130 rmb in Ganzi county town.

Herding
The villages are farming villages, but they also have some livestock. On average each household has five cows, two female yaks and one bull. Each household can produce about 30 to 40 jin butter from their milk cows and milk yaks. People in the villages just keep the butter for themselves to eat and they do not produce enough dairy to sell.

Project goals
The immediate goal of this project is to buy 20 threshing machines for six villages in Jialaxi Township, Xilong County, Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province. The overarching goal of this project is to alleviate the village women’s workload and furthermore, to improve family living condition.

Beneficiaries
This project will directly benefit 453 people of six villages including Gere Village, Rala Village, Regan Village, Gagandi Village, Walo Village and Niuri Village.

Problems
Heavy burden and time consuming: Once grain has been harvested it has to be threshed to remove the kernels from their stalks, and then winnowed to remove the chaff and dirt. Women do all of this work by hand. Hand-threshing and hand-winnowing can take almost one and half months. Traditionally, in this area threshing and winnowing are considered tasks for women. During the day time, the villages’ women sit on clay-made floors on top of the houses. They spend the whole day using small sticks and sickles to cut the edible kernels of grain off from the dry stalks. At night they use a tool called a flail – a long stick with a small club-like piece of wood attached by a leather thong at the end -to knock the kernels off the sheaves of grain and loosen the husks. Then they stand on top of the houses to winnow threshed barley and wheat lightly into the air so that the wind could blow through it. Since the inedible husks are lighter than the kernels, they would blow away while the grain would fall close by. However, sometimes there is no wind at night and they have to wait for wind until 12 pm or 1 am. During these times they eat dinner very late and they cannot eat regularly. During the time of threshing barley and wheat in autumn, the village’s women get up at 5 am and go to sleep at 1 am for most of the days. The village women’s work is long and hard, it takes weeks or months at a time just to thresh and winnow their grain crops by hand. If they don’t thresh the barley and wheat quickly, then birds and mice will eat the kernels.
Poor living condition: The villagers know that if they have threshing machines then they can finish threshing barley and wheat soon, but due to their poor living condition they cannot afford a threshing machine. During the time of threshing barley and wheat the women don’t have time to go out to work to do construction work to earn money. Some women say, “It is better to use the time of threshing barley and wheat to go out to do construction work to earn money and use that money to buy barley.” There are some richer families who live in the valley in Jialaxi Township and they have threshing machines. They use two or three days to thresh the barley and wheat. Women who are from richer families have time to go to earn money from construction work while other poorer villagers must thresh barley by hand. Hereby the rich families become richer and the poor families become poorer.

Health problems:The villages’ women and girls get many kinds of illnesses from sitting on the clay-made floors for long time to thresh the barley and wheat and standing up in the wind to winnow the barley. Therefore, most women over 35 years-old get joint problems and backaches in these villages. Also, some women who already have poor immune systems get serious sicknesses from heavy threshing work, long working hours, and eating irregularly during the threshing time. For example, there is a woman named Songlong Drolma whose health is not good and she always gets seriously sick during threshing time; sometimes she has to go to the hospital. She becomes sick during the threshing time due to the heavy workload and eating irregularly.

Prevent students from focusing on education:During the time of threshing barley and wheat in autumn, the village children’s parents consider their work of threshing barley as very important and they take children’s education as a small thing. During this time parents often take their children, especially girls, out of school so they can help their mothers to thresh the barley. As stated earlier, to thresh barley and wheat by hand can take a month and a half or more. So, it is very difficult for female students who are taken out of school to catch up with their classmates. During the threshing time, students miss valuable knowledge they need in order to score well on their examinations.

Benefits
1. If the villagers have threshing machines then the women can finish threshing barley and wheat in two or three days while without the machines it takes one and half months to finish the work. The women will not need to stand and wait for wind at night and they can go sleep on time. They also will have plenty of time to rest. Also as all the villagers finish threshing barley and wheat in a very short time, there will be fewer chances for the crops to be eaten by mice or birds.
2. The women will not need to spend time threshing barley and wheat for one and half months as before. So, they can leave their village to earn money from construction work; they also can do weaving and spinning at their homes. Also the women will have fewer causes to get seriously sick and have to go to hospital. Overall the villagers’ living conditions will be improved.

3. The women will not suffer from as many joint pains and backaches as before, for they will not need to sit on clay-made floors for a long time or stand on the roof to winnow the grains. This will especially help women who have poor immune systems and prevent them from getting very sick during the threshing time.

4. The parents will not need help from their girls to thresh barley and wheat. Therefore the girl students will not need to take days off from the school. They will not need to worry about making up all of the knowledge they missed, and their chances of getting higher scores on their examinations will improve.

Gender equality
In these villages house chores like fetching water, threshing barley and wheat and other field works are mainly done by the women; women become very tired from this work. Therefore if the villages have threshing machines then the women will have less work to do and they can have time for leisure activities or earning extra income.
Formerly in Jialaxi Township, people used to believe that women were powerless and they could not do meaningful things as men did. They also believed that sending girls to school was useless. However last year in 2007, I did a barrier wall project and a solar panel project for two villages in Jialaxi Township. After that many people changed their ideas toward women and they believed that women could accomplish as men could. The villagers began to respect women. Before I implemented these projects, nobody asked me to do projects such as solar power and water for them. But now many people believe that women also can accomplish important things and they asked me to help write proposals for them. Some people have even asked my father to ask me to write proposals for them while I was not in my hometown.
If this project is funded, then in my hometown more and more people will believe that if women get education, men and women will have the same ability to do meaningful things. More parents will send their girls to school and they will have higher expectations for girls. The girls will also have higher expectations to accomplish more meaningful things.

Government support for the project
The project manager called the local government leader Banggeng Duoji on July 5th, 2008. He was very happy about the project and he said that if the project manager can do something to help their community he surely would give permission to do the project. The local government leader is very happy to give permission to complete the project.

Project Steps:

1. Discussed with the villages’ leaders and villagers why they need threshing machines and how threshing machines can help them to thresh barley. (Done)
2. Chose two men (Walo village leader, Kala and Gere village leader, Songlong Renzend) and two women (Zezong and A sima) to manage the project with the project manager. (Done)
3. Discussed with the villagers that three households will share one threshing machine. (Done)
4. Figure out where to buy the threshing machines and the price in Letang Company in Chengdu City. (Done)
5. Figure out how to transport the machines to the villages and the transportation fee.     (Done)
6. Write the project proposal. (Done)
7. Receive the funding.
8. Purchase the machines from Letang Company in Chengdu.
9. Deliver the machines to the project site and teach the villagers how to use the machines.
10. Take pictures of the machines and how people are using them.
11. Interview local people. (Include men, women and children)
12. Write final reports.
13. Send the final report with pictures and receipts.

Time frame:
(It will take 17 days to carry out the project.)
1 day: Hold a meeting with the villages’ leaders and villagers to tell them to give the local contribution and who should transport the machines to villages.
2 days: Collect local contribution from the villagers for the project.
10 days: Transport the threshing machines from Chengdu to the project location.
2 days: Teach the villagers how to use the threshing machines.
2 days: Interview the beneficiaries and take pictures of the project beneficiaries.

Detailed Budget

Three families will share one threshing machine and they will contribute 510 rmb per threshing machine includes transportation fee from county town to the township, so the total local contribution is 10,200

Sustainability
The threshing machine company offers a one-year warrantee on the machines.  If any part in the machine is broken, the company will replace the part for free. The company offers a three year warrantee to repair any broken part of the machine for three years. All the damages or problems occur after warranty date will be solved by the villagers. For instance, each family will take turns to use the machines in the villages and if the machine breaks down from standard use in a family, then the family will pay for anuy repair fees. If anyone breaks the machine when they carry machines from family to family, he/she has to pay for the repair fee immediately. The villages’ leaders will supervise all the villagers and train them how they keep the machines while they are not using and how to take care of them.

Reference information
The project manager Tashi Hlamo successfully implemented two small-scale development projects in 2007. One was a barrier wall project for Yatong village, which was funded by the German Embassy. Another project was a solar electricity panel project for Yinlong village, which was funded by the British Embassy. The two projects are located in Jialaxi Township, Xinlong County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. These two projects are mainly to improve the impoverished local people’s living conditions, reduce their workload and improve enrollment of school children. The Threshing Machines Project for Six Poorest Villages in Jialaxi Township will be her third project.

Pictures:

Two Ya Jiong village women are cutting the edible kernels of grain off from the dry stalks by using small sticks. Without a threshing machine, the village women do this work for a month and a half every autumn.

This is the place where the villagers put the barley and wheat before they thresh and it is located on top of the house.

Sometimes the villagers put their barley and wheat in the open yard in order to dry but the birds eat barley and the mice take the barley while the people are not present.

This is a pile of big beans with bean stalks. The women finished threshing the beans but there is no wind so the beans are covered so they can wait for a wind to winnow. On top of the beans is a flail (a tool of a long stick with a small club-like piece of wood attached by a leather thong at the end), one of the tools used for threshing.

Two Walo Village women pull out sundries in their barley field on the high mountain slope. As you can see, the barley grows sparsely in the field because the land is dry and not fertilized on the mountains. All the villages’ fields are like this in picture. The villagers have a lot of straw in autumn but little grain. (Life Style)

The map of the project location