This project is to build a running water system for Rilangda Village, in order to supply clean water for Rilangda villagers to reduce the villager’s burden, and decrease the six households’ workload so they have more time to relax like the other 18 households in Rilangda Village and improve their living condition.

Youth Group from Vienna funded this project

Lo Sang Bal Dron is from Luhuo County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. She is currently studying for an Associate’s degree at the English Training Program in Qinghai Nationalities Teacher’s College, Qinghai Normal University.

What? Build a running water system for Rilangda Village in Zhuwo Township, Luhuo County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province in order to decrease the six households’ workload, and reduce sickness.

Who? The six households in Rilangda village, Zhuwo Township, Luhuo County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.

Photos during the project

These two women are digging the ditches for their water pipes in front of their own houses.

The skilled worker puts all the materials together and begins to install the water pipes and taps.

Two of the unskilled workers are mixing cement and sand for building cement water boxes.

The skilled worker is putting the #45 pipes into the ditches.

The skilled worker is building the cement water box and the unskilled workers are helping him by providing stone and cement.

The skilled worker and unskilled worker are building the cement water box with timber.

A small cement water box is built for each family.

The #25 pipes are put into the ditches for two families.

The #45 pipes and the plastic pipes are about to connect in the ditches.

The skilled worker and two unskilled workers are putting the #45 pipes into the diesel oil to connect with the #25 pipes.

The unskilled workers are covering the ditches after the pipes are connected.

The six families are fetching water through the water box and taps from their kitchen and near doors.

The project manager Blobzang dpal sgron and her assistant Xinagyong give 5,400 RMB to the village leader, so the six families can use the main village water supply. Initially, the project manager was told that they needed to give 5,400, however later the village leader stated that they needed to give 5,940 RMB. The project manager had to collect 90 RMB from each family to pay the extra 540 RMB.

After finishing this project the six households’ members came to the project manager say thanks and offer a Kha dha – a piece of white silk used as a greeting gift in Tibetan areas.

Project summery:

Project title: Running Water Project for Six Households in Rilangda Village
Project goals: To build a running water system for six households in Rilangda Village to provide safe and clean water, decreasing the six households’ workload so they have more time to relax like the other 18 households in Rilangda Village.
Project Location
This project is located in Rilangda Village, Zhuwo Township, Luhuo County; Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Rilangda Village is about 50 km away from Luhuo County (called Zhanggo in Tibetan); Luhuo County is located in the southeast of Ganzi Prefecture and Luhuo County is 650 km away from Chengdu City, the capital of Sichuan.

Total beneficiaries: This running water project directly benefits six households with a total of 39 people: 14 men, 14 women and 11 children under the age of 16 (including 3 new babies).
Implementation organization/individual: Blobzang dpalsgron (Madge), project main manager; Xiang gyangs,the project manager’s assistant, and Shem Women’s Group.

Contact Group: Shem Women’s Group

Funding ⎯ source, amount, and date received: Blobzang dpalsgron received 18,715.2 RMB from Shem Women’s Group in December 2009, and she will receive 4,678.8 RMB after implementing the project successfully.

Details of the project activities:
1. Asked the village leader about the needs for the project.
2. Asked the village leader whether the six households can use the same water system as the 18 households.
3. Received government permission to do this project.
4. Contacted a skilled worker.
5. Found out the transportation fee.
6. Asked the price of materials in Luhuo County.
7. Wrote project proposal.
8. Collected information from Rig ‘dzinm Thar phyin, who implemented a running water project in a nearby village.
9. Took pictures.
10. March 5th- March 10th 2010: Received funds, helped the two co- managers (mKh’gYang and Jiang shi) prepare local materials, and transport sand and stone to their home.
11. .March 11th -March 14th 2010: Purchased the materials and cement bags from Luhuo County and transported them to the village to begin setting up the water taps
12. March 15th –March 24th 2010: The 12 unskilled workers began to dig ditches
13. March25th –April 1st 2010: The skilled workers began to place the pipes and the unskilled workers mixed sand and cement for the tap boxes for each family.
14. April 2nd_ April 4th 2010: The unskilled workers covered the ditches
15. Interviewed the six households members
16. Write the final report
17. Send the pictures and receipts with the final report.

Project Finance

Prices of materials are exact in Luhuo County in March 2008, but some prices increased in the year of 2010. The total cost is 32,947 RMB, the total donor contribution is 23,394 RMB, the local contribution is 9,053 RMB. In the original proposal the local contribution was 7,740 RMB, but because the price of materials had gone up, I asked the six households to contribute an extra 1,353 RMB.

Delays, difficulties, and lessons learned
Delays
The project manager Blo bzang dpal sgron planned to do this project in December and January, but because of the cold winter, it was delayed until March and April.
Difficulties
Project manager Blo bzang dpal sgron wrote the proposal in 2008 and in 2009 her proposal got funds; by then the prices had changed, and it became more expensive than before, thus the project manager had to go to Rilangda Village to ask for more money from the six households.
When the project manager Blo bzang dpal sgron asked the village leader how much money for using the village’s big water box, the village leader told her each family (6 families) would have to pay 900 RMB for it. But when she went to the village leader to give the 900RMB*6=5,400RMB for the six households to use the water box, the village leader and some other villagers changed their minds. The leader said the other 18 households (which already had running water taps) had a meeting, and decided the six households have to pay 5,940 RMB to use the water box, meaning each family had to pay 990 RMB. The project manager had only received 900 RMB for each family from the donor, and most of the beneficiary households said they had no money, so she went to the county town and asked for that money from some rich people to deal that problem.   

Lessons learned:
Brave: Before working on this project, the project manager Blo bzang dpal sgrn was a very timid girl, but after she did this project, she became much more brave. When she met with some difficulties and problems, she would try to deal them by herself. For example, when the village leader asked for more money for their water box, she went to the county town and asked for the extra money from rich people.
Change the traditional thoughts: In the past, the project manager thought women couldn’t make any kind of contribution except doing housework, but after she did this project she changed her mind, and began to think that women also can contribute to society. In her hometown mostly women do the hard work, not men, so during the project she chose both men and women to dig the ditches and cover them.

Interviews:
The project manager interviewed some of the six households’ members.
#1: Mkha’ gyang is 39 years old

Blobzang dpalsgron: I notice that in your village, most of the households have water taps, why don’t you use their water tap?
Mkha’gyang: There are 18 households that already have water taps, and we can get water from their taps. One time or two times it’s ok, but after that we are too shy to get water from them.
Blobzang dplasgron: So, you said you are too shy to get water from them, right? Now you have your own water tap, are you happy for this?
Mkha’ gyang: Yes, of course! I’m very happy for this water tap. Now I needn’t worry about rain or freezing weather. Also my old mother is now 78 years old, and before I was afraid that when she went to get water, because before A ma Zhala and lamo were injured seriously, but now she also can fetch water from our home.

#2: Sanggeng is 47 years old

Blobzang dpal sgron: Are you happy for your water tap?
Sanggeng: Surely, thanks very much for helping us. From today, my family members can wear clean clothes and eat clean vegetable. Before my wife always washed them in our village’s river, but you know that river is small and polluted, and after washed we can smell them.
Blobzang dbalsgron: What about your children?
Sangeng: Oh, before they always needed to come home earlier from school than other children, because they had to get water from other families or the river, otherwise after rain and snow, we couldn’t get clean water, but now we don’t need our children to get water, and they have more time to study and relax.

#3 Sgron dkar is 35 years old

Blobzang dpalsgron: Are you going to use this water tap often?
Sgron dkar: Of course! I will. I will always wash my family members’ clothes and water the vegetables and apple trees.
Blobzang dbalsgron: What else does the water help you?
Sgron dkar: it also helps us reduce health problems. I heard that our village’s river was polluted, and drinking polluted water causes many kinds of sickness, so now we can get away from this dirty water. I’m very happy for that.
Blobzang dpalsgron: In our village, I noticed that women are always doing the hard works, like collecting fuel, washing clothes, doing chores, and fetching water, so now does this help you to reduce your works?
Sgron dkar: Surely, it reduces my work lots. For example: I needn’t go to the river and get water, I can get it from my home. I can use that time to do other chores or relax. Next year I decided to send my second daughter to school for study. Now I needn’t her to fetch water any more. Thanks very much to help me and my family members.

Thanks letter from the beneficiaries:

Receipts
Receipt # 1

The fees for the six tractors of sand and six tractors of stone for the project, and the cost is 600 RMB.

Receipt #2

The fee for skilled worker (910 RMB)

Receipt # 3

This is the fee for the cement (1,710 RMB)

Receipt # 4

The fees for the plastic connection (550 RMB), plastic pipe #45(1,600 RMB), plastic pipe (8,000 RMB), and other materials (1,764 RMB) In total, it is 11,914 RMB.

Receipt #5

This fee is for project management assistant during the project. (400 RMB).

Receipts # 6

This fee is for the six households to use the Rilangda Village’s (18 households) big water box (5,940 RMB).

Receipt 7

Those vegetables are for the skilled workers and the two project managers during doing the project, the total cost is 501 RMB.

Receipts #8

Those receipts are for the food when the project management Blo bzang dbal sgron and the assistant bought the facts of the project.(together 150 RMB)

Receipts #9

The first 100 RMB is for the hotel fees when the project management and her assistant came to the county town to buy the project materials. The second 100 RMB is for the project management came to the county town for sending her final report and the receipts; she stayed there two days. Together it costs 200 RMB.

Receipts #10

This is the project management’s telephone fee. (100 RMB)

Receipts # 11

This receipt is the project management sent the receipts to Shem members from post office, and it cost 22 RMB.

Receipts #12

The first money is the fare for the project management Blo bzang dpal sgron, her assistant Xiangyong and the skilled worker from Luhuo County to Rilangda Village. (960 RMB). The second money is the fee for transport the project materials from Luhuo county to Rilangda village (1,840 RMB). Together there are 2,800 RMB.

Original Proposal

Project Location
This project is located in Rilangda Village, Zhuwo Township, Luhuo County; Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Rilangda Village is about 50 km away from Luhuo County (called Zhanggo in Tibetan); Luhuo County is located in the southeast of Ganzi Prefecture and Luhuo County is 650 km away from Chengdu City, the capital of Sichuan.
Population
There are 156 people of 24 households in Rilangda Village. There are 59 men, 62 women and 35 children (under the age of 18).
Education
There are 32 students (17 males and 15 females) in Rilangda village; this includes 5 college students (2 males and 3 females), 8 high school students (4 males and 4 females), 5 middle school students (4 males and 1 female), and 14 primary school students (9 males and 5 females). Also 7 people (4 males and 3 females) have official jobs. 50% of men and 2% of women are literate in Rilangda Village (not including students, monks, nuns and the functionaries). The rest of the villagers are illiterate. This is partially due to older generations’ belief that students are unable to get jobs after graduation.
Cash Income
All of Rilangda Villagers are farmers, so their lives depend on agriculture. They plant barley, wheat, potatoes, and peas in their fields. Some families with many members own 5-10 mu (1mu=0.0666 hectares); they can earn 2000-2500 RMB per year from selling their barley and wheat. Families with few people have only 1- 3 mu of land, so it’s impossible to sell their barley and wheat. Some of these families with fewer mu of land are unable to grow enough barley to live on, so they must purchase barley from others. Rilangda villagers depend on agriculture, but they also own at least 5-7 livestock such as bulls, cows, yaks and horses. Villagers can earn around 900 to 1000 RMB per year from selling livestock and 400 to 500 RMB per year from selling butter and cheese. Also, the young villagers who did not attend school earn money by doing outside jobs, such as construction jobs (30-40 RMB per day) or service jobs in restaurants and hotels (15-20 RMB per day). There is also another way to earn money for the village, which is to dig caterpillar fungus, a kind of medicinal herb. During the months of May and June the village adults go to dig fungus; each fungus can sell for 14 to 16 RMB, and the best fungus can sell for 20 to 25 RMB; each person usually can earn 3000 to 4000 RMB during the caterpillar fungus season. On average, each family can earn 4000 RMB per year. All of this money is used on food, clothes, festivities, children’s school fees, electricity, medicine and transportation.
Herding
Each family owns at least 6 or 7 livestock including bulls, cows, yaks, and horses. The animals are used to plough fields and for milking. Families can earn 900 to 1000 RMB from selling livestock. They also sell butter and cheese to earn about 400 to 500 RMB per year.
Agriculture
Rilangda villagers depend on agriculture. They plant barley, wheat, potatoes, and peas. Some families have 5-10 mu of land. Each mu of agricultural land can produce 500-600 jin of barley, wheat and peas per year. However some families have only own 1-3 mu of land, which makes their lives very difficult. These families must purchase or borrow barley from richer families.
Weather
The village is located in a high altitude region (about 4,834 m). During the summer and spring there are heavy rains, and the river becomes muddy. During winter time the river becomes covered with thick ice, so it is dangerous for villagers to fetch water. In the wintertime it is common for people to get injured from fetching water, especially older people, children and pregnant women. In 2002 there was a woman called Zhogga who was 5 months pregnant. One winter morning she went to fetch water from the river, she slipped on the ice and was injured so badly that she miscarried.
The project goals
The immediate goal of this project is to build a running water system for six households in Rilangda Village. The other 18 households already have access to running water. The overarching goal of this project is to provide safe and clean water for six families in Rilangda Village, decrease the six households’ workload so they have more time to relax like the other 18 households in Rilangda Village.
Problems
1. Heavy workloads for women and children
Fetching water and washing clothes are usually done by village women and children. Women and children must fetch water for drinking, washing clothes, and watering their gardens. The closest water source is a river, but access to river water is unreliable (see below). Families must sometimes spend time to walk 1.5 km to a spring or ask neighboring households for water. This reduces the time women have to complete other chores or have leisure time. This also reduces the time children can spend doing school work or playing games.
2. Health problems from drinking unsafe river water
Some health problems such as parasites, bacterial infections and diarrhea have been traced to drinking water from the river. In May 2004, the local doctor, Yang Xiang Pin, found that these kinds of diseases must be caused by the water. In June 2004 the village leader invited a health care official from Luhuo County to check the river that villagers were drinking. He found that the village river was polluted with bacteria from human waste and dirty things (clothes, mopes, rags…..) that villagers washed in the river. So the river water that six families now use is not safe to drink.
3. Unreliable access to water from the river
During the rainy season the six households always worry about water. After the rains the river becomes muddy for two or three days, and it is impossible to drink it during that time. The six households need to call the others (who already have the running water) to fetch water from their taps. They said: “To go to these families two or three times for fetching water is ok, but we feel shamed to fetch water from them everyday.” Sometimes families must walk 1.5 km to a spring to fetch water. During the winter time the river becomes frozen, so it becomes difficult and dangerous to fetch water.
4. Unequal distribution of running water
In January 2007, a man called Rin ‘dzin mthar Phyin from a neighboring village implemented a running water project in his village. After he finished the project he still had a little money left, so he decided to help Rilangda village. However, he did not have enough money to run taps to all of the households in Rilangda. He only had enough money to help 18 households. The villagers drew lots to determine who would receive running water. Six households were left without running water.
Benefits
1. Reduced burden of women and children
Women and children will not have to spend as much time and energy to fetch water for their families. It will be more efficient to wash clothes and water vegetables. Women will have more time to relax than before. Also, children will have more time to spend on studying and playing games.
2. Safe drinking water, reduced health problems
Health problems from drinking contaminated water will be eliminated. These six households will not need spend money to treat water-related illnesses.
3. Consistent, safe access to clean water
These six households will not need to worry about the changeable weather during spring and winter times. They will no longer need to worry about not being able to use water during the spring or winter time. Also if this project is funded then the villagers, especially old people and children, will not have to risk injury from fetching water from the river.
4. Equal distribution of water to all villagers
All households in the village will have access to water. This will reduce inequalities related to health problems, labor burdens, leisure time, and watering vegetables. The children of the six households will no longer need to spend valuable study time on fetching water.
Gender Equality
In this village most labor tasks are done by women and female children. Washing clothes and fetching water are especially seen as the duty of women. If this project is approved, it would be very helpful for those women and children. In addition, this project contributes to gender equality by including women in the planning and project implementation. Furthermore, as a woman project manager I will serve as a role model for the women and children of the village. If this project is successful it will challenge the traditionally held idea that women cannot accomplish heroic deeds.
Government Approval
The government knew that the 18 households already had the running water, and they tried several times to help the rest of the village. The problem is that they have no enough money to provide running water to the remaining households. This project would be well received by the local government, because last year a male student from Qinghai Normal University, Rin ‘dzin mThar Phyin, implemented a running water project in his nearby village. The local government, which also oversees Rilangda village, gave him full support. I asked some members of the local government, lha ‘Dzam and rDor rJe, and they gave me full permission to implement the project. I also received permission from the township leader, Chos ‘dzam, who cleared the project with the government clerk.
The steps of project
1. Ask the village leader whether the six households can use the same water system as the 18 households.(done)
2. Ask the village leader about the needs for the project.(done)
3. Receive government permission to do this project.(done)
4. Talk to the skilled workers (Yon Tan and Don ‘grum) about the payment for their work.
5. Talk to the six households about this project, and let them choose two people to be the project’s co-managers.
6. Hold a meeting with all the villagers, and ask the 18 households whether they agree to share the water system. (done)
7. Ask the price of materials in Luhuo county.(done)
8. Collect information from Rig ‘dzin mThar phyin, who implemented a running water project in a nearby village. (done)
9. Take pictures of the six families’ conditions.
10. Receive funds.
11. Ask the two co-managers when should the six families prepare tools and materials for the project.
12. Purchase materials from Luhuo county.
13. Implement the project.
14. Interview the six families’ members (both men and women).
15. Write project proposal.

Time Frame
This project will take a total of 45 days to complete. 5days, receive funds, and let the two co- managers (mKh’gYang and Jiang shi) to prepare local materials (sand and stone). 7days purchase the materials and cement bags from Luhuo County and transport them to the village; choose the family to set the water tap. 21days, the 12 unskilled workers begin to dig ditches. 6days, the skilled workers begin to place the pipes and the others will mix sand and cement for the tap boxes for each family. 3days, twelve unskilled workers are hired people from this village to cover the ditches. After the 3days, skilled and unskilled workers complete building taps for each family. Finally, take pictures of the implemented project and interview the beneficiaries.
Project Budget

Prices of materials are exact in Luhuo County in March 2008, but are subject to change. Total donor contribution in RMB =23,394 RMB
1) Fee for using water box: For taking the water from the system that 18 households are using, they said that if the 6 households took water from their water system, then each household must pay 900 RMB for them (18 households), they meaning that 5400 RMB is for their energy to dig the water system and ditch from water system to their village and the cost of things (sand, stone, metals) and the payment for the skilled and unskilled workers. I figure out it is very difficult to building a water system to only for 6 households, so I agreed with their idea. However, these six villagers are in difficult condition. In those 6 households, 2 families (Sanggen and Conggobo) are poorer than other 4 families, both families’ children were only attending primary school and now stopped, I asked the reason why they let their children stop study and they told me that they can’t pay the school fees. Now some of their children are working in restaurant and hotel to earn money for their families. The two families have no livestock and the parents are also earning money from hard works, such as structure work, caterpillar fungus and the small farm land. The other 4 families’ all children are attending school and they earn money from livestock, agriculture, and structure works. But 900rmb is a very big amount for them and they couldn’t pay 900RMB for the running water system.
Sustainability
The six households are very eager to have safe water, so I, the project manager, am sure that they will protect the water system very well. I asked a member of the water company, called Zhanhzhong, whether they would exchange parts if the system has any problems in two years. Zhangzhong said the company offers a four year guarantee for the water system. If the system has problems after the guarantee date the village leader will be responsible to find a person who can repair it, and the six households will pay the cost of repairs. During the winter time if the six households will prepare insulation to protect the taps from freezing.
Past Experience
During the 2007 winter holiday Madge volunteered as an English and Chinese teacher in Rilangda village. She taught 30 children four hours a day. In 2008 she wrote a book review called “The Mystery Monasteries in Lhasa”.
Map of the project location

This project is to buy 34 bunk beds for the students who stay at A Yan Gou School in Tian Zhu Autonomous County Gansu Province to improve the boarding students’ accommodation conditions, so that the parents will not need to worry about the students’ poor condition at school.

The Australian Embassy funded this project

Drolgar Jyid is from Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Gansu Province, China.  She graduated from Qinghai Normal University with advanced proficiency in oral and written English and Tibetan, and currently she is working for One Earth Designs in Xining City, Qinghai Province.
What? Purchase 34 bunk beds for 88 students in A Yan Gou School.

Who? Students in A Yan Gou School which located in Tanshan Ling Township, Tianzhu Autonomous County, Wuwei Region, Gansu Province.
Photos of the project implementation

The workers are loading Bunk Beds on the truck in Lanzhou.

The truck stops on the way because of a car accident. After 10 hours waiting in the long queue the truck with bunk beds starts to move to the project location.

The students and the teachers are unloading bunk beds from the truck.

The beds are settled in both boys’ and girls’ dormitories.

Project summary
Project title: Bunk beds project for A Yan Gou School

Project goals: The immediate goal of this project is to buy 34 bunk beds for the students who stay at A Yan Gou School. The overarching goal of this project is to improve the boarding students’ accommodations.

Location of project: A Yan Gou School is located in Tan Shan Ling Township, in the western part of Tian Zhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Gansu Province. Tan Shan Ling Township is 60 kilometers from Tianzhu County Town and 145 kilometers from Lanzhou City, the provincial capital. Tan Shan Ling is 230 kilometers from Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province.

Project beneficiaries: This project directly benefits 88 students. There are 19 teachers and around 200 villagers who can indirectly benefit from this project. The students have their own beds and they can sleep comfortably during the nights without any worries like falling down. During day timethey will not fall asleep in the classes and they can listen carefully to what the teachers teach. Moreover, it helps those students to study well in the school.

Implementation organization/individual: The village leader (Xu deying) and the leader of the Educational Bureau of Tanshan Ling Township (Niu yung feng), Drolgar Jyid (project manager) and Shem Women’s Group.

Contact Group: Shem Women’s Group

Funds received: Amount and date received
On March 15^th 2010, the project manager Drolgar Jyid received 80% of the funds, which was 13,976 RMB from Shem Women’s Group as the first installment of the funds. Shem Women’s Group will distribute the final 20% of the funds (3,494 RMB) as the second installment when the project manager finishes the final report.

Details of project activities

• Called the school leader and informed them of the project approval.
• Phoned the school leaders to update them about the situation at the project site to check if the project could be implemented, especially considering the road conditions.
• Phoned Shem office to update them about project implementation.
• Called the school leaders and decided on the date to start implementation.
• Traveled to Lanzhou City to purchase the bunk beds.
• Signed the contract and purchased the beds.
• Called A Yan Gou School to clean the beds which they contributed.
• Transported the 34 beds from Lanzhou City to Tianzhu County Town.
• Transported the beds to the project site.
• Held the meeting with the teachers and students in the school to distribute 34 beds and explained how to combine the parts together to make a complete bed, etc.
• Visited the receivers and conducted interviews.
• Came back to Xining City to scan photos and receipts
• Translated the school’s letter of thanks
• Worked on the final report

Project Finance

Note*+26 RMB: This was left from the donor contribution to the project because the transportation fee for the bunk beds was less than the original estimate, so 26 RMB is left over.

Difficulties and lessons learned from the project

Difficulties
Based on the project managers former experiences in managing projects, she was able to implement the project very successfully and did not meet with many problems. The few difficulties that she met are listed below:
First, in the project area there are many coal mines, and the main road from Tanshan Ling Township to Huazang Si County Town is the same road that people use to transport coal from the mines to other cities. It is a dangerous road and many accidents happen there. . So when the project managers and co-managers transported beds to A Yan Gou School, there was an accident that created a long line of cars, buses and tractors on the road. They waited for 4 hours in the snow without having any food to eat.
Due to the cold and windy weather at the project area, the project manager got sick after they transported beds to school, which kept her in bed with an IV for three days.

Lessons learned
During implementation of this project, the project manager has learned a few things that will help her in implementing other projects in the future.
· Keep in touch with the local leaders on a regular time base, even after of project approval, in order to make sure the information on the project proposal is valid.
· Make sure not only to base the information on one person’s statement. To get a full picture, one has to collect the information from multiple sources.

Interviews

Drolgar Jyid (Project manager): As a teacher, how do you feel about  those beds? Are they really very helpful?
Ma Tsedan（One of teachers): Firstly, I am representing all of our teachers and students to say thanks for the help. Of course they are very helpful, as a teacher, we have a lot of responsibility for all of our students, we need to take care of them, make sure they are safe in their beds without their parents.

Drolgar Jyid(Project manager): Do you think those beds can be used for a long time?
Duo Drojyid（One of teachers）: Yeah, the quality of those beds is very high compared with the beds we had before, and also those beds are wider than before.

Drolgar Jyid (Project manager): Are you happy with those beds?
Around 8 students (both boys and girls): Yes.
Drolgar Jyid (Project manager): Can you tell me why?
Qing Drolma dkr (grade six): We don’t need to share beds with other students and also we can put our own stuff on the beds, so we don’t lose them very easily.
Drolgar Jyid (Project manager):  Do you have some other things to say?
Yang Dbadan (grade five): We can sleep well during the night.

Letter of appreciation

Translation of thank you letter

Most dear donors,
I would like to represent A Yan Gou School to express our deepest appreciation for your great concern and enormous support for us. Thanks for your generosity in supplying us with 34 bunk beds. These 34 bunk beds were received by students who are staying at the school. We will not forget your compassion and generosity. All of us want to express our most sincere thanks to you again and again.

Best wishes!
Sincerely
Rashu Village Committee

Receipts
#1

The total amount of money paid for 34 bunk beds (16,320 RMB)

#2

This is total transportation fee from Lanzhou City to the Tianzhu County Town. (400 RMB)

#3

This is the transportation fee (310 RMB) from Huazang si to A Yan Gou Primary School. (I couldn’t get the receipts from this trip; people don’t use receipts in such a small town.)

#4 The project management expenses:

This is the taxi fee for the project manager during implementing the project and it is 10 RMB.
#5

These receipts above are the trips fee for the project manager Drolgarjyid and the other 4 project managers from the school (the teachers) from Lanzhou to Huazang si during implentation of the project and it is 371 RMB.

#6

This is the trip fee for the project manager from Huazang  to Xining and it is 33 RMB.

The Original Proposal
Project Location
A Yan Gou School is located in Tan Shan Ling Township, in the western part of Tian Zhu Autonomous County, Gansu Province; Tan Shan Ling Township is 60 kilometers from Tianzhu County Town and 145 kilometers from Lanzhou city, the provincial capital. Tan Shan Ling is 230 kilometers from Xining, the capital of Qinghai province.

Population
In Tan Shan Ling Township, there are about 3,000 households and 13,458 people (4,658 men, 4,800 women, and 4,000 children). The students in A Yan Gou School are mostly from the following six villages: Wang Zhi Liang Gou, Si Tao Gou, Da Kuo Tan, Zhu Cha, Tian Tang and Gu Cheng.

School background
A Yan Gou School was established in 1951 and is the only Tibetan school in Tan Shan Ling Township. In April, 2008 the government in Tan Shan Ling decided to combine all the primary schools with A Yan Gou School. Now, all the students in Tan Shan Ling Township who want to study Tibetan come to A Yan Gou School.
There are 19 teachers, and 120 students (59 girls and 61 boys), among these students 88 are boarding students, living at the school. In total, there are 7 grades, and there are 3 major subjects like Tibetan, Math, and Chinese, but they also teach some other subjects such as society, Nature, and English.
The government gave the school 10 bunk beds and some stoves, but 10 bunk beds are not enough for 88 students. The students still need 34 bunk beds.

Education
In these six villages, (Wang Zhi Liang Gou, Si Tao Gou, Da Kuo Tan, Zhu Cha, Tian Tang and Gu Cheng) 10% of the people are literate (not including students). Elderly men make up most of this small percentage. There are also a few monks who can write and read Tibetan. On average, one child in each family currently attends school. But some people still think it’s just a waste of money and time, as they fear their children won’t be able to find a job. Some parents think education is useless, so they ask their children to do house work and earn money at the home. About 50% of the students are primary students, 35% of the students are studying in middle school, 10% of them are in high school, and 5% of them are in universities.

Herding
The weather and the altitude are similar in all six of these villages, so the herding situation is the same. Three years ago, 85% of the people in these six villages made their living by herding; they owned yaks, sheep, cows, and goats. With the exception of pigs, these animals are used for milking and working, not for eating. Pigs are owned for eating. Villagers can sell butter and cheese and each family can earn about 700-800 RMB per year. They use this money to buy daily needs, send their children to school, and purchase medicine for their livestock.

Agriculture
About 5 years ago, 8% of the families in these villages owned their own farming land, each of the families owned around 8-9 mu land. They grew wheat, potatoes, radishes, peas, and barley once a year. They were able to produce 170-180 jin of barley from one mu land. At that time they could earn about 700-800 RMB per year.
Since 2002, the government planted trees on the farming land leaving the families just 1-2 mu. This small amount of land is not enough to support the families. The government does provide some compensation for farm land used to plant trees, around 200 jin barley per mu, but this is still not enough to support a family
The other villages are same as A Yan Gou village.

Cash income
In these six villages, about 85% people live on animal husbandry, earning around 700-800 RMB per year per household from selling sheep, yaks, butter, and wool. 8% of the people live on agriculture, and 7% of people earning money from doing labor work outside their villages.
Family members, including adults, who are able to do construction work go to the Township or the County Town and earn money doing manual labor. Workers can earn 1000 RMB (not including the food fee and living fee in where they work).

Project Goals
The immediate goal of this project is to buy 34 bunk beds for the students who stay at A Yan Gou School.
The overarching goal of this project is to improve the boarding students’ accommodation conditions.

Beneficiaries
There are 88 students who can directly benefit from this project. There are 19 teachers and around 200 villagers who can indirectly benefit from this project, because they will not need to worry about the students’ poor living conditions.

Problems
1. No money to buy beds
Before the government combined the primary schools with A Yan Gou School, the school had no bunk beds for the students. After the government combined all the primary schools together, it gave the school 10 bunk beds. However, 10 beds are not enough for the 88 boarding students who stay at the school. The school spent money buying stoves so the students will be warm in the winter time. As a result, the school does not have money to buy extra beds for the students.
2. Many injured students
So far around 73% of the students are boarders, and the school does not have enough money to buy beds for students. Usually, four students need to share one bunk bed; with two students crowding onto the top and two students on the bottom bunk. This crowding can lead to injuries, especially if students are having bad dreams or trying to roll over to make space.
3. Influence students’ study
If four students share one bed, they cannot sleep very well at night because of the narrow bed. It affects the students’ studying in school. For example, they don’t sleep very well at night, then they fall sleep during class or they are very sleepy during the class which makes it hard to pay attention to what the teachers teach. These problems adversely affect students’ studying.
4. Parents not willing to send the young children to school
Because of limited beds for each student, some parents think it is not safe to send their children to school. So the parents are very worried to send their kids to school and some even keep their children at home because they are so afraid of the conditions.
5. Health problem
Due to overcrowding of bunk beds it is very easy for students to pass illnesses to each other, such as colds and pneumonia. For example, if one of the students gets a cold, then other one who shares one bed with he or him, will also get a cold; sometimes both of them can’t attend the classes. Also, because of the culture, people are very shy to change their clothes even with their friends, so for those primary school students, they can’t change their clothes on their beds, because they are sharing the beds with others.

Benefits
If the every student can have their own bed, then many problems will be solved:
1. This project can help the school to get the students their individual beds. The school master and the teachers don’t need to worry about buying enough beds to the students.
2. If the students have their own beds, then they don’t need to share with other students, so they will not fall down from the bed and get injured.
3. The students can sleep very comfortably during the night, so they will not fall asleep during the classes and they can listen carefully to what the teachers teach.
4. This project can help to relieve parents’ worries about sending their children to school and it will change some of the parents’ thoughts about sending their children to school.
5. If they have their own bed, they don’t need to sleep with others. The chances of spreading infectious disease will be lessened. Also, students can have some private time; they can change their clothes very easily.

The steps of the project
1) Asked the teachers and some students what do they need and decided to do a bunk bed project for this school.
2) Talked with other project managers who have experience working on this type of project.
3) Hold a meeting with the teachers and some students, and ask them what kind of beds do they need, and decide who will take care of those beds.
4) Find out the transportation fee and the price of bed and write proposal.
5) Receive funds
6) Purchase bunk beds from Yan Tan Jia Ju Market in Lanzhou City.
7) Hire a truck to transport those beds to the school.
8) Distribute those beds to the school. Take pictures.
9) Write a final report.
10) Send the report and the pictures to the donor.

Timeframe
It will take about 12 days to complete this project.
1 day: contact the school teachers for purchasing beds
3 days: Arrive Lan Zhou City with two school teachers
2 days: Purchase beds and hire a truck for transporting beds
1 day: Transport the beds to school
2 day: Display beds in the dormitories
3 days: take photos, interview teachers and students for final report

Governmental approval
On 2008, June 1^st, the project manager discussed this project with the school leader (Ma Yu Xi he is a Mongol) and several teachers, 3 women (Ma Zhong Feng，Duo Shang Ji，Qing Cuo Mao), and 3 men (Ma Yu Xi，Ma Cai Dan，Ta Gui Xi). They said they were very happy that the project manager is planning to do this bunk bed project and encouraged the project manager to try her best to complete this project.

Gender equality
The project will be implemented and managed by the students and the teachers in A Yan Gou School. We chose 6 teachers (3 women and 3 men) and 8 students, (4 boys and 4 girls) for to be on the bunk bed committee. In this case both men and women equally have a chance to make decisions together.
In addition, the project manager can be a very positive role model for the villagers and students especially for females so that the girls can also achieve big things like implementing projects in their home areas.

Detailed Budget

Note: The school will use the teachers’ room for the students; because there is no enough dormitories for the students, so two teachers will share one dormitory together, and let the students use the teachers’ rooms as dormitories. So there are 3 dormitories contributed as local contribution to this project.

Sustainability
This project is sustainable because the beds are made of metal which means the beds can last more than ten years. A teacher called Ma Cai Dan, who knows how to fix and repair things, promised that he would be very responsible for repairing the beds if the beds become broken in the future.

Past experience
Drogar Ji completed a second-hand clothing project which was donated by Ms. Sue Bishop at the British consulate in Shanghai. More than 100 local villagers from A Yan Gou village and She Qiao village benefited from this project in 2006. Als in 2009, she completed a solar flashlights project which was donated by Naljor Prison Dharma Service

The map of the project location

This project is to buy a reaping machine for 160 households in Tagrig village to alleviate their works and financial burden as well as family living condition.

The New Zealand Embassy funded this project

Kajee Gyal is from Tagrig Village, Shar Long Township, Guide County, Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, and China. She completed an associated degree at the English Training Program at Qinghai Normal University’s Nationalities Department.

What? Supply one reaping machine for Tagrig Village.

Who? 160 households of 868 people in Tagrig Village in Shar Long Township, Guide County, Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China

Photos of project implementation

The villagers are holding a meeting and the village leader is informing them of the good news that the reaping machine project is funded by the New Zealand Embassy.

The project manager and the driver are selecting the machine at the Qinghai Sheng He Machine factory.

The project manager went to Guide County Agricultural Management Center to see the agricultural management leader to get the license plate number for our reaping machine.

The villagers drove the machine into the public house in the village.

The local villagers are showing their appreciation and thankfulness with the white and yellow Tibetan khada to their benefactors: the New Zealand Embassy and Shem Women’s Group.

Project summary

Project title: Reaping machine project for Tagrig village.

Project goals:

The immediate goal of this project is to supply one reaping machine to Tagrig village. The overarching goal is to alleviate villagers’ workload during the harvest time and to improve the living conditions of Tagrig villagers. This project will decrease villagers’ health problems, especially women’s, and increase education levels. The reaping machine project will reduce women’s heavy labor burden and workload, and it will also help to save time and money and gives the villagers more opportunities to make extra cash income.

Location of the project:

Tagrig Village is a semi-nomadic village located in Shar Long Township, Guide County, Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, in PR China. Tagrig Village is about 8 kilometers from Shar Long Township, and it is around 143 kilometers from Shar Long Township to Xining city.

Project beneficiaries:

This reaping machine mainly benefited 160 households with 868 people in Tagrig Village.

Implementation organization/individual:

Khajee Gjal, Tagrig Village leader Jiulu, Village women’s officers Zhuomacuo and Shem Women’s Group.

Contact Group: Shem Women’s Group

Funding - source, amount, and date received

Khajee Gyal (Project manager) received 41,300 RMB (80% of the project money) from Shem Women’s Group on April 1^st 2010, and will receive the remaining 20% of the funds (10,325 RMB) after the project manager completes the project successfully with a final report.

Details of the project activities

1. Asked villagers about the problems they face by meeting with locals and the leaders.
2. Collected data from Tagrig Village for designing and writing the project proposal.
3. Found out the price of the machine.
4. Took pictures and wrote proposal.
5. Receive project funds on April 1^st 2010.
6. Purchased reaping machine on 13^th April 2010 in Qinghai Sheng He factory.
7. Delivered the machine to the village on 14^th April 2010.
8. Wrote final report from April 16^th to 26^th, 2010.
9. Sent final report with receipts to Shem Women’s Group on May 15^th 2010.

Project Finance

Original Budget

Actual Cost

Explanation

Originally we planned to buy a reaping machine with 75,000 RMB, but fortunately the government set up a new policy that if a village wants to buy a reaping machine then the local government donates 30% of the funds for a machine. Therefore the villagers could buy a bigger and better quality reaping machine compared to the original one. Thus they changed the original plan and bought a reaping machine that costs 101,300 RMB. So the 30,390 RMB was paid by the local government and 5 RMB was paid by the project manager.

Delays, difficulties and lesson learned

Delay

The local government paid 30% the project funds for the village, but they did not give the money at the same time that the project manager got funds from the donor, so the project manager had to delay the implementation of the project by about one month.

Difficulties

When the project was funded, the project manager hoped that she could implement this project quickly, because all the villagers expected to see the machine as soon as possible. But things were not that easy, as she faced a problem when implementing this project. After she received the first installment of the project funds, she needed to borrow or find a way to get the other 20% of funds in order to implement the project. She was worried about where to borrow the funds from.. She went to the village to ask the villagers who are familiar with her to borrow money, but none of them were able to help her, because they used their money to build houses this year. Then the village leader and the project manager went to the local Agricultural Bank to borrow the money, but unluckily, the bank leader had gone to another place and would not return soon. Then the project manager finally decided to go to another village where she has a friend whose father is a teacher and after she told him everything he supported her immediately. Finally she borrowed the 20% of the project funds and completed the project successfully.

Lessons learned

The project manager learned many lessons from implementing this project successfully for Tagrig Village. The most important is being patient and having a good relationship with all the people around her. For example, when she didn’t receive the subsidy money until  May 4, 2010, she felt very anxious, but she realized that anxiety can’t do anything, , so she patiently solved the problem.

Another one is the importance of having good relationships with many people and having more experience, which can make things run more smoothly. For example, the project manager is an ordinary young woman without any experiences and good relationships with the people in the community, and she also didn’t have much experience  meeting and talking with the leaders. Therefore, she needed to take village leader where her everywhere so that she could accomplish things more easily. So from this project she has learned that building positive relationships with others is very significant, as well as having experience with things such as solving problems like borrowing money; talking with the leaders; going to the market and buying the machine; giving speeches to the villagers or holding meetings with the villagers, etc.

Thank you letter

Translated thank you letter

Dear New Zealand Embassy and Shem Women’s Group

I am the village leader of Tagrig and my name is Jiulu. Tagrig Village is a semi-nomadic village, we are dependent on both herding and farming, but this place is very much lacking in rainfall, therefore, we do not have much grass and water to feed the livestock and water the fields. We have tried our best to work hard to change this poor living condition, but we have failed for many reasons and villagers don’t have other skills to improve their lives. Our only income source is migrant labor, but it is not a stable and reliable income for us, because most construction work places are unwilling to hire illiterate workers, so it is very difficult for us to find stable work to earn money and send our children to school.

But we are really grateful that the New Zealand Embassy helped us to improve our living condition, and supported us in buying this reaping machine. For us, this is the first time to receive this kind of great help from another country. We really appreciate your great compassion and help. Here I represent all the Tagrig villagers to thank for your great help from the bottoms of our hearts.

Sincerely from village leader Jiulu

April 16^th, 2010

Receipts

#1

It is 101,300 RMB for the machine. The donor contribution is 51,000 RMB, local contribution is 19,910 RMB and the central government’s contribution is 30,390 RMB .

#2

It is 4,000 RMB for the machine’s equipment such as such as 90hp rape machine configuration and board teeth.

#3

This receipt is for reaping machine’s oil fees; that means the villagers drove the reaping machine to the village and it cost 400 RMB.

#4

This receipt is also for the reaping machine’s oil fee and it is 45 RMB.

The project management expenses:

#5

This receipt is for the project manager’s transportation fee from Xining city to Guide county when the manager interviewed the issues in local village for the project and it is 24 RMB.

This is the ticket for the project manager from Xining city to Guide county when the manager impleminted this project and it is 24 RMB.

#6

It is 25 RMB for project manager’s return fee from Guide county to Xining city.

#7

It is also 25 RMB for the project manager from Guide county to Xining city during the implementation of the project.

#8

These two are the phone fee for the project manager during implementation of the project and it is 80 RMB in total.

#9

The above the receipts are for the meal fee for the the project managers and the machine driver during the implementing the project and it is 67 RMB in total in Guide.

#10

These are the taxi fees for the project managers during implementing the project, total of 30 RMB.

Original Project Proposal

Population

There are approximately 160 households and 868 people in Tagrig Village: 320 women, 368 men and 180 children.EducationIn this village, 20 percent of the people are literate (not including students). Most of the people went to primary school and then stopped going school. Ninety percent of children are attending school; there are 17 university students, 5 high school students, 10 middle school students and 60 primary students. On average, one child in each family attends school currently. Some students did not finish their high school education because their parents cannot afford their school fees. If a family has a high school student, then her or his parents need to pay 2,500 RMB for her or his tuition fee for one year.

Cash income

Ninety-six percent of villagers are farmers and 4 percent of villagers are students and government officials in Tagrig. The local villagers plant barley, wheat, potatoes and beans and also raise domestic animals such as pigs and cows. On average each family owns seven mu of land (1 mu = 0.0666 hectares) and most families own only one cow. The villagers produce butter and cheese from the cow’s milk, but because of the hot weather, there is not enough grass to feed the livestock, and they don’t produce much butter and cheese to sell.

The first way of earning cash is from migrant laborers. Adults who are able to work usually go to urban areas and do constructions work for two or three months during the summer. One person can earn up to 30 RMB per day (women can earn 25 RMB and men can earn 30 RMB per day); however, the work is very dangerous, and we have heard of many people injured or killed from construction work.

The second way to earn money is to dig caterpillar fungus. The people mostly go to Golok Prefecture, which is approximately 200 kilometers from Tagrig Village. On average one person can earn 3,000 RMB from digging caterpillar fungus. In 2007, the government established a new policy, which does not allow people to dig caterpillar fungus anymore. The policy is aimed at protecting the environment, and anyone who breaks this rule is strictly punished by the government. Since the new rule was implemented, people prefer to work near the city and no longer go Golok.

Herding Tagrig Village is a farming village; most of villagers own a few livestock. An average, each household owns one cow, one pig, and one sheep. These animals are used for milking and meat. Agriculture Tagrig Village is the biggest village in Guide County, and villagers do not have enough fields. Many of the fields are arid farmland, so people do not have extra wheat to sell to others. In addition, there is not much grass on the mountains due to the lack of rainfall.Project goals The immediate goal of this project is to buy one reaping machine for 160 households in Tagrig Village, and alleviate their burden.The overarching goal of this project is to improve all the villagers’ living conditions, and alleviate villagers’ work and financial burden.Problems• No income: Ninety-six percent of Tagrig families are total farmers, and majority of them can‘t earn any money from livestock. As a result, most of the Tagrig villagers depend on their land to subsist. However, the village is located in a place where the rainfall is very low. Therefore, villagers often don’t have enough water for irrigation, making it hard for them to farm the land. Also, since the villagers need to spend lots of time on harvesting, they can’t go out to earn extra money. In addition, they have to wait for the village’s public threshing machine to thresh their crops after they reap all the crops by hand. Because there are only three threshing machines for 160 households in Tagrig Village, all the villagers have to wait their turn. This process is very long, and the villagers need to spend 25 days threshing their crops. The villagers would like to hire a reaping machine to reap and thresh their crops at the same time, then use the extra time to go to an urban area to earn money. But the problem is they can’t get the reaping machine during the harvest time. Finally, all of the family members have to work together on their field by hand, which takes around two months. If they had a reaping machine, then it could reap and thresh at the same time and they wouldn’t need to do extra work.

• Time consuming: During the harvest time, people often spend more than two and half months reaping and threshing crops. In Tagrig Village, each subgroup only has one threshing machine to thresh all the crops, and often the village has electricity outages caused by the poor quality of the electrical lines, which can mean many hours of delay for the villagers. Sometimes there are sudden storms that soak and sometimes even destroy all the crops. Then the villagers have to wait three or four days to dry the crops, and if it takes too long then there is the danger that the crops will go bad, decreasing the village’s agricultural productivity and putting the villagers in a difficult situation.

• Heavy labor: Harvesting is a very big workload for the villagers, but especially for the women, as this village’s custom is for the women to do all the reaping. Frequently they get up around 6 a.m. and spend 14 hours a day harvesting. During the day, the weather is very hot and many of women are exhausted from their day’s work, but they still have to do the housework, such as cooking, taking care of children, etc. In addition, after they collect their crops in their yards, both men and women need to work in thick dust to thresh the crops. The women have to carry grass to the caves for storage and also throw crops in the air in order to clean or separate the grain. Then they have to dry it on the ground by carrying the crops on their backs, and then again they have to collect crops at sunset. They do all of this work by hand.

• Health problems: As mentioned before, villagers need to spend a large amount of time harvesting, and women need to work whole days from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the field during the harvest period because of the shortage of workers. Because of the hot weather, they need to drink cold water a lot despite the fact that a local doctor suggested local women not drink cold water. So local women have health problems, such as stomachaches, backaches, headaches, and sore limbs from bending in the fields for so long every day in the heat.

• Limiting educational opportunities: During harvest time, many households want help from their children who are attending schools. So they often take their children out of school, which makes students more stressed and causes them to get lower scores. As a result, their chance of getting into middle school is lower, because the middle school teachers select students depending on their study scores in primary school.

Benefits

1. Help villagers to earn income:

If Tagrig villagers get a reaping machine, they will be able to spend less time on the reaping and threshing. In that way, villagers would have more time to spend seeking work in urban areas to earn income for the families, thus improving their families’ conditions.

2. Reduce time: Tagrig villagers could save time by using this machine, because this machine would reduce the time that they have spent reaping and threshing in the past. Also, if they are able to do the reaping and threshing quickly, then they won’t need to worry about crops getting wet or being destroyed by a storm.

3. Alleviate heavy labor: If Tagrig villagers had this machine, then they wouldn’t need to reap and thresh the crops by hand, which would not only can reduce the heavy labor in the fields, but also save the women lots of time for finishing the housework earlier and having some leisure time.

4. Improve health: If they had this machine, it would help local women to improve their health, because it would reduce the amount of time women spend in the hot weather. Also, since they wouldn’t need to work whole days in the field, they would not need to drink as much cold water, which could be an important factor in improving their health.

5. Education: If the villagers had this machine, parents wouldn’t need to interrupt their children’s studies. So children could improve their scores by using their time to study, eventually increasing their chances to go to a better middle school.

Beneficiaries

This reaping machine would mainly help 160 households in Tagrig Village. On average each family has five people, and the total population is 868.

Gender equality

During harvest time, all the village women are responsible for reaping their fields in the hot weather. According to the village’s custom, men do not join in this kind of activity; they are only responsible for collecting the barley and wheat from their fields with a handcart. But women and girls need to reap, collect wheat and barley, and dry rapeseed. These days it is a common for some female middle school students and college students to return late to their schools during harvest time, because there is so much work to do. It takes approximately two months to reap and thresh their crops. If the harvest was completed in less time, then female students could go to school on time; and it would also alleviate the labor burden on the local villagers, especially women.

Government approval

Every year the local government gives some almsgiving to Tagrig villagers, such as barley, but it cannot solve their financial problems and also it cannot reduce their heavy workload. If we can secure funding, the government fully supports the implementation of this project. The project manager asked permission from Shar long township government leader Huakejia to implement the project and he supports this project wholeheartedly because they really want this project to happen and hope all the poor families become rich.

The steps of project:

1. Ask villagers about the problems they face by meeting with locals and the leaders. (Done)

2. Collect data from Tagrig Village for this proposal. (Done)

3. Find out the price of the machine. (Done. The machine costs 75,000 RMB)

4. Take pictures and write proposal.

6. Receive funds.

7. Purchase machine from an agricultural machine factory in the city of Danyang in the Jiangsu Province with the village leaders.

8. Distribute the machine to the villagers and give them instructions for using it correctly.

9. Have a meeting with the village leaders about the sustainability of the project.

10. Take photos and interview the villagers about the impact of the project.11. Submit final report.Time FrameThis project will take 11 days to complete.

Four days: Purchase machine from the city of Danyang in the Jiangsu Province and transport it to the Tagrig Village.

Six days: Tell the villager leader and subgroup leaders about the sustainability of each machine and how to use them. Take photos and let them write a letter of thanks to the donor. Hold a meeting for all the villagers and let them know that every year I will visit Tagrig and interview them about how the harvest is going.

One day: Interview the beneficiaries of the project.

Project Finance

Total donor contribution is 51,625 RMBLocal contribution: Each household contributes 150 RMB to this project; the total in RMB is (160 households) × (150 RMB) = 24,000 RMB

Project sustainability

This machine will have positive impacts on both women and men. It also can be a long-term alternative for all the Tagrig villagers to improve their living conditions year by year. Moreover, this project is supported by both villagers and the village leader. They see this as a beneficial project that will reduce their burden. In addition, they will not sell the machine, because the machine will be kept by Khajee Gyal and the village leader, and we will keep the machine in Tagrig Village’s public house. We have already chosen a good quality reaping machine in a Xining agricultural factory, and the factory boss told us he guarantees repairs on the machine for at least 10 years, so during that period we won’t need to pay money for repairing the machine. In order to make sure he keeps his word, we will sign a contract when we buy the machine. Every year Khajee Gyal, the project manger, will interview the villagers about the impact of the project, and report the project outcome to Shem Women’s Group.

Map of the project location

Photos

This is a deaf man called Lhaqianjia who is from Tagrig Village. There are only three people in his family: his sister, brother and himself. Because of their poverty, none of them are married now. When he was 15 years old, he got a disease that caused him to become deaf. At that time there were medicines to treat his illness, but because of their poverty, they couldn’t afford the treatments.

This is an aged blind women called Laguoji from Tagrig Village. She has a daughter, but no husband; because of their poverty, her daughter herded livestock for another family in order to fill their stomachs. In 1998, she left her family and went to urban area, and her mother Laguoji still doesn’t know where she has gone. However, some kindhearted villagers help her to do her work, such as reaping the field, threshing crops, drying wheat, and so on.

This is a 70-year-old woman from Tagrig Village. She has a son and daughter-in-low in her family; all of her other daughters and sons are married and they have their own families. Her granddaughter is a primary school student, and her son is still not married. There is no cash income to augment their family’s living condition, and now her daughter-in-law may not be able to continue her studies.

This project is to hold short health training for the village women, plant trees in the wasted water reservoir, building running water system and small greenhouses for 28 households in Waku Rama Village.   Waku Rama Village, Wenduo Township, Xunhua County, Haidong Region, Qignhai Province.

The Canada Fund funded this project

Lhamotso is from Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. She graduated with an associated degree in English at Qinghai Normal University Nationalities Department English Training Program in 2005. Currently she works in Shem Women’s Group and she is one of the program directors and general financial officer of Shem Women’s Group.

What? to hold short health training for the village women, plant trees in the wasted water reservoir, building running water system and small greenhouses for 28 households in Waku Rama Village.

Where? Waku Rama Village, Wenduo Township, Xunhua County, Haidong Region, Qignhai Province.

1.BENEFICIARIES

Identify the direct and indirect beneficiaries of this project. Please include numbers of each sex (male/female) and an explanation of how each type of beneficiary has benefited.

Please explain any variation (+/-) for the number of beneficiaries and include details on how many were members of minority groups.

2. LOCAL CONTRIBUTION AND PARTICIPATION

a) How were local people been involved in the design, planning, implementation and monitoring of the project? In particular, describe how women beneficiaries were involved. Describe any suggestions or feedback they made during the project that were different from the original project plan or different from the ideas of the implementing agency.

As the project beneficiaries, the local villagers fully participate in the design, planting , implementation and monitoring of the project like providing the project related information, being interviewed, attending meetings, giving ideas and thoughts, planting trees, carrying water for irrigating trees, the project committee have supervised the process of implementing the project, etc. In Waku Rarma village, they can not get very enough harvest from very poor and limited fields, so most village men go out for earning money to support their families, and only women, elders, children and some men stayed at home. In this case, all the women have fully participated from the beginning the project until now included making suggestions, attending meetings, working and etc.

b) What specific skills did they acquire from their involvement?

Since the villagers already have certain experiences with planting trees and building running water system in other villages, so they did not learn any specific skills so far but their knowledge towards planting trees are surely improved. For the village women, they should get very good ideas about what they should do and should not during pregnancy and so on.

c) Did local government made any contribution?

So far, the local government has not made any contribution financially but they gave full permission to proceed the project and assisted the local villagers and the project manager to get the formal receipts (Fapiao) because some sellers required a local government stamp in order to give formal receipts (Fapiao).

d) How has the project helped to develop the local community’s problem solving capacity? I.e. how are they more able to solve the community’s problems?

As I mentioned several times, this village did not have community sense before this project at all, everybody just tries their best to improve their own living condition; people did not come to the village meeting and participate in any village’s affairs. By involving and participating in this project, most people do get some community sense, they all come together to solve the problems which they have met during in the process of implementing the project; the villagers attend all the meetings, share their ideas and give suggestions and make comments.

3. UNEXPECTED EVENTS/CHALLENGES OVERCOME/LESSONS LEARNED

Outline any positive or negative events that have had an impact upon the project; e.g. delays, increased number of beneficiaries, matching funds form government, etc.; challenges and how they were addressed, and lessons learned in the process. This is relatively a big integrated project which contains four different activities like health training, planting trees, build running water system and greenhouses for almost one year. As the project manager, Lhamotso has not encountered any serious or big challenges but small problems can not be inevitable and unexpected. Firstly, Not familiar with the project location and the villagers lead to no trust between the project manager and the project beneficiaries: since the project manager, Lhamotso me, I am not from the project location and very new to the village which made me difficult to handle the unexpected problems like the villagers did not believe me as a outsider and stranger to help them to get drinkable and clean water, health training, plant trees and build greenhouses for them. Even I tried to explain many times they still did not trust me totally until the funds arrived and we actually started to do the different activities. At the same time, it is very tough to explain to the positive impacts of being implemented this project because this is the first project that this village ever have so the villagers did not have any ideas about the project and so on. Secondly, Lack of experiences with the big integrated project: planting trees and buying mental fence would be the main challenges during implementation of the entire project. It was bit late to plant trees because the period for planting trees is almost over but we could not find a seedling nursery to buy saplings for a reasonable price; and also it was much more difficult to purchase metal fence around Xining City. All these kinds of problems occurred but I could not deal with it either the villagers. So I asked my father to help me with buying saplings and mental fence because he has many experiences with those work, finally all the problems solved one by one and we bought a very good quality of mental fence in Huangyuan County and relatively cheap saplings in Huzhu County. This is the first time I have implemented a planting tree project, and I don’t have any ideas that planting trees have some conditions like when is the appropriate season to plant, which kind of trees can grow in certain place and if the saplings have leaves then they will not grow. For the mental fence, again I do not know which mental fence is better for settling around the village forest in order to protect from animals. All those information really stuck me at some point, but all these unknown information are mostly provided by my father, the villagers and the people who are working in their own respective companies. Thirdly, Lack of solidarity of the whole village makes the project bit difficult to carry on smoothly; there were different opinions and ideas while we needed to make decision. People preferred to receive everything from the donor and they seemed did not like to work for their own welfare and for the whole village. Fourthly, the project manager could not get the funds from Qinghai Minority Charitable Foundation on time, and they only gave the funds (70%) partially to the project manager. Because of the postponed funds, the project had to delay for some period of time which did not cause huge negative impact on the project, but due to delayed funds, we could not start the project especially plant trees since plant trees need to depend on the right season, as a result we almost did not get the saplings to plant in the village as we planned in the original project proposal. At last, the villagers did not have the sense of community and unit. At the beginning, the villagers did not participate in the village meetings which were about the project. Some villagers did not participate in public working like attending women’s health training, planting trees, carrying water to irrigate the trees and digging ditches for running water system. Later one of the project committee Pama Dorjie, who is from Waku Rarma village, very often spoke about the community sense, the project and work together to accomplish very successful project and so on. Gradually the villagers seem get some ideas and the villagers have fully participated in any kinds of community work especially the village women.

4. MONITORING & EVALUATION

a) Indicate what milestones have been reached (if not all have been reached explain)

1. i. three days short training on women’s health to the village women in Waku Rarma village
2. ii. plant trees in the unused and waste water reservoir nearby Waku Rarma village
3. iii. build a running water system for Waku Rarma village
4. iv. build 26 greenhouses for 26 households in Waku Rarma villages

b) What data were tracked during project implementation and what will be tracked in future?

During the project implementation, the project manger did not tracked with any specific data, after discussing with some local villagers, we will track with some numbers like the times of washing clothes after they have sufficient water in their yards and wash and clean their hair; the local women’s working hours and also we can observe people’s living condition like having vegetables.

c) What measures were taken to ensure quality control? E.g. pre- and post-training exams, materials testing, follow up interviews, etc.

Up to date, the intermediary organization has not monitored the progress of the project but they strongly has requested every single formal receipt (Fapiao) which was used to purchase any project related materials. However they have not monitored the process of the project, the project manager, Lhamotso provided the photos and project data during their annual board meeting.

d) What evidence suggests that the project has been successful and has achieved its purposes?

A female Tibetan doctor was invited and gave basic women’s health training for three days, in total 15 hours; the villagers purchased 30,000 saplings and planted them in the village’s unused water reservoir; the villagers have very reliable and clean water to drink after building running water system in the village and 26 households built small greenhouses next to their houses for planting some green vegetables.

e) Describe what methods were used to monitor and evaluate the project results (include relevant dates, names etc. to explain monitoring process). Describe how the project results were identified and documented.

1) On April 4^th to 6^th 2009, the project manager (Lhamotso) and co-project manager (Pama Dorjie) have visited the project site village and supervised and monitored the whole process of the heath training, for instance, Lhamotso and Pama Dorjie participated in the training, made suggestions about the training and encouraged the village women to participate actively in the training. 2) On April 13^th 2009, Lhamotso bought mental fence, transported to Waku Rarma village and kept in the village Mani Temple. 3) On May 2^nd 2009, Lhamotso and Pama Dorjie bought water pipes. Pama Dorjie was responsible to supervise the transportation of the materials and at the same time he took photos and asked the villagers about the panting trees. 4) On June 3^rd 2009, Pama Dorjie visited the project site to supervise the process of the building running water system to the village. 5) On July 25^th 2009, Lhamotso and Pama Dorjie went to project site to monitor the process of building running water system. 6) On October 20^th 2009, Lhamotso and Pama Dorjie purchased cinder blocks, cement and red bricks and transported to the village. 7) On November 7^th 2009, Lhamotso and Pama Dorjie purchased plastic sheet for covering the roof of the greenhouses. 8) On December 5^th 2009, Lhamotso went to the project site to monitor the progress of building greenhouses as the last activity of the project. 9) On December 19^th, Lhamotso and Pama Dorjie visited the project site for final evaluation of the project. 10）On March 18^th 2010, received partial fund from Qinghai Minority Charity Fund as the intermediate organization. 11）On March 19^th 2010, the project manager, Lhamotso and a village man went to see the saplings in Huzhu Shuangshu Tree Nursery to check the saplings and the price. 12）On March 26^th 2010, the project manager, Lhamotso and the village leader and one of village man went to the same Tree Nursery to book the amount of saplings and decide the price for each sapling and transportation fee for transporting the saplings to the project location. 13）On April 2^nd –4^th 2010, the samplings were loaded on the two trucks and transported to the project location and the villagers unloaded all the saplings for the almost entire night. 14）From April 6^th 2010, the villagers started to plant saplings. 15）On April 8^th 2010, the project manager, Lhamotso visited the project village supervised how was planting saplings going on, interviewed the project beneficiary and took photos for the report. 16）On April 17^th 2010, the villagers completed to plant the trees. 16) At the beginning of January 2011, Shem Women’s Group as a managing group will go to the project site to evaluate the project by asking prepared questions.

f) What monitoring was performed by the Intermediary? E.g. site visits, telephone calls, document reviews, etc.

The intermediary organization has not visited the project site, but we frequently reported the process of the project by providing photos, receipts, document reviews and oral report to the responsible person in the intermediary organization.

5. WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION & IMPACT

a) Describe how women have been involved in the project so far and what impact the project is having on them.

The women especially the women who are in the project management committee are very much involved in planning, designing, managing and implementing the project. At same time other village women have participated all the activities like health training, planting and watering saplings and digging ditches for burying water pipes. Regarding to the health training for the village women, it is very effective and has very positive impact on them. For example, they understand that this project is largely benefited women in terms of reducing heavy workload by building running water system, planting trees and build greenhouses; and this leads to the women is fully participating in every single activity of the project. On the other hand, the women can share and exchange openly what they have encountered being a village woman.

b) What targets were reached for women’s involvement? E.g. number on committee, beneficiary numbers, skills acquisition, etc.

There are two women are on the project management committee and those two members of the committee have very positive impact on the other village women and set the role models for the rest of the village women in Waku Rarma village by fully get involved the every process of the project. Moreover, around 58 village women can get befits from this project especially the women’s health training and building running water system to install water tap in each household. As a female project manager, I really do get very valuable experiences and skills like communication, bargaining with the sellers and lots of knowledge of planting tress and constructing running water system.

c) How did women respond to this level of involvement?

By implementing this project, the women has involved in the whole process of this project, especially labour work like planting trees, carrying water for irrigating the planted trees, digging ditches for burying water pipe for building running water system and building greenhouse. And also they actively participated three days training every day. For instance, those two female project committee members strongly encouraged other village women to attend the training punctually. At this level, they are very much enthusiastic about their involvement in this project. When the male project committee members presented at the same time, they were passive and constantly stated that the men knew better than them. They always tried to push their rights for making decisions, giving suggestions and comments to the men, and mostly agreed the men’s decision. At this level, the women were passive and they had no self-confidence make big decisions or say something since this is probably the first time the women really got involved in such a big village’s affair like implementing the project for almost entire year.

d) Identify measures that will be taken to ensure female beneficiaries’ continued enjoyment of the benefits of the project.

It is not necessary to take any measures to ensure female beneficiaries’ involvement in all aspects of the project because all the village women are fully and very actively engaging, involving and participating in every single activity of the project and they will surely get involve in the continued activity of the project since most of the village men are doing work outside of the village in order to earn family cash income.

6. ENVIRONMENT

a) What effect upon the natural environment, both positive and negative (if any) has the project had so far?

There are not any negative effect upon the natural environment, but planting saplings really bring positive impact upon the natural environment like beautify the village surroundings and because of planting trees, more plants can be grown in the unused water reservoir.

b) How any negative impacts have been addressed? By implementing this project, there is no any negative effect upon the natural environment.

c) What future impacts are expected? In the future, there would be positive impact upon the village environment, like trees can be a huge resource to beautify the village surrounding, and different plants and grass can be grown well because water can be sufficient to irrigate the trees and grass more often.

7. AGREEMENT POSTING

a) Describe how the Agreement, including detailed budget was posted publicly (i.e. location), how long it was posted for, and how it was explained/translated into local languages, (if this was required)

In Waku Rarma village, the most villagers can only read Tibetan but do not understand the content, so Pama Dorjie translated the contract into Tibetan and we posted the contract and detailed breakdown actual cost in the Mani temple on July 12^th 2009. Later Pama Dorjie explained all the content of contract one by one as well as the detailed actual cost during the meeting.

b) How did local people respond to the public posting of the Agreement and detailed budget?

Local people are very satisfied with posting the contract in Tibetan and detailed actual cost and most of them expressed this was the good way to maintain the villagers’ active participation in the project and trust between the project manager, the project management committee and the villagers.

8. KEY PROJECT RESULTS AND OUTCOMES

a) Was the project a success? Why?

The project was a success because all the activities are accomplished, all the village women attended the training, 90% of the saplings are grown well, the villagers have sufficient water to drink and the greenhouses are completely finished to implement.

b) What did the project accomplish? (Note: this relates to results, not simply activities or outputs.) The project accomplished the following four things:

1) By the village women’s active participation in the health training, the village women are very much inspired and really get involved in the process of implementing the project. At the same time, the village women eagerly like to share their ideas and thoughts regarding to gender and women’s health. 2) Most of the saplings are grown very well and it would be the village forest for the villagers can use the tree branches for fuel in the future and also the village forest would be a nice place to hold village picnic and other village activities. 3) After building running water system, the villagers have clean water to drink and the women do not need spend any time on carrying water, in this case the women’s workload is greatly reduced. The villagers can also water the trees and the greenhouses. 4) The villagers can plant some green vegetables in the greenhouses and can feed themselves.

c) What changes resulted? Discuss how the project has affected the community.

As I mentioned several times, this village did not have community sense before this project at all, everybody just tries their best to improve their own living condition; people did not come to the village meeting and participate in any village’s affairs. By involving and participating in this project, most people do get some community sense, they all come together to solve the problems which they have met during in the process of implementing the project; the villagers attend all the meetings, share their ideas and give suggestions and make comments. Therefore, this could be a very positive change within the village because of implementing this project. If the whole community has formed a firm solidarity then it would be good for the village’s future development and the villagers might concern about the problems of the village.

d) How the change has been measured (surveys?)

This change has been measured by randomly talked to some villagers and observed the behaviours of the villages, especially many conversations with the co-project manager Pama Dorjie since he is from Waku Rarma village, the project site.

e) What future results are expected as a result of the project?

As stated in the original project proposal, It is expected that the project will have wide-ranging and a profoundly positive impact upon the local community: economically, household income is expected to rise somewhat as a result of the time saved collecting water being reinvested in agriculture, animal care and potentially paid labour activities. Health is also expected to improve as people will be able to drink and bathe using safe water throughout the year. Similarly, households will be able to wash clothes, dishes and provide water to animals, vegetable gardens and trees. Currently clothes are only washed every few months in winter and bathing in winter usually only occurs sporadically. The elderly in the village will also benefit from easy access to fresh water for tea and cooking, even when family members are away from the village. Water combined with small greenhouses will allow villagers to improve their diets with vegetables such as cabbages, leek, carrot, garlic, peppers and the like, thus strengthening their health though provision of vitamins and micronutrients. Villagers will be able to conserve time and energy while reducing deforestation and erosion through the maintenance of the village forest, thereby providing them with a valuable source of fuel and timber.

9. EXAMPLES/CASE STUDIES

Please provide some typical examples or case studies of the impact of the project on beneficiaries; i.e. how has the project changed their lives in some way? Include photos of interviewees if possible.

She is one of the project beneficiaries and her name is Lhalungyi. In this photo, she was participating in planting trees. She is thirty-seven year old village woman and there are seven people in her family. Her family is mainly depended on working in the fields, digging caterpillar fungus and working as migrant worker like building roads and houses. On April 13^th 2010, the project manager, Lhamotso briefly interviewed her about the impacts of this project. She mentioned several times that she was so happy that they can plant trees in this wasted land and even her generation may not get much benefits from those trees but she was pretty sure that her next generation will get benefits from those trees like collect branches of the trees as fuel. She said that she as a woman had very heavy workload like collecting fuel, carrying water, doing all the housework, taking care of children and so on, so the woman in this village shouldered very heavy work, especially about carrying water, she stated that during busy period like harvest time, the women needed to carry water from valley for more than three times in per day, in this case carrying water was a big task for them. However, because of this project, they did not need to carry water any more and they could wash their clothes whenever they were free from working, and she said jokingly that she became lazy because she did not need to carry water any more.

10. PROJECT MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

a) How was the project management committee selected?

Two years ago, the project manager, I had a meeting with the villagers, talked about the urgent problem and consent to propose a running water project for their village. During the meeting some village men and women talked very actively and passionately and also during interviewing and talking to them individually, I realized those people are very suitable to be the project committee at the same time the rest villagers agreed that those people can help the rest of the villagers to complete the project very well. In this way, the project management committee was selected without any objections.

b) How were major decisions made?

People have different ideas and disputes towards a very small things as well as it takes time therefore the major decisions in this project are mostly made by the project manager and the project management committee. One more reason is that the project management committee members are from this village so they can more or less represent the villagers’ thoughts and opinions.

The process of making decision:

1. Meeting with the villagers and talked about the issue.
2. Talked about the positive and negative aspect of making certain decisions
3. Analyze the feasibility of the decision, the villagers’ thoughts, ideas, suggestions and comments.
4. Make the most reasonable decision with the project manager and the project management committee.

c) How were women, not only organizational leaders but also local women such as farmers, included in the project management process and encouraged to participate and provide their input?

In Waku Rarma village, they can not get very enough harvest from very poor and limited fields, so most village men go out for earning money to support their families, and only women, elders, children and some men stayed at home. In this case, all the women have fully participated from the beginning the project until now included making suggestions, attending meetings, working and etc.

KEY PROJECT IMPLEMENTERS

List the key project implementers’ names, positions and sex.

11. PROJECT SUSTAINABILITY

a) Describe what measures have been taken to continue the project’s activities and/or outputs in the future.

The villagers as the project beneficiaries themselves collected 50rbm from each household to purchase the necessary material if the running water system is broken in the future. At the same time, the villagers will take turn to look after the village forest to protect the trees from stealing by the nearby villagers. Since each family has their own small greenhouse and they will be responsible for their own greenhouse.

b) Identify potential challenges to sustainability such as recurrent and maintenance costs, personnel change or other potential risks.

As the villagers mentioned that there may have some potential challenges to sustainability such as natural disaster flood which may destroy the parts of the running water system. If the flood happens then the villagers will repay the running water system by themselves. Regarding the trees, as I mentioned in the last section, the local villagers concern that the trees most likely will be stolen by other villagers so three families as a group take turn to take care the forest in each month. If the trees or the mental fence are stolen or broken then those families need to repay them without any excuses. The project committee will responsible fro making some rules for that.

c) How will the program continue after Canadian support ceases?

Since this is the first development project in Waku Rarma Village and they have not implemented any government projects either. However if there is a chance then the villager will organize to have a very local and simple health training if the financial condition is positive and also they strongly eager to collect some money from each family and buy more trees to plant in the forest trees in order to expand the village forest.

d) What arrangements have been made for the training of community members to be responsible for the control and maintenance of the program, if applicable? (E.g. does the community possess the technical skills for maintenance and repair of equipment and who will be responsible for follow-up and/or maintenance?

Actually the villagers themselves are very capable with repairing the running water system, greenhouses and take care of the village trees. Therefore it is not necessary to have training for the villagers in order to learn skills of maintain the project outputs.

12. PROJECT FINANCE

Notes: after all the activities of the project are completely done, there still 3,053.68rmb left from the funds, and the donor requests to send back to them.

13. PUBLIC AWARENESS & CANADIAN IDENTITY

a) What measures were taken to inform the beneficiaries and the general public of the contribution of the Canada Fund and the commitment made by the implementing agency?

1) having meeting with the project beneficiaries and introducing the donor and the project 2) explain the contract 3) randomly talk to the villagers while mentoring the project 4) displaying the plaque which is written about the project name and the donor

b) How has the contribution been recognized at the project site?

1) The representatives from Canada Fund have visited the project site and talked to the project beneficiaries twice. 2) The project manager made clearly announcement to the villagers about the Canada Fund’s contribution to this project. 3) Randomly talked to the villagers about the donor. 4) Paste the contract on the wall of the public place, the village Mani Hall.

c) List all media coverage of the project. Provide copies of any print media.

1) Posted on the managing group, Shem Women’s Group’s website (www.shemgroup.org)

Appendix: some photos of the project

All the village women, who have participated the women’s health training, are in the photo with the project manager and doctor, Wuxiuji; and they are very happy to receive all kinds of hygiene related stuff like the period paper, tooth brush, washing powder and etc.

The both village women and men are carrying water to irrigate the saplings before building running water system.

The workers are uploading the metal fence in the truck in Huangyuan County.

The cement for building water box is stored in the village’s public house, Mani Hall.

Some of the water pipes are kept in the Mani Hall. The saplings are become green tress in water reservoir. The villagers have sufficient water to drink and also do some constructions work. The villagers are removing the cinder blocks from the truck. The project manager is comparing the quality of the plastic sheet which is used to cover the roof of the greenhouse. This is well-built a greenhouse in one of the project beneficiaries’ yard. This is the plaque with three languages in it.

Original Project Proposal

Project location
This project will be located on a mountain, Waku Rarma Village, Wen Duo Tibetan Township, Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province. Waku Rarma Village is the southwestern part of the Xunhua County and is approximately 217 km from the provincial capital, Xining.

Background
All families in Waku Rarma Village historically moved from a neighboring village called Waku Village, both of which are located at the bottom of the same mountain.. There were lots of families in Waku Village with very insufficient farmlands, so the local people did not have enough land. This meant they did not have enough food. Therefore, in 1973, all the new families in Waku Village were sent to a new place, which was on the top of the mountain. Those new families composed a new village called Waku Rarma Village. As a result Waku Rarma is economically and materially very poor which is sated in the following sections.

Population
In Waku Rarma Village, all the villagers are Tibetan. There are 30 households consisting of 140 residents in the target village. There are 58 women, 55 men and 27 children.

Education
The majority people in Waku Rarma Village are illiterate. Currently there is only one college student, a girl, and one middle school student who is a boy. Also, there are two girls and eleven boys attending Jieku primary school in neighboring Waku Village. In total, there are only 15 children attending school.

There are several reasons for such inadequate education conditions. Firstly, college school tuition is about 3,000 rmb to 5,000 rmb per semester. For a high school student, the school expense is over 1,000 rmb. In this case the local people cannot afford to send their children to continue further studies in high school or college. That is why there are very few students who have education higher than the middle school level. Secondly, the neighboring primary school is 5 km away from Waku Rarma Village, which means that the little children are unable to go to school without being accompanied by adults. In addition, there is a river with no bridge between the neighboring school and Waku Rarma Village. When there are heavy rains the river becomes very strong and the students need to walk in the river with their bare feet no matter if it is summer or winter. An additional reason for the poor education conditions is that the children have lots of housework to do such as carrying water, clean houses, feed pigs, and work on the fields and herd livestock. All of these factors cause the overall education level in Waku Rarma Village to be very low.

Cash income
People who live in Waku Rarma Village really have very difficult economic conditions.

Traditionally, Waku Rarma Village is an agricultural village. They seldom make money from the livestock. Therefore, the villagers earn money by the following two ways: as a migrant construction workers and digging caterpillar fungus every April and May in other places, some as far as 500 kilometers to 700 kilometers. Caterpillar fungus is a kind of medicinal herb, which mostly grows on high mountains. Several years ago the local villagers could make a fair amount of money from digging caterpillar fungus. Specifically, most villagers could earn over 1,500 rmb within two months of digging caterpillar fungus after they paid about 100 rmb to 200 rmb tax for use the pastureland. But recently, to protect the ecological balance, a new law was passed that forbids people from digging for caterpillar fungus.

As a result, people do not want to take a risk to go to such far places to dig caterpillar fungus without knowing whether it will be worthwhile. Because of this fact, more and more local people are working as migrant construction workers in Xunhua County or Xining City. Basically the villagers build roads because they do not have any skills to do other work that could be a good source of making money. By building roads, they can make around 500 rmb to 600 rmb each month, and usually they are able to work about three months. In total they can make about 1,800 rmb.

Villagers spend on average between 600-700 rmb on purchasing tea, salt, other daily necessities, fertilizer and clothes. People spend about 300-400 rmb per year buying fertilizer in the form of urea and amino acids. Each 100g bag of urea is 95 rmb and each 100 g bag of amino acid is 150 rmb. In addition, few families need to pay averagely 500 rmb for school tuition fee. Most families need to spend about 800 rmb on buying food because their lands cannot produce enough food. According to the villagers, 95% of families have to take out loans because they need to buy food and support their children. It is often very difficult for people to take out loans from the local banks because they are poor and the banks do not trust that they can pay back their loans when the time of the loans are due.

Agriculture
Waku Rarma Village is the smallest village within a bigger village, Waku. Without access to irrigation, the villagers are dependent on nature for good harvests. If there is a lot of rain that means they will have a prosperous harvest. However, the fact is that in recent years, there have been fewer rains, which has made the people’s lives even harder. Another reason for getting bad harvests from is that many villagers do not have money to afford fertilizer in the form of urea and amino acids. People grow barely, wheat, rapeseed, beans and potatoes on their fields; usually, 1 mu of land can only produce between 300 and 400 jin of wheat. Even though Waku Rarma Village is an agricultural village, villagers still have to buy a portion of food every year.

Herding
Waku Rarma Village is not a nomadic village therefore, on average, each household has 2 donkeys, 1 cow and 20 sheep. Even though the local villagers can not make money from livestock they usually use donkeys to transport grass and grain during the harvest time. Cows and sheep are used for milking and meat for themselves. As a result, the local people have no way to make any money from livestock.

Project Objectives
The project aims to address several of the major causes of illness and environmental damage in the village, namely the lack of potable water, limited supply of local wood for heating and cooking, lack of vegetables and resulting nutritional deficiencies, and limited local knowledge of health and hygiene related concepts. The lack of local potable water and fuel supply particularly affect local women and children’s lives as they are typically responsible for the regular collection of water and fuel for household needs from distant sources.

2. Beneficiaries:
Direct:
• 140 villagers including 58 women, 55 men and 27 children will benefit from four-season access to potable water, improved hygiene and better nutrition
• Provision of greenhouse materials will allow villagers to grow vegetables and saplings for their own use and for sale
• Establishment of a village forest will provide villagers with a long-term solution to their current reliance on dung and unsustainable forest practices; the forest will directly and indirectly reduce erosion and provide a long-term source of renewable energy, fruit, and building materials, benefiting affected households and the local environment more generally

Indirect:
While the entire population of Waka Rarma Village will benefit directly from core activities, villagers in the surrounding area will also indirectly benefit from knowledge and skills shared and possibly from products produced by direct beneficiaries.

3. Expected Results (Outputs):
• A reliable fully functioning water system that delivers water to villagers’ homes throughout the year
• Basic health training, including hygiene and women’s reproductive health, provided to villagers to complement access to water
• Greenhouses constructed to allow villagers to develop kitchen gardens, thereby extending the short growing season
• Fast growing and fruit producing trees planted to supplement fuel supply, reduce erosion and provide fruit for food and income

Expected Results (Outcomes):
It is expected that the project will have wide-ranging and a profoundly positive impact upon the local community: economically, household income is expected to rise somewhat as a result of the time saved collecting water being reinvested in agriculture, animal care and potentially paid labour activities. Health is also expected to improve as people will be able to drink and bathe using safe water throughout the year. Similarly, households will be able to wash clothes, dishes and provide water to animals, vegetable gardens and trees. Currently clothes are only washed every few months in winter and bathing in winter usually only occurs sporadically. Educationally, the burden on children, notably girls, will be reduced, so it is possible that school attendance rates might increase, as they will no longer be obliged to stay home to collect water for their families’ needs. The elderly in the village will also benefit from easy access to fresh water for tea and cooking, even when family members are away from the village.
Water combined with small greenhouses will allow villagers to improve their diets with vegetables such as cabbages, leek, carrot, garlic, peppers and the like, thus strengthening their health though provision of vitamins and micronutrients.
Villagers will be able to conserve time and energy while reducing deforestation and erosion through the maintenance of the village forest, thereby providing them with a valuable source of fuel and timber.

4. Implications for Women:
The economic benefits that will be appreciated by women are perhaps the most substantial; as the many hours formerly spent collecting water can be put to other, more profitable uses. Moreover, the project could increase the likelihood that girls will be able to attend school and ultimately find better jobs. Women will also benefit directly from a women’s health training to be provided by a female Tibetan doctor from the Qinghai Tibetan Hospital. Training topics will include women’s reproductive health, basic hygiene and disease prevention.
That the project is designed by a woman and will be managed and implemented by village women is also quite progressive, by local standards. The role of the project manager also sends an important message to local women and young girls: that woman and girls can accomplish very useful and important projects and play an important role in their communities.
In parallel, the project managers will acquire valuable new skills and experience dealing with local government and suppliers, and will be able to use these skills to implement projects in the future.

Implications for the Environment:
While initially digging the trenches for pipes and constructing the water reservoir will slightly alter the environment, this will be temporary and will be mitigated by using the least damaging methods (e.g. conserving and replacing topsoil, turf and ground cover). Villagers will plant trees to further improve the local microclimate and encourage water filtration (increase surface permeability and decrease erosion). Villagers will also establish a village forest and will plant trees in their village providing an additional source of leaf litter (fodder) for animals, thus reducing the need to allow animals to roam the village grazing on vegetation.
Currently villagers must spend a great deal of time collecting wood in the winter, usually after dark since wood collection has been banned by the government (without providing alternate means) and the forests are guarded. Cow dung is also collected, which requires time, energy and denies the land of the nutrient value of the manure. The establishment of the village forest will provide a long-term solution to this problem and will have additional benefits as villagers will no longer need to rely on burning manure, an inefficient and unhealthy practice due to the smoke and hygiene issues.
Access to a modest amount of water coupled with greenhouses will allow the villagers to continue to grow trees for local planting (using the greenhouses as nurseries following training), with individual households responsible for their own section of trees within the forest. The village forestry component will contribute to a reduction of the amount of trees currently harvested elsewhere and represents the best, most viable long-term strategy for carbon-neutral energy self-sufficiency.

Implementation Plan and Method

Detailed Budget

Monitoring
Throughout project implementation the project manager (PM) will monitor the quality and progress of the project work; the PM will be supported by other Shem staff and by the five member project committee. Following project completion, the PM and Shem staff will inspect project outputs and interview beneficiaries to determine the effectiveness of the project and obtain lessons learned for future projects.In terms of impact level assessment, the evaluation (to take place several months after completion of the core project activities), will focus on the impact of the project on villagers; e.g. changes in work load and time use for women and children, changes in hygiene-related habits such as hand-washing, changes in diet, income and fuel use. Oral interviews will be corroborated by in situ observation.

Sustainability
Project sustainability will be assured by the direct involvement of villagers – notably women – in the design and implementation of the project and their later role as managers of all project outputs. The use of high quality building materials (pre-tested on other projects) and active monitoring during construction will ensure that construction adheres to the highest standards. Provision of basic tools and training will allow villagers to conduct annual maintenance and make repairs as needed. The collection of a modest annual water maintenance fee to be managed by the water committee will provide the necessary financial means for any repairs that may be required.

Greenhouses and forest sections will be maintained by individual households, and thus will be looked after by family members and protected from damage (from weather, livestock, children, etc.) It is hoped that some revenue will be earned through the sale of fruit and vegetables, some of which will be devoted to upkeep of the greenhouses.

Here are some photos of the villagers who will benefit from this project

Villagers join in a meeting to discuss problems.

This is one of the beneficiaries (with a piece of red cloth in left hand) who has two children, one is standing beside her and other one is a middle school student. She told us that one of her elder son’s was almost blinded because she carried water when she was pregnan. Therefore, her son cannot see very well now and she truly wishes for a running water system.

Her name is Lhamojyi (b.1967) and there are five people in her family. She has three children and one of the children is attending primary school, which is 5 km away. She mentioned that water is their most urgent and serious problem in Waku Rarma Village. In the village, if you borrow one bucket of water from another family, afterwards you have to give back one bucket of water. It seems very strange to pay water back but their water condition is really poor. She said a common saying in her village about how precious water is: “You can ask for oil, but not for water.”

Nyimatashixi (b.1971,) who is wearing a yellow jacket, is another beneficiary of this project. Originally there were four people in his family but unfortunately his elder daughter was very sick in the spring 2007and they did not have money to take her to see the doctor. As a result, his elder daughter died and now his wife is sick. He told us that his family is in a very bad condition now. He hopes that this water project will really bring lot of extra time for all the villagers and solve water problem, and they will have enough water everyday.

Additional information

Past experience of doing development projects

Lhamotso (Lily), the project manager, has already successfully completed five small-scale development projects.

The first was a solar cooker project, funded by The Canada Fund in the summer of 2004, which provided 20 solar cookers for the village where the village clinic project is located. During the same year, in the winter Lhamotso managed another solar cooker project funded by the Canada Fund, which provided 30 solar cookers for Huoluoshi.

Lhamotso also successfully completed two second-hand clothes projects in 2004 and 2005. These clothes were provided by the British Consulate in Shanghai. There were two boxes of second-hand clothes that included shirts, trousers, bags, shoes, hats, toys, sweaters and other things.

Moreover, Lhamotso completed a greenhouse project last October, funded by the Australian Embassy. Now the project is completely and successfully finished. The whole project cost about 60,000 rmb, not including the local contribution.

In addition, Lhamotso completed a solar cooker project in December of 2006, funded by The Shambala Connection. The whole project cost about 14,300 rmb, not including the local contribution. In 2007, Lhamotso also completed a village clinic project proposal for Huoluoshi Gongma village.

The map of the project location

This Project is to host a three-day health training in Rdo Sbis Township to educate village women about common health problems, the importance of caring about women’s health problems and also the methods to prevent gynecological diseases to improve the health conditions of local women.

The Australian Embassy funded this project

Lumo Tsering is from Xunhua County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, China. She graduated with an associate’s degree from Qinghai Normal University’s English Training Program in January 2008. She is currently working as one of the program directors at Shem Women’s Group.
What? To host health training in Rdo Sbis Township to educate village women about common health problems, the importance of caring about women’s health problems and also the methods to prevent gynecological diseases to improve the health conditions of local women.
Who? Women in Rdo Sibis Township, Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province.
Photos of project implementation

This is the first day of health training in Rdo Sbis Township governmental yard; because it is too cold to hold the training in the meeting hall in the morning, the participants suggested to hold the training outside the meeting hall in the sun. In this picture the participants were sitting in the circle and listening to the doctor.

The women in the picture is the president of Xunhua County Women’s Federation, Rdo Sibs Township leader invites her to participate the training and in the picture she is giving a short speech about how important it is for the women to be healthy.

The doctor gets feedback from the women after discussing proper hygiene when using the toilet.

Considering that most of women usually don’t have money in their pocket, the project manager decided to give each participant 5 RMB, so that they can have lunch in the afternoon. This woman is named Tsemo and she is receiving the money after she signed the paper.

These are the hygiene materials the project manager bought from Xining City. It includes: one basin, two tubes of toothpaste, one toothbrush, one pair of plastic gloves, one cotton towel, and a packet of napkins for each woman who participated the training. These materials are brought according to doctor’s suggestion and our experiences in the past doing health training projects.

This woman is one of the health training participants on the first day. After the first part of the health training, people ask her to sing song to thank the project manager and the doctor and she offers project manager Kadangk (a traditional Tibetan scarf people offer to thank or greet others) after she sang the song.

This is the second health training in Niamu Village. Women in this village gathered outside of Mani hall and listening to the doctor (the woman with pink scarf, sitting with paper in her hand.) Originally we were going to hold the training inside Mani Hall, but all the women said that Mani hall is too cold in the morning and they want to sit in the sun. Also in the Mani Hall there are some old man chatting, so it is not convenient to talk about health problems. Because women are the ones who need to take care of their children, they are not able to come to the health training alone and most of women came to the training with their children on their back or in their robe like the women in this picture.

This is one of the Salar women participants; because of the language barrier, she didn’t get most of what the doctor talked. However, she had the chances to ask the doctor some questions regarding her own health problems. These Salar women also receive the hygiene materials and living subsidy. The woman with black scarf is Salar, and the other woman is the president of women’s federation in the township government.

These two old women are the oldest ones in this training; they said their daughter-in-laws are not able to come, so they came instead of them. But their ears are not very good, and the project manager asked the doctor to speak loudly so that they can hear her.

When it came to some sensitive topic like sexual diseases or the ways of preventing pregnancy, the participants started to laugh and become shy. Some people even said that in the 21st century people can say anything they want openly. So the doctor told them again and again that there is nothing to be shy of.

In the picture, the project manager Lumo tsering is distributing the hygiene materials as the co-manager Lumo (the woman in the right with blue cap) calls the names one by one.

These women are from Wuma Village and this training in held in the afternoon. All the women, doctor and project managers gathered in a family and held the training. These women sitting in the front are listening to the doctor with great interest, however some women in the back are pretty worried about the family chores they have and are chatting about their work constantly.

This woman is also from Wuma Village, she is signing her fingerprints on the paper before she receives the hygiene materials.

Project summary
Project title: Health Training Project for Tibetan Village Women in Rdo Sbis Township

Project goals: This project is to host three-day health training in Rdo Sbis Township to educate village women about common health problems, the importance of caring about women’s health problems and also the methods to prevent gynecological diseases to improve the health conditions of local women.
Project location: Rdo Sbis Tibetan Autonomous Township, located in southwest Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, is one of five Tibetan Townships in Xunhua County. The others are: Bis mdo (Wendu), Rkang tsha (Gangcha ), KA ring(Galeng), and Se chang (Xichang). There are 27 villages in Rdo Sbis Township, including two Salar, one Hui, and one Han village. Nearly all Rdo Sbis residents are Tibetans.
Total beneficiaries: This women’s health training directly benefits approximately 160 people and will indirectly befit around 800 women in Rdo Sbis Township, as women who attended the training could pass what they have learnt at the health training to their mothers, daughters, sisters and friends.

Implementing organization/individual: Lumo Tsering (project manager), Sangmo (President Women’s federation), Zhoujia (Rdo Sbis Township Leader), Lumo Tsering (co-project manager) and Shem Women’s Group.

Contact Group: Shem Women’s Group

Funding  source, amount, and date received: Lumo Tsering (Project manager) received 5,400 (80% of the project money) RMB from Shem Women’s Group on March 25th, 2010, and will receive 1,350 RMB after the project manager implements the project successfully.

Details of project activities

1. Found out the health problems by talking to Dr.Suonamtso from the hospital in 2008.
2. Developed project by attending an international training on education for sustainable development in Sweden.
3. Discussed the project with the County leader about where and for whom to hold the training.
4. Conducted informal interviews with some women (from?) about the health problems they have.
5. Contacted one of the health workers who used to work on health issues in the village to find out about common illnesses.
6. Contacted Dr. Woxiuji, who gave training to the village women.
7. Figured out the price of materials for the training.
8. Wrioe project proposal.
9. Funds are received on March 25th 2010.
10. March 26th, 2010, contacted County leader and the president of women’s federation to discuss the start date of the project.
11. Prepared announcement of the health training.
12. March 27th, 2010 went to the wholesale market to check the price and quality of the materials.
13. March 28th, 2010 went to Yiwu Market in Xining City to check the price and quality of the hygiene materials needed for the training and bought some of the materials.
14. March 29th 2010, went to the wholesale market to purchase some other materials and co-project manager Duojie Dorlma went to Yiwu Market to purchase hygiene materials again.
15. March 29th 2010, transported some of the materials to Xunwa Village in Xunhua County.
16. March 30th 2010, lunch time went to the wholesale market to buy rest of the materials again and transported them to project manager’s office.
17. April 2nd, 2010, transported the hygiene materials to project manager’s family.
18. April 3rd, 2010, hired a car and went to the Township government to hold the first day of the health training in Rdo Sbis Township governmental yard.
19. Interviewed some of the participants to see the impact of the project.
20. April 4th, 2010, went to Niamu Village to hold second health training for the Niamu Village women.
21. April 4th, went to Bai Zhuang Township to buy more hygiene materials.
22. April 4th, 2010, in the afternoon went to Wuman Village to hold third health training with Wuman Village women
23. Interviewed some of the village women and took pictures.
24. Write project final report.

Project Finance

Note: For some costs, the project manager was not able to get receipts, because the shopkeepers in the township are not able to write. So some receipts are not formal receipts. Also because the training happened on weekends, the project manager decided to not have group photo and give photos to each participant, because in that way she needed to go to Xunhua again to distribute photos. Also the participants are very worried about their works when having the training, so project manager decided not to waste their time any more by taking photos. Therefore, there is no cost for photos.

Also, because of having no experience, project manager didn’t know it is better to provide participants some money since most of them don’t have money to eat lunch, so project manager decided to give each participant 5 RMB, so the meal fee is higher than the original budget.

The total donor contribution of this project is 6798.5 RMB and project manager paid the rest of the 48.5 RMB.

Delays, Difficulties, and Lessons learned
Delays
The starting date for the project was delayed for half a month, because when the project manger received the funds, the villagers in Rdo Sbis Township were cultivating their fields and it usually takes about 15 days for the whole township to finish the work. Considering it is their busiest time, project manager decided to wait until the villages finished cultivation. In that way, selected women can come to the training without needing to worry about their work.

Difficulties
In order to start the training earlier on Saturday morning, the project manager went to Xunhua County on Friday night after she finished her work, and it is about 4 hours from Xining City to the project manager’s home. So when the project manager arrived in the County town it was too late and there were no taxis, and project manager had to hire a very expensive car..

On Saturday morning, the project manager and the project co-manager went to the township to prepare the project before the training, like buying fruits, drinks and other needed things. However, the county leader didn’t show up until 11 am, which is one hour later than we scheduled, although the project manager contacted him very earlier to tell him to be on time, so the project managers and participants had to wait for long time to start the training.

Also originally, the project manager planed to have a female doctor who is very experienced with health training to facilitate this health training. However, because of their institute the doctor needed to go to Beijing and was not able to go to the training. The doctor helped the project manager to find another female doctor. Since it is her first time to facilitate training, she is not as active as the project manager expected. However, she did a great job with making the training plans and all important topics were presented at the training.

Additionally, in Rdos Township, there are two Salar (an ethnic group in China) villages and the county leader also announced the training to them. So there were five Salar women attending the training, however, they don’t understand Tibetan and hardly understand Mandarin. So there was a very big communication problem between the doctor and the Salar women. We had to speak Tibetan to all the participants, and ask the Salar women to ask questions after the training.

Changes
There were three small changes with this project. Firstly, according to the original plan, Doctor Woxiuji was going to facilitate this health training. However, she had to go to Beijing suddenly, and was not able to go to Xunhua for the training. So Doctor Woxiuji helped the project manager to find another doctor.

Originally, the project manager planed to have three days training in Rdo Sbis: first day in the township, second day in Niaba Village, and last day in Helongbu Village. In the actual project implementation, the County leader suggested that it is better to have two days training, because most of the villagers are busy with building walls and if project manager held the training for one village each day, then it would take lots of work time away from the villagers. So the project manager decided to have two days training instead of three days. So they held first training in the township for whole day, second training in Niamu Village for half a day and third training in Wuman Village for half a day.

The villages that the project manager originally planned to hold training in also changed, because when project manager was talking to many people regarding where could be the best place to hold the health training is, villagers said that most of the projects go to the villages that we originally planed because those villages are located beside the road. So for this training, the project manager decided to go to villages which are very remote and very poor, and Niamu and Wuman Villages are the poorest and most remote villages in Rdo Sbis Township. Although the road to these villages is not very good, this project would help these villages more than others.

Lesson learned
During the implementing of this health training project, one thing which the project manger learnt was that it is very important to meet the project target group personally, in that way it will be very clear about what they need and how one can help. Also by meeting with the target group, one can avoid misunderstanding, because the project manager and target group can always explain to each other and make sure they understand each other. The project manager went to the project location when she first designed the project and she communicated with the county leader clearly why this training is needed and how the government can help. However, she was not able to go home when the project was funded. So she contacted the county leader through phone and that is not good way of communicating, since the phone is sometimes unreliable. The project manager thinks that maybe that’s one reason why the leader was late for the training.

The project manager learnt from one of the officials that sometimes it is better not to contact the big leader directly, because they have lots of things to do and sometimes they would forget or will have no energy to focus on one thing. So he suggested project manager to contact the woman who is in charge of the women’s federation, in that way she can fully focus on the training and can help the project manger fully without being disturbed by other things.

Participants Name list

Rdo Sbis Township participants name list

Niamu Village participants name list

Wuman Village Participants Name List

Interviews

Dorlma Tso
Dorlma Tso is from Wuman Village, and is one of the participants of this heath training. Among all the women participants, she is the most active. After the training the project manager interviewed this woman for five minutes. The project manager mostly asked whether they had such training before and what does she think about women’s health condition in Wuman Village. She said that since Wuman Village is a very remote village in Rdo Sbis, they hardly receive attention from government. These kinds of training go to villages that are near the road. Also because they are very far from the township, when there is training in the government, women can’t go, because they need to walk, which takes them about 2 or 3 hours. She also stated that since their village is very remote, women don’t go to the hospital when they are sick, because it takes lots of time away from their work. If they feel really sick, then they will just take a short sleep. So it is very important for them to get basic knowledge about women’s health to prevent them from getting sick. The project manager asked this woman the ways of preventing pregnancy and she easily answered the questions. She said if we can do something then that’s good, but they can’t ask their husband to do anything. So the project manager had the idea that maybe they can organize health training for men next time.

Ayi NanmaJyi
Ayi Nanma Jyi is 81 years old. She said she has being living in this village for her whole life and has never had a chance to listen to such training. She said since they never had the chance to hear knowledge about women’s health, they don’t know whether what she knows is correct or not. This time she heard from the doctor that their way of cleaning after they went to the toilet is wrong. They did that for their whole lives, and didn’t know it is wrong until today. She laughed and said she can tell her daughter to do the right way from today. She also asked the project manager that if in the future they can still organize these kinds of training, she will ask her daughter-in-law to come since she couldn’t come this time. She said that women are doing all the works at home and never have time to take a rest, so if a women in the family gets sick then all the family members’ lives will be affected. So she said women need more doctors to teach them the health knowledge.

Tsomo
Tsomo married into this village a long time ago, and she said few people want to marry into villages like Wuman Village, because it is very remote. She said they even can’t get vegetables most of the time, let alone health education. She said “women never know how to take care their health, what they know work, work and work. Even though I didn’t catch any serious sickness, the small illnesses always bother me. I always have backache, and my lower abdomen is very painful during the menstruation period. What I do is just bear it, but today the doctor said all these small sickness create big problems. So I should more aware of my own health, if something happened to me, then what would my children do.” Tsomo answered with a very sweet smile. Then the project manger asked whether she knows how to prevent oneself from being pregnant. She didn’t answer these questions but became very red. So project manger didn’t ask her any more.

Letter of appreciation from the Government

The translation of thank you letter

Thank you letter

Dear Shem Women’s Group,

On April 3^rd and 4^th in 2010, Township Party committee, Township government, County women’s federation and your organization organized health training in Township Government, Wuman and Niamu Villages. The family planning advocator from 34 villages, the directors of women representatives in the Village, and Township women officials in total of 218 people participated the training. The project manager invited gynecologist Hua Sai Tso from Qinghai Tibetan Hospital to our township and passed on knowledge that is related to our daily life. They also provided some daily needs and living subsidy. This training enhances women’s health care knowledge and it created a strong foundation for women to have a healthy and happy life in the future. Therefore, on behalf of 3,617 women in Rdo Sibs Township Party committee and Township government would like to thank the leader and all members of Shem Women’s Group, especially project manager Lumo Tsering for your great work.
Thank you!

Xunhua County Salar Autonomous County Rdo Sbis Tibetan Township

April, 11^th 2009 (Stamp)

The list of Receipts

Receipt # 1

Doctor Training fee 500 RMB

Receipt #2

Transportation fee: 1,200RMB

• Project manager Xining to Xunhua 100 RMB (50 RMB Xining to Xunhua +50 Xunhua to Home)
• Car Rent Fee: 400RMB/day*2days=800 RMB
• Doctor (Xining to Xunhua) 200 RMB: Doctor rented a car from Xining to Xunhua on Saturday morning
• Project manager and Doctor Xunhua to Xining 100 RMB

Receipt #3

Hygiene materials (towels, basins, toothpastes, toothbrushes, plastic gloves and napkin) cost: 917.5+300+480+480+40+150+245+576=3188.5 RMB

Receipt 4

Meal cost: The project manager and Doctor stayed in the project manager’s aunt’s home and ate there, so project manager gave 200 RMB to buy meat and vegetables.

Also considering that most women usually don’t have money in their pockets, the project manager decided to give each participant 5 RMB, so that they can have lunch in the afternoon. Also other women participants received 5 RMB each person, so in total it is 800 RMB. In total it is 1,000RMB.

Receipt 5

Desert fee: Project manger brought fruits, drinks, cookies, one time used cups and other needed materials which cost 150/training*3=450RMB. However, the shop keeper couldn’t provide a receipt, since she doesn’t know how to write and she even didn’t have a receipt book, so the project manager was not able to provide formal receipts for this cost.

Receipts 6

Project Manager Expenses: project manager phone bill 50 RMB + Shopping helper Phone Bill 20 RMB + Taxi fee 110 RMB + Food Fee 160RMB + co-manager transportation fee 20 RMB + project manager transportation fee 100(when she first design the project). In total 460 RMB

Note: For food fee, there are together 10 pieces of receipts and for taxi fee there are together 11 pieces of taxi fee, which the project manager used when she implemented the project. Also some of the taxi receipts are the ones taken from the bus station to the project manager’s office. Since there are lots of receipts for food and taxi there, the project manager only post one to represent them all.

Original Proposal

Brief Introduction of the Facilitator Doctor Woxiu Ji
Woxiu Ji is a Tibetan woman who graduated from Qinghai Tibetan Medical College in 2006 with a major in Tibetan medicine. Currently she is working at the Qinghai Tibetan Medical Research Center. She has being working on women’s health for a long time and has been invited to give a health training in Xunhua County before.

Brief Introduction for Organizer Shem Women’s Group (SWG)
Shem is a women’s group dedicated to empowering Tibetan women and their communities through grassroots development. We focus on increasing the well-being of people in impoverished communities by providing access to basic needs such as water, fuel, electricity, health care, and basic education. We fulfill our mission by training educated Tibetan women to design, implement, and manage sustainable grassroots development projects that will successfully alleviate the problems that their communities face. SWG has so far successfully completed 29 small-scale humanitarian projects in provinces all over the Tibetan plateau.
At the village level, while our projects fulfill basic survival needs for village women and their families, our project managers, educated Tibetan women, present villagers with strong female role models. The work of these young women raises villagers’ confidence in women’s abilities and encourages villagers to value women’s education.
At the university level, we offer discussion groups and workshops designed to empower educated Tibetan women, and we provide women with the resources and training they need to put their ideas into action.

Project location
Rdo Sbis Tibetan Autonomous Township, located in southwest Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, is one of five Tibetan Townships in Xunhua County. The others are: Bis mdo (Wendu), Rkang tsha (Gangcha ), KA ring(Galeng), and Se chang (Xichang). There are 27 villages in Rdo Sbis Township, including two Salar, one Hui, and one Han village. Nearly all Rdo Sbis residents are Tibetans.
There are around 12,000 people in Rdo Sbis, a township in a valley surrounded by mountains. A road runs through the valley center between these mountains. Villages are located on either side of the road. Some villages are on the mountainsides; their fields are watered only by rain and such villages are called ri ma. Villages at the foot of the mountains and on the valley floor, called chu ma, have fields irrigated by the river.
These villages are agricultural villages. Local people grow barley, wheat, and potatoes on their land, which is irrigated five or six times every year between the fourth and sixth lunar months. Wealthy families owning 8 mu can sell surplus barley and earn about 800 RMB per year, since 1 mu of agricultural land can produce around 700-800 jin(350-400kg) of barley. However, most village families do not have this much land. Usually two or three households share about 8 mu of land between them. Such families can only grow enough barley for their own subsistence.
Villagers earn cash income from livestock; each family usually owns at least one cow. From the cow’s milk, villagers produce butter and cheese which is not eaten but sold to generate income. A family can earn about 600-800 RMB per year selling butter and cheese. Most households can make about 25 to 30 jin of butter and 30 jin of cheese annually. Also, villagers work as migrant laborers. Almost every able adult leaves the village in May and June to dig caterpillar fungus, a medical herb which grows in high altitude areas. In 2007, each caterpillar fungus could be sold for ten to fifteen RMB. During good seasons, each person can earn 2,000-3,000 RMB.
All money earned is spent on children who attend school and family costs such as New Year festivities, fertilizer, electricity, and other essentials. In total, the average family can make approximately 3,700 RMB in cash income per year, and they must spend approximately 3,500 RMB per year. This leaves the average family with 200 RMB in surplus income each year. If the family has students who are going to university then they need to borrow money from others to afford their tuition.

Why we need this training (Problems)
1> General understanding: Health issues are not taught in most of the universities and colleges in Qinghai Province, China, except in the Medical Colleges. As a result, university students and college students have very limited knowledge about health issues.
Also, it is culturally sensitive to talk about health problems related to sex or reproduction. Thus most Tibetan women and girls are shy to talk about those health issues openly even if they know they have some health problems. Even if they want to talk about their health problems, they do not have a safe space for discussing these health issues openly or discussing their problems with other women.
Moreover, there are very few Tibetan books, magazines and newspapers that talk about health problems, especially women’s health problems. So students have little access to general information about health. Those women who received school education have problems accessing health information; women who did not have access to education have even more difficulty accessing health information. Even if the village women had access to some health related books from the government, they still cannot understand them. These problems make it difficult for women to gain knowledge about health issues.
2> Problems identified by doctors and health workers: From talking to a woman gynecologist from the hospital we also know that most women never go to the hospital to check for gynecological diseases unless they are very sick. They wait until they are seriously ill to go to the hospital, and by the time they arrive their sickness has already become very serious.
Also, I talked with a foreign student who had worked on healthcare projects in Tibetan villages. While talking to the villagers, she found diseases like tuberculosis respiratory infections, constipation, vaginal infections and cervical cancer are quite common in the villages. She said, “Women get the illnesses I mentioned because they are unaware of vaginal hygiene and don’t regularly wash/clean the vaginal area. Also, never using toilet paper and the fact that their husbands don’t wash their genital area probably plays a role as well. I think villagers tend to not bother about sickness until it’s very serious, because of the cost of healthcare and the distance and difficulty of travel to a health clinic. I think it’s likely that women, even more than others, don’t pay so much attention to their health – they keep waking up early and working hard all day long even when they are not feeling well, and their illness must get very serious before they try to seek health care. I was also told during my interviews that sometimes women are reluctant to ask their husbands for money to seek healthcare, and sometimes husbands don’t care much about their wives’ health and don’t give them money to see a doctor when they are ill.” She said all this happens because village women know very little about their own health and hygiene.
3> What we learned from implementing a health training: Shem Women’s Group held our first health training in Xining with college students. Our hope was that these young women could go home and share what they learned from the training with their sisters and mothers. While holding the training, the doctor asked lots of questions related to women’s health and very few students, even adults, could answer the questions. The students from medical school also had difficulties with answering the questions. So from the training, we could see that women’s knowledge toward their own health is very limited.
4> What we learned from students: This year in 2009, Shem selected its 2009 members and in total we received 37 application forms and among them 20 students mentioned that the reason they want to take our development class is to learn how to write proposals, so that they could help the women in their villages who suffer from health problems. Those students are from different areas of the Tibetan plateau and more than half of the students mentioned something about health problem in their village. From these applications we can see that health is a big concern in many Tibetan areas.
5> Example of my own experience: My mother used to be farmer and worked in the field for most of her life. Because she lacked basic health knowledge, she often drank un-boiled water, especially when she was doing the harvest and was too exhausted to boil the water. Later, every time after she ate cold food (no matter what food) her lower abdomen started to protrude and feel very painful. Also, she said it was very difficult for her when she went to the toilet. Our family has been taking my mother to the hospital to see the doctor many times. She is diagnosed with a type of gyneopathy that is very serious. Even now, she must be very careful with what foods she eats and must eat a lot of medicine to control the illness.

Solution
We will provide a space for village women to discuss health issues and share each other’s knowledge about health openly. We will also invite Doctor Woxiu Ji from Tibetan Medical Hospital to give a training on health issue for those village women and teach the importance of caring for health problems. In addition, we will give each participant an assignment: to pass what they have learned from the doctor or from other participants to their daughters and other women who are not able to attend the training.

Project Goals
The overarching goal of the project is to provide health education in order to prevent diseases and improve the health conditions of local villagers, especially women.
The immediate goal of the project is to host a three-day health training in Rdo Sbis Township and another two villages to educate village women about common health problems, the importance of caring about women’s health problems and also the methods to prevent gynecological diseases.

Beneficiaries
Around 200 village women will directly benefit from the Health Training and these women will be asked to pass on what they have learned to other women they know, so many other women will also benefit indirectly through the 200 participants.

Government approval
On May 5th, 2009, I went to the township government office and by talking to the county leader Zhou Jya, I realized that the government also offered health trainings before, both in the government meeting hall and in individual villages. Their training was mostly about birth control. So the county leader said this is such a nice thing to do and said the government could provide necessary support, like providing a meeting hall for the training, and also make announcements about the training time. I am very happy that they could provide such support, because with government’s help, villagers will be more cooperative.

Gender equality
The project will be implemented and managed by a young Tibetan woman, and this health training will be offered for women. So this training will benefit about 200 women directly and other women will also benefit indirectly since those women who participated in the training could share their new knowledge with them. Also I, the project manager, as a young woman, will manage the project and serve as a role model for women in the village. Hopefully, this will work to change village women’s attitudes toward sending their daughters to school and will encourage the village women to rethink their ideas that boys are always successful than girls.

Brief concept of training
1. Basic knowledge about women’s common health problem like tuberculosis respiratory infections, constipation, vaginal infections and cervical cancer.
2. The importance of caring about and for women’s health problems.
3. The methods of preventing gynecological disease.

The Steps of Project
1. Found out the health problems by talking to Dr.Suonamtso from the hospital in 2008. (Done)
2. Developed project by attending an international training on education for sustainable development in Sweden. (Done)
3. Discussed the project with the county leader about where and for whom to hold the training. (Done)
4. Conducted informal interviews with some women about the health problems they have. (Done)
5. Contacted one of the health workers who used to being working on health in village to find out about common illness. (Done)
6. Contacted Dr. Woxiuji who will be giving training to the village women.( Done)
7. Figured out the price of materials for the training (Done)
8. Write project proposal. (Done)
9. Funds are received.
10. Meet the county leader and women leaders to discuss the start date of the project.
11. Prepare announcement of the health training.
12. Purchase the materials for the training in Xining.
13. Hold the training.
14. Take pictures and interview the village women about the impact of the project.
15. Send final report to donor.

Detailed Schedule:
This project will be held for five hours each day during three days in winter time
First Saturday, invite two women from each village to attend the training in Rdo Sbis Township government meeting hall. Introduce the common health problems and the importance of caring about women’s health problems in the morning. Use the afternoon to share methods for treating common women’s health problems.
The second Saturday, hold training in Helong Be village with the women in that village. Use two and half hours in the morning and another two and half hours in the afternoon to talk about the health problems and care methods.
The third Saturday, Hold the training in Ning ba Village, and use five hours to talk about the health problems and preventitive methods.
Note: The government leader told me that there are two women in each village who are in charge of women’s affairs and women’s health, so if we invite these women to the training, then they will most likely pass what they learned from the training to other women. The government is providing a small salary to these women in the village, so they have the duty and responsibility to attend every meeting and training announced by the government.
Also we are holding two individual trainings in two villages. Firstly, these villages have a meeting hall that we could use for training and, secondly these two villages are somewhat bigger than other village. Therefore, if we hold a training in these two villages, then more women will get benefits from the training.
In addition, this training will be held in the winter time, because it is the time during which women can have more to rest, and could attend the training without worrying about their housework and other duties. Women are always busy during other seasons, because they need to work in the fields and sometime they even need to leave the village to earn cash for their family.

Detailed Budget

Donation requested from the donor in Chinese Yuan: 6,750rmb
Note: transportation fee is for the project manager and the doctor to go to the project location from Xining. The health training will be held on three different days, so we need to go from Xining to the project location three times.

Photos of the project

The project manager Lumo Tsering talkS to the Township leader about the heath training in his office.

She will be one of the participants of health training in Rdo Sbis Township, because she is one of two women in each village who are in charge of women’s affairs and women’s health, so she will be invited to attend the training.

Map of project Location

to purchase 70 solar generating panels for 70 households and improve living conditions for Cuozhou Township, Jiajia Township and Duojia Township.

Shem US & Dining for Women from US funded this project

Gawangjyid is from Yehe Village, Cuozhou Township, Jiantsa County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. Currently she is working for Shokay (Ventures in Development).

What? Purchase 70 solar generating panels for 70 households to improve the living conditions of the 70 poorest families from Cuozhou Township, Jiajia Township and Duojia Township.

Who? Cuozhou Township (Nega Village, Tsoxiong Village, and Yehe Village), Jiajia Township (A Jiong Village, Nandang Village, HaxuVillage, Ruma Village, Waze Village and Jiangze Village,), Duojia Township (Lhajiong Village and Langwa Village), Jiantsa County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China

Photos of project implementation

The weather is so windy, hence the project manager decided to unload all of the solar panels in a family’s yard.

The villagers are placing all the solar panels in lines as they unload them.

Project recipients are making finger prints for their signature, and handing in the local contribution.

Village heads start distributing the solar panels as the project manager calls the recipients name one by one.

Project recipients are standing in lines to get the solar panels.

Project summary
Project title: Solar Electricity Generating Panel Project for Cuozhou, Jiajia and Duojia townships
Project goals: To purchase 70 solar generating panels for 70 households and improve the living conditions for 70 poorest families from Cuozhou Township, Jiajia Township and Duojia Township.
Project location: This project is located in Cuozhou Township (Nega Village, Lhade Village, and Yehe Village), Jiajia Township (A Jiong Village, Nandang Village, HaxiuVillage, Ruma Village, Waze Village and Jiangze Village), Duojia Township (Lhajiong Village and Langha Village), Jiantsa County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, PRC. Cuozhou Township is 180 kilometers away from Xining, the capital city of Qinghai Province. Jiajia Township and Duojia Township are 185 kilometers away from Xining City. All of these areas are both agricultural and nomadic villages with 270 families total. Half of the family members herd in the pastures and half of them farm in the field.
Total beneficiaries: This project directly benefits 70 households with 490 people from those eleven villages in Cuozhou Township (Nega Village, Cuoxiong Village, and Yehe Village), Jiajia Township (A Jiong Village, Nandang Village, HaxuVillage, Ruma Village, Waze Village and Jiangze Village), and Duojia Township (Lhajiong Village and Langha Village)
Implementation organization/Individual: Gawang Jyid (project manager), Danba (JiaJia tribe leader), Zhouluo (Yehe village head), Wangjie and YangcuoJi (volunteer villagers from Ruma village), Zhaxi (villager from Langha), Yangzhong (villager from Lha Jiong), Zhuoma Bum (villager from Tso Xiong) and Shem Women’s Group.
Contact Group: Shem Women’s Group
Funds received (Source, Amount, and Date Received): Gawang Jyid received 37,064rmb from Shem Women’s Group on March 2nd, 2010 and will receive 9,266rmb after the project manager implements the project successfully.

Details of project activities
1. Had a meeting with the village leaders and a female representative from each village to collect information about their urgent needs or biggest problems.
2. Chose one person from each village to take responsibility for work related to the project. Zhouluo from Yehe Village, Zhuomaben from Cuoxiong Village, Gaisang from Nega Village, Yangtso from Ajiong Village, Danba from Haxu Village, Wangjie from Ruma Village, Renchen Nor Ri from Waze Village, Yangzhong from Lhajiong Village, Caijia from Lhangha Village.
3. Found the cheapest and best quality solar panels and found out how much each solar panel costs. We contacted Gesang Solar Panel Company first because of their great reputation and history of success.
4. Wrote project proposal.
5. Found a donor for funding and sent the proposal.
6. Held a meeting with village leaders, and discussed each person’s contribution of labor (e.g. when the solar panels arrived to the project site, they should help the project manager distribute the solar panels carefully and make sure they know how to use it.)
7. Had a meeting with village leaders to arrange a time to carefully transport the solar panels.
8. Purchased the cheapest, best quality solar panels and transported them in a tractor to Ruma Village since Ruma Village is in the middle and it is convenient for other villagers come there to get their solar panels.
9. Completed project.
10. Interviewed recipients and took pictures.
11. Completed the final report.
12. Sent final report with all pictures and receipts to Shem.

Project finance

Note: Project manager Gawang Jyid received 46,330 RMB from Shem Women’s Group and received 10,850 RMB from the village. The original local contribution was estimated at 10,750 RMB, but the villagers gave the project manager 100 RMB more than the original estimate. The reason was that the villagers rounded up the 153.57 RMB that each recipient owed to 155 RMB per person, so 100 RMB was left from the local contribution which is not in the above table. As a result, the project manager got a total of 57,180 RMB for the project. The project cost 56,840 RMB and 340 RMB was left from both the donor and local contribution. From that 340 RMB, 90 RMB was left from the donor contribution.

List of recipients

Translation of the recipients

Delays, Difficulties and Lessons Learnt

Delays
The factory needed 15 days to produce 70 solar panels for Gawang Jyid, so she signed a contract with them, but after 15 days, Gesang Solar Panel Factory told Gawang Jyid that they were very sorry, but they hadn’t completed the order. Therefore, Gawang Jyid gave them one more week to finish the rest of the work.

Difficulties
With the villagers’ help and great cooperation, the project manager didn’t face any serious problems or difficulties during the implementation of Solar Electricity Generating Panel Project. From Xining to Kang Yang Township, the road is wide and paved well, but from Kang Yang to Ruma Village, Jiajia Township the road is not really good. It is paved simply, but the road is through mountains, and narrows as well. Therefore, the driver complained about road all the way. Gawang Jyid explained all the road conditions before they signed the contract and the contract emphasized that the driver would transport 70 solar panels to the project site safely. So, the driver couldn’t do anything such as stop on the way.

Another difficulty was that some villages have more people living in the pasture (compared to 2007 when she wrote the proposal) and some other villages have fewer people living in the pasture, so the total number of households in the pasture is around 80 now, but Gawang Jyid only had 70 solar panels. Therefore, the village heads helped the project manager choose the 70 poorest households. The village heads and project manager chose them according to their family conditions, such as the number of yaks, sheep, land mu, and the number of people who are able to work. The project manager could see from their faces that those 10 families who were not chosen were upset. Therefore, project manager Gawang Jyid had to comfort them with saying that she will apply for solar panels for them in the future as well.

Lessons learnt
By managing this project, project manager learnt and experienced the following things:

1)It is very important to be respectful, thoughtful, enthusiastic and flexible in order to carry out a project successfully.
2)Project manager should make everything clear when dealing with any other person, and must sign a contract in order to avoid any problems that might happen.
3)žIt is important to be well prepared before starting the project in order to prevent the problems.
ž4)The project manager should be familiar with the project site in order to choose the best method to implement the project.
5)Every project has different kind of things to learn; e.g., even though Gawang Jyid had done solar cooker and threshing machine projects before, she learned more things from implementing this solar panel project.
6)Larger scale projects can make the manager practice more.
ž7)Helping the poorest people to meet the urgent need is the most pleasant thing to do

Interview of the project beneficiaries

This is Jiumei standing in front of his house. He told the project manager that he is very excited and happy to get light at night from those warm and kind-hearted donors. He said he felt thankful for those who helped him get this light.

Her name is Gasang Ji. When project manager Gawang Jyid entered her house, Gasang Ji took Gawang Jyid’s hand into her hand, crying and saying that Gawang Jyid had given eyes to them. As Gawang Jyid explained again that she is only the person who transported the solar panels to them, but there are some other important people who really helped them to get solar panel is the donor, then Gasang Ji was saying constantly “those long-life kind-hearted donors, those long-life kind-hearted donors, those long-life…”

Thank you letter

Translation of thank you letter

Thank you letter

Dear most thankful donor,
On behalf of all the Jiajia, Duojia, and Cuozhou people, we ( Jiajia community) would like to show our great gratitude to you for giving 70 solar electricity generating panels to the poorest households that are living in the pastures. We would like to say Thank You Very Much from the bottom of our heart!

Sincerely

Jiajia Community
April 3^rd, 2010

The list of receipts

Receipt #1

Total amount of money to purchase 70 solar panels: 56,000 RMB.

Receipt#2

Transportation fee from the factory to the project site: 450 RMB.

Receipt #3

There are in total 11 pieces of taxi receipts for visiting factory to decide which product to purchase and to check the quality of the product when the factory completed the product, as well as go to factory to get the panelsand back to office after the project is implemented. Plus phone fee, taxi from the village to Jianzha County Town, bus from Jianzha to Xining: Total for management costs is 390 RMB.

Original Proposal
Project Location
This project will be located in Cuozhou Township (exactly in Cuoxiong Village, Lhade Village, and Yehe Village), Jiajia Township (in HaxiuVillage, Ruma Village, Waze Village and Jiangze Village), Duojia Township (in Lhajiong Village and Langha Village), Jiantsa County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, PRC. Cuozhou Township is 180 kilometers away from Xining, the capital city of Qinghai province. Jiajia Township and Duojia Township are 185 kilometers away from Xining City. All of these areas are both agricultural and nomadic villages with 270 families’ total. Half of the family members herd in the pastures and half of them farm in the field.

Population
In these nine villages there are 1890 people, making up 270 households. Usually there are 1530 people in the farming areas and 360 people in the pastures. This project will directly benefit 70 households with 490 people from those nine villages. Of these 490 people, 170 are children, 157 are men and 163are women. These are very poor people who cannot afford cheap, low-quality solar panels. (The project manager selected the poorest families from these villages with the help of the village leaders and some old, faithful villagers).

Education
Only 43 out of the 170 children currently attend school. 4 of them are college students（1 girl and 3 boys）13 of them are middle school students (5 girls and 8 boys) and 26 of them are primary school students 11 girls and 15 boys. The rest of the 127 school aged children help their parents with herding and farming. All of the middle aged and old people are illiterate in these villages due to the following reasons:

Before 1981, all the fields and livestock were shared by all the villagers together. Whichever family labored more for the public fields and livestock got more barley and wheat. Therefore, at that time all the parents kept their children at home for labor. Consequentially all the villagers worked very hard and didn’t have time and money to pay for tuition. Hence the entire population of old and adult villagers are illiterate now.

After 1981, fields and livestock were divided for each household. Since then, each family owned their own fields or livestock. But they were too poor to send their children to the school immediately. After they divided the fields and livestock, they could only have around ten sheep or goats and five yaks according to the number of family members who could work. Although they still do not have a large amount of livestock, they have to herd them in the pasture for the whole year. When they are herding they cannot leave to earn additional income and thus cannot afford tuition for schooling

Cash Income
Every year, each household could earn 700-800 rmb on average by digging caterpillar fungus. (Caterpillar fungus is a kind of herb and plant that grows on the grassland. And they can sell it with around 8-9 rmb for each.) They have to buy clothes, tea, salt, candles, vegetables and also some barley and wheat with that little money. Due to their low incomes they are unable to purchase sufficient supplies for the whole year. With that little money, they buy around 70 candles costing about 90 rmb for the whole year. They only use these candles when it’s entirely dark that they can’t see anything at all with burning sap. They’re also used some other special evenings such as when guests are at their home or during ceremonies or ritual evenings. Hence they purchase one pair of clothes to share with all family members, one little pack of tea and salt, 70 candles, vegetables, one pack of barley and a little wheat. It is very hard for them to buy clothes, because they would have to spend 500 rmb on average if they bought clothes for each family member. Therefore they have to wear one set of clothes for three or four years until they become very old and worn-out. Milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, barley and wheat are their main food sources. Sometimes they kill a weak or old yak, sheep or goat to have enough money to survive. Thereby, some years these poorest 70 families from these nine villages can barely sustain their lives. So this project can greatly improve the lives of those very poor 70 households.

Agriculture
The villagers in these nine villages plant wheat, barley, potatoes, and beans. The richest families have 3.5-mu of fields to plant those crops (just enough for a year’s worth of food without surplus). Each year they can produce 500 jin of barley, wheat or potatoes, per mu. However, the poorer families only have 2 mu of fields, which means 2 mu to feed all members of the family. If one year has less rain, those poorer families might not even have enough food for themselves. Sometimes the government gives one or two packs of flour to the poorest families, but this is not sufficient.

Herding
These villages are semi-nomadic places. In these nine villages, 122 households have only five or six yaks, 114 households have around 10sheep, and 32 households have 4 or 5 yaks and also 7 or 8 sheep (these families are the relatively rich families in the villages). Some families don’t have yaks but might only have around ten sheep. This project will benefit 37 families from 122 households who only have yaks and 33 families from 114 households who only have sheep, because these 70 families are the poorest families in this area.

Project goals
The overall goal of this project is to improve living conditions for Cuozhou Township, Jiajia Township and Duojia Township.
The immediate purpose of this project is to purchase 70 solar generating panel for 70 households

Electricity is essential for our lives, but those 490 villagers not only live in darkness at night, but also they can’t see anything on the TV to get information or broaden their view of the world. More importantly, if there is light, there will be fewer instances of villagers getting hurt by yaks. Access to light will also improve villagers’ access to education.

Problems

Sometimes those 70 households who are in the pasture lose their livestock during their herding and are not able to drive them home before dark. Therefore, they have to milk and feed the lambs, bucks or baby yaks during the night. One of woman was blinded by a yak’s horn when she was trying to tie the yak to its line during the night; the yak stuck its horn in her left eye. She doesn’t have money to go hospital to heal it, so her left eye has been blinded since then. While a thirteen year old girl was feeding a baby yak underneath its mother, one another yak came to attack the baby yak and its mother. That girl was placed between the two yaks and she was terribly wounded. In winter, the villagers have to keep their lambs and baby goats on their kang (bed made of earth; smoke comes from an adobe stove and heats the bed) under the basket. One night, a mother was cooking in the darkness when her little baby was sleeping. While she heard the scream, a lamb came to the baby and chewed the baby’s fingers. So, villagers were terrified, although they cautiously take care of themselves to avoid those risks, those dangerous events occur only during the dark time, so if they have solar panels, they can make light in the house and carry the light to outside also to see the livestock. Until now, seven villagers have been terribly wounded by livestock due to lack of light.
Because the villagers don’t have enough money to buy candle, they usually burn sap to make light till it is very dark, and then they would light candles. They can collect sap from the trees, but they can’t make too much light from it. Candles produce more smoke in an already smoke-filled house. Plus they also have to cook by burning wood or yak dung, which creates more smoke as well. The smoke makes the villagers’ eyes tear up all the time and gradually damages villagers’ eyes. In addition, it is very dark usually when they are feeding their livestock, so they can’t see if there is dirty garbage such as worn-out pieces of clothes or plastic bags in the animals’ food. (Animal foods are dried straws and the surface of wheat, which are usually on the ground randomly, so it is easy to mix with garbage.) Because they pour it to the livestock’s bowl with a big spoon and mix it in to a little bit flour with a stick. Hence sometimes livestock would die from contaminated food. However, the villagers would eat its meat though it was dead of illness, because food is not so sufficient for them if they don’t eat it. Hence some villagers would become strictly ill and sometimes a few of them would die. All the villagers have had stomachaches; one girl and an old man were dead because of eating contaminated yak meat.
From this year, the government decided not to collect tuition for primary and middle school students. Hence the rate of attending school is increasing in other villages. However, those 127 children from those 70 households still can’t attend school, because all of the children have to help their parents to try to finish the house work before dark. Further more, those 43 children who are attending school are unable to finish their homework or read other books at home when it is dark. These villages are located in a remote area. They don’t have electricity to see movies or watch TV. They have no access to see about other people, societies, countries, and global issues.

Benefits

Due to all of potentially harmful and dangerous things that can unexpectedly happen in darkness this project will improve these 490 villagers’ safety. Because at least they could see what is happening and what is around them.
Supplying this project will improve the villagers’ health. If these people have electricity generating panels, they don’t have to burn as much sap to create light and won’t have to destroy their eyes from its smoke.
If they have electricity, they could see if there any dirty things in the livestock’s food or not (i.e., they can bring the livestock’s bowl inside the house under the light to see if there is any garbage or not. They can take the light bulb with them to give food to the livestock, because the bulb’s line is pretty long and the distance from people’s room and livestock room are very short). Then the livestock will get sick less often. As a result, the villagers won’t die or get sick from eating contaminated livestock. Therefore, providing this project can improve the villagers’ health.
If this project is funded, most of those 127 children would have a greater opportunity to graduate from primary or middle school and become literate. Those students who are attending school will be able to do their homework and do some reading in the evening. Hence this project can give opportunities for those 26 children to improve their primary and middle school education. When I talked to some of the parents, they said that now they have solar cookers from a previous Shem project they do not need to collect as much yak dung as before, so they can send their children to primary school and middle school at least. Not many children were sent to the school, but at least 7 children were sent to the school after my solar cooker project was done.

Gender Equality
Usually women and girls cook in the house for family members and feed livestock in the darkness. If this project is funded, women and girls’ difficulties related to light would be driven away. Men and boys would also be happy about it, because they are also not comfortable when their mothers, sisters and wives are suffering from darkness. So local men, women and children are involved in the project planning and will be involved in implementation and maintenance, because all of them will benefit from this project directly.

This project will also improve people’s perceptions of women and their capabilities. Women’s social status in this village is very low. Girls are not expected to do any helpful things for the villagers and their community. For example, when I was doing the clothes project for the first time, the villagers really didn’t believe what I was doing and they wondered how I could do that. Their idea of me changed a little since I have completed two clothes projects. When I first had a meeting with the villagers and discussed the urgent need for solar cookers, they thought I was not capable enough to do such a big job; they didn’t take the project seriously. However, after I completed the solar cooker project, their view of me totally changed. They paid me compliments and said that I was “even more capable than a man.” Not only their view of me changed, but they also paid more of their attention to their daughters.

Effect on Children

Children also benefit as I stated in the Benefit part. Specifically this project will help them in many ways. First of all, this project will help children attending school. Secondly they can do home works under the light that the teachers won’t get angry at them and punish them, and also they can read the texts or other books to catch up the other students or learn more. And thirdly babies don’t get hurt at least from lambs and calf in the darkness. Children also won’t be hurt by livestock. All of them will grow up without get injury in the night. It is very sad to see that a child got injured and stay with it in his or her whole life. So this project will stop those uncomfortable and pity thing to happen. More over, the villagers said as far they know, children’s eyes are easy to be hurt, the light from solar panel won’t hurt children’s eyes though they read many books under the light than the smoke comes from the sap burning for making light does.

Government Support
May 3rd, 2006 – Gawangjyid talked to the government leader Namlah. He gave enthusiastic consent and said that he would appreciate it if the donors realized our difficulties and funded any kind of project.

Project Steps
Have a meeting with the family leaders (men and women) to collect information of their urgent needs or biggest problems in each village. (I did this)
The project manager and the village leaders selected the 70housholds.
Choose four people from each village to take responsibility for any kind of work related to the project. Two responsible women, the village leader and another man who takes care of the village usually. Also choose a general leader to take responsibility for all of them. (I discussed this with the villagers and they said they would do the work if the project was funded.)
Find the Solar Electricity Generating Panel Company selling the cheapest and best quality and make sure we know how much it will cost per solar electricity generating panel. This step has already been completed, and we will use the Huangnan Autonomous Prefecture’s Nima Brand Company Factory because of their great reputation and history of success. (completed)
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 solar electricity generating panel to the village, distribute to each family and make sure everybody knows how to use it, take responsibility for not damaging the solar electricity generating panel).
Have a meeting with all of those four people from each village to arrange a time to carefully carry the solar electricity generating panel to each village.
Purchase the most cost-effective, best quality solar electricity generating panel and carry them in the Nima Brand Company truck to the village.
After distributing the solar electricity generating panel to each family and making sure everybody knows how to use it, supervise the process of the project with four people who are already chosen. Do this with the general leader, whom we’ve already chosen, and the four people chosen from each village.
Complete project.
Interview villagers (men, women and children) and take pictures.
Complete final report.
Send final report with all pictures and receipts.

Time Frame
This project takes 35 days to complete it from the project is funded

2 days: Have a meeting with the villagers and choose two people to buy solar electricity generating panels. (Choose these two people from 36 people who are already chosen to take responsibility for the project).

5 days: Purchase solar electricity generating panels and carry them to the villages.

5 days: Give solar panels to 70 households

12 days: Interview residents and take pictures.

11 days: Complete the final report and send to the donor.

Detailed Budget

The total project cost: 57,580rmb

The total donor contribution: 57,580 rmb (6,783dollars)

The local contribution: 10,7rmb50

Shem Women’s Group: 500rmb

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 solar electricity generating panels and take care of them as if they were treasures. This project will be sustained for at least ten years because the solar electricity generating panels that we will buy are of good quality. The few families in neighboring villages who have already bought solar electricity generating panels from Nima Brand Company have used them for four years. I went to ask them about the quality as I did when I was doing the solar cooker project for Yehe village, and they claimed the quality was excellent. They didn’t find any flaws during the four years of use. Also one of our Shem members bought solar panels from Nima Company (two other Shem members have bought from Nima Company, but not in Huangnan Prefecture) and she vouches for their quality. Additionally, the solar panels are covered by one year warrantee from Nima Company.

Additional Information
I completed one solar cooker project for 350 people in Yehe village in December 2006. When I was doing that project, a neighbor villager came and asked for solar cookers for their village. Therefore, I told them that I would try my best to write another solar cooker proposal for them. Recently, however, I heard that the government is going to give them solar cookers. Hence I wrote this solar panel proposal for them.

So far, I have completed two used clothes projects and one solar cooker project which solved many problems that the villagers are facing. I will implement this project as soon as it is funded and will then write a proposal for a threshing machine.

Interviews
When I decided to do this project, I interviewed many people in each of the nine villages. When I interviewed an old woman named Tsering Dorma she said that not having electricity or light at night was very difficult for her, but she’d never imagine that she could use a solar panel, because it’s too expensive for them to afford. She cried in despair, making me also cry.

Another interview was conducted with a young man named Deger. He said the lack of light it was not sorrowful for him, because he believed that is his karma. However, he really didn’t want his son to have this kind of life. He said that once he sent his son to the school which was far away. His son came back home after dark every day, so he could not do his homework. It was too difficult for his son to continue his studies, so he stopped going to school. The man said that this was the biggest sorrow of his life.

Map of Project Site

To provide second-hand clothing to impoverished villagers to solve living problems that Gartshe villager face in Rebgong County.

Private donors funded this project

Dpalmo gyal (Alison) is from Horgyal Village, Rebgong County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. Currently, she is studying towards a BA degree in English and Tibetan at Qinghai Normal University

What: This project is to provide second-hand clothing to impoverished villagers to solve living problems that Gartshe villager face in Rebgong County.

Brief Description of Implementation
This project was implemented on February 7^th, 2010; it was nearly the time for celebrating Losar. I chose two poorest families in Gartshe village according to their income situation and members of people who can participate in work under their village leader’s help. After the village leader and I distributed the clothes to the two families. The two families were very happy and especially their children were happy to receive those clothes.

Project beneficiaries

Her name is Sgrontso. She is 86 years old now. She had one son but he was died after he got married. After her son’s death, Sgrontso’s daughter-in-low took her two sons and left home. After that no one cares Sgrontso and she became lonely and weaker. Her living condition became worse and she couldn’t work anymore. Since then her life is depending on the little money that villagers contribute. She said she had nothing to give to express her gratified heart but thanks for the people who helped her from bottom of her heart.

His name is Lung rtog. He is eighteen years old. He studies in senior high school. His parents were divorced when he was eight and he lived with his mother’s parents. Lung rtog’s parents do not take care of him because they have other children. Now his grandparents are old and have no abilities to work and send him to school. But Lung rtog’s study is very good so his school fee is given by a sponsor. The sponsor only cares his school fee and his cloth is always not very good.

List of recipients

Thanks letter

Translated thanks letter

Dear donors,

I am a simple student in Gartshe Village. In such a cold winter day, thank you very much that you kindly sent these warm and nice clothes to people who are living in poor conditions such as me and the lonely old woman. For me I never had a chance to wear the modern beautiful clothes, but I never give up with my study. For my grandparents and aunt Sgron tso, they are old and already have no ability to work and earn money. Therefore, I would like to say thank you again and again to the donors and Shem group instead of the other beneficiaries’ for you avoided many difficulties and long distance to send these clothes to us.

February 7^th, 2010

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.

What? Supply 30 solar electricity-generating panels for 30 households in Tsha Ra Village to provide light for them at night.

Who? Tsha Ra Village, Mkhar Sgng Township, Ganzi County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.

Photos of the project implementation

The project manager is checking the quality of the solar panels.

Some of the villagers and the solar expert are loading the solar panels.

The villagers are unloading the solar panels.

The villagers are placing all the solar panels into several rows and getting ready to distribute them to the project recipients.

The project manager and the solar expert are training the villagers about how to use the solar panels.

The village leader and the project manager are collecting the local contributions and letting villagers make fingerprints on the paper for their signatures.

The woman in the picture said they no longer need to stay in the darkness during the night.

This is the brilliant light that each family can enjoy thanks to the solar panel. They are no longer suffering from having no light during the night and worry about cost of candles and kerosene.

Project Summary

Project title: Solar Electricity Generating Panels Project for Tsha Ra Village.

Project Goals: The immediate goal of this project is to purchase 30 solar panels for 30 households in Tsha Ra Village. The overarching goal of this project is to provide bright light for all the villagers and reduce women’s heavy workloads; the villagers will be healthier because they will be able to get rid of the smoke from kerosene, candles and butter lamps. Especially during the nighttime, women will be able to do the housework conveniently by the bright light.

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 30 km away from Ganzi County Town and Ganzi County is located in the northeast of the provincial city of Sichuan and it’s about 745 km away from Chengdu City. Ghengdu is about 1,388 km away from Xining.

Total beneficiaries: There are about 151 people in Tsha Ra Village who directly benefited from this project.

Implementation organization/individual: Xiangba Lacuo (Phoebe), Ze Jia Luo (Mkhar Sgng township leader), Ge Gan ( the village leader), Ze Weng Da Ji, Luo Ga Qing Zhen and La Weng Cuo (villagers); and Shem Women’s Group.

Contact Group: Shem Women’s Group

Funds received: Amount and date received
The project manger, Xiangba Lacuo, received 80% of project funds (32,764 RMB) from Shem Women’s Group on December 15th 2009, and will receive 20% (8,191 RMB) after the project manager implements the project successfully and submits the final report for the project.

Details of the project activities
1. In 2008, during the winter holiday, the project manager discussed the problems with villagers and what could be done to reduce those problems.
2. In May 2008, talked to the village leader about the community’s most important needs and discussed how the electricity problem can be solved.
3. In May 2008, held a meeting with villagers and negotiated details about the project.
4. In June 2008, collected all the information about the project.
5. In July 2008, found out the price of the materials for the project (solar panels) from ‘Mtho Sgng Gi Ni Aod’ company.
6. Completed the proposal.
7. In July 2009, project was funded.
8. On January 11, 2010, collected local contributions.
9. On January 12, 2010, two men and two women from the village went with the project manager to purchase 30 solar panels from ‘Mtho Sgng Gi Ni Aod’ company where they had previously ordered 30 qualified solar panels.
10. Hired a truck to transport the solar panels from Gan zi County to Tsha Ra Village.
11. Held a meeting again and unloaded the solar panels from the truck.
12. Solar expert trained villagers on how to use the solar panels properly.
13. Distributed the solar panels to the villagers and they signed their names.
14. Took pictures during the implementation of the project.
15. Started to write the final report of solar panel project.

Project finances

Delays and lessons learned
Delay
There was one main issue that delayed the implementation of the project for several months: Since the project manager was in school when the project was funded, it was not possible to take 20 days off during the semester. Therefore she had to wait until the winter holiday to implement the project.

Lessons learned
By doing this solar panel project, the project manager got experience in how to deal with different people, and learned how to contact companies and drivers so that solar panels could be guaranteed and transported to the project location safely. The project manager is inspired by the experience of implementing this project. Her expectation of doing more development work is expanded. The project manager learned confidence is the most important thing for being a project manager, especially a female manager. If the project manager is not afraid of facing tough things, but instead confronts difficulties with a big smile, everything will be done with great success. She also learned how to make a schedule and follow that schedule. One more important thing that she learned through this project is “no matter what you do, if you take  full responsibility for finishing it, there is no doubt of a wonderful result.”    

Interviews of the project beneficiaries

This is Gen Ga’s family; there are four people in the family. They are extremely happy to have such a bright light during the night time. The two boys can read and write under the solar light at night. Gen Ga’s wife said “her sons are willing to read and write under the shining light, we are really grateful for this help.” She feels comfortable working at night because of the light.

Droma said, “I am willing to chant Mani and I could chant even more than what I promised to chant a day from my devoted Lama; furthermore our grand-daughter could finish her homework completely during the night by the shining light of solar panel.” And her daughter-in-law is happy to do the housework anytime at night.

This teenager is studying in Ganzi Tibetan middle school. This is her last semester for studying in middle school, so it is time to review all the subjects and she has to prepare for the senior entrance examination in June. She said “I am more confident that I will pass the examination, because I can review under the brilliant light. And I could follow my schedule on time. Otherwise I could never finish what I planned before, because the candle  burnt out and finished quickly, and I can’t burn too many candles since it’s too expensive. Now I can review during both day and night time and do not need worry about finishing burning candles.”

Thank you letter

Translation of thank you letter
Dear ETWA
First of all, on behalf of all the villagers, I want to sincerely thank you. Our villagers owe you a great debt of gratitude. This is the greatest contribution that ever happened to us. This is the first time for our village to receive such great benefit. These solar panels are  special things that we can use without any expense. With your support we have 30 solar panels in 30 households.

In general, our village’s economic condition is relatively poor and villagers are living by digging cater pillar fungus and doing construction work. These solar electricity generating panels improved our living conditions. While we did not have these solar panels, women’s workload is technically heavy and we had to use kerosene, candles and butter lamps, which harm people’s health and eye sight.

Right now, not only those problems are solved, but also we can enjoy such bright light during the nighttime. Moreover, we can play the radio and listen to music and news. We really appreciate your great contribution and help to our village. We will surely employ these things in a good manner. And we will cooperatively protect the solar panels with a great care in the future.

Faithfully,

Tsha Ra Village, 19th of January, 2010

List of recipients

The translation for the list of recipients

The contract between the village and the Solar Panel Company

Receipt # 1

It is for 45,000 RMB for purchasing 30 solar panels.

Receipt #2

It is for 115 RMB for the transportation fee for the solar panels from Ganzi County town to Tsha Ra Village (project location)

Receipt # 3 project management expenses

It is for 30 RMB for phone call fee during the implementing the project.

It is for 83 RMB for the train ticket from Xining to Cheng du.

It is for 300 RMB for transporting one person by small car from Chengdu City to Ganzi county town.

Original Proposal

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

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

In 2009, Shem Women’s Group has offered several activities: small-scale development project workshop, gender courses, basic computer class and TOEFL class for the young college female students from Qinghai Normal University and Qinghai Nationalities University. In addition, Shem’s members have successfully implemented and managed 26 different projects in rural areas in Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu Provinces. Those projects have directly benefited around 17,500 local people.

View full report

To build a running water system for Walo Village and Yajiong Village, in order to supply clean water for Walo and Yajiong Villages to reduce the villager’s burden, and increase enrollment of school children and improve their living condition.

Youth Group from Vienna funded this project

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 of 2008, and currently she is working for Shem Women’s Group in Xining City, Qinghai Province.

What? Build a running water system for Walo Village, Yajiong Village and Nuri Village to supply clean water for the villagers, to reduce their burden, increase enrollment of school children and improve their living conditions.

Where? Walo, Yajiong and Nuri villages are located in Jialaxi Township, Xinlong County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province

Photos of project implementation

The villagers are loading the water pipes into the tractor; the villagers transported five full tractors of water pipes to the villages.

In this picture, the village men are carrying cement bags on their backs to one of the families for keeping and the women are using wooden baskets to carry the cement. During the daytime, all the villagers dig ditches and during nighttime they transport materials such as cement. They work hard and fast because the winter is coming soon.

This is a part of a ditch the villagers dug.

The project manager is visiting the ditches with the villagers. This picture shows the bags of bread and tea the villagers carry on their backs to save time when they dig ditches. They work hard, and only return home at night.

The village women dug the water box for storing water for Walo Village while the village men transported the water pipes. In this photo, the project committee Chele is measuring the hole with a stick and telling the villagers that they still need to make it much bigger and deeper.

Each household in Walo and Yajiong villages has water taps in their yard. The woman in the picture is from Walo village and she is fetching water.

The woman in the picture is from Yajiong Village and she is happily washing clothes under the convenient water tap in winter. The villagers use pieces of warm cloth to cover the spigots to keeping it warm to prevent it from freezing at night.

Project summary

Project title: Water Project for Walo,Yajiong and Nuri villages

Project goals: The immediate goal of the project is to build a running water system for Walo, Yajiong and Nuri villages, in Jialaxi Township, Xinlong County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. The overarching goal of the project is to supply clean water for Walo and Yajiong villages to reduce the villagers’ burdens, increase enrollment of school children and improve their living conditions.

Project location: The project is located in Walo and Yajiong and Nuri Villages. Walo Village is about 1 km away from Yajiong Village on the same mountain slope, and the three villages are in Jialaxi Township, Xinlong (Nyarong) County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. The villages are about 18 km from Xinlong county town; this is about 700 km from Chengdu City, the capital of Sichuan Province.

Total project beneficiaries: This project directly benefits 56 people from Walo Village, 13 people from Yajiong Village and 31 people from Nuri Village. In total, about 100 people benefit from the project.

Implementing organization/individual: Tashi Hlamo (project manager), Chele and Duoke (the village leaders for this year in Walo and Yajiong villages), A qu (from Nuri village), and Shem Women’s Group.

Contact Group: Shem Women’s Group

Funding ¾ source, amount, and date received:

Tashi Hlamo received 51,244.40 RMB from Shem Women’s Group on October 21^st, 2009, and will receive 12,811.10 RMB after the project manager implements the project successfully.

Details of project activities

1.      Discussed with the villagers why the village needs water and collected information for the project.

2.      Visited the water spring to see whether it is big enough for all the villages.

3.      Discussed the project’s needs with Sangjia (who is more knowledgeable about the water project than other people in the villages) and determined what kinds of materials we need.

4.      Contacted the firm’s leader to get specifications and prices for the water pipe.

5.      Asked the local government leader, Banggeng Duoji, to get permission for the project.

6.      Decided what labor the villagers could complete, i.e. digging ditches and burying pipes.

7.      Took pictures for the project.

8.      Wrote proposal.

9.      Received funds.

10.  Met with the villagers to decide the starting date of the project.

11.  Invited a skilled worker from the hydroelectric board in the county town to measure the distances from the villages to the springs and designed it     again.

12.  Bought the water pipes, cement, sand and gravel and transported them to the village.

13.  Dug the ditches and buried the pipes in the ditch.

14.  The neighbor five families of Walo and Yajiong villages had a meeting and started the water project.

15.  Purchased the water pipes and dug ditches together.

16.  Had meeting with the villagers and interviewed the village men, women and children about the project and took photos.

17.  Completed the final report with all pictures and receipts for implementing the project.

Project finance

*: Explanation: 8,848.75 RMB was left from the donor contribution of the project. We originally planned to build water boxes for each household besides the water taps in Walo and Yajiong villages for winter time, but the skilled worker from the hydroelectric board said it is not necessary to build water boxes for the villages because the water is from a steep mountain, in addition, the villages and the spring are located on the sunny side. Ultimately, the villagers did not need to build water boxes for each family, so we saved 8,848.75 RMB.

Helped another five households with the rest money from the project:Originally we planned to do a water project for only Walo and Yajiong village but as we mentioned above, we had 8,848.75 RMB left from the project. Therefore the project manager decided to add five more families to the project. The five households are also living on the same mountain slope as Walo and Yajiong and their life style and living condition are exactly the same as Walo and Yajiong’s. The five households are in Nuri Village and they also had the same water problem as the two villages. Six bags of cement were left from the project of Walo and Yajoing. So the project manager used the rest of the money and also collected 1,650 RMB from the local people to buy water pipes for the five households and also used the six bags of cement for building a water box. You can see the implementation of project for the five households follow:

Two women and one old man are cooking food for the villagers who are digging the ditch.

The five families finished digging the ditch and they are putting the water pipe in the ditch.

Water was brought into the middle of the village from a spring above them. At the moment, the villagers are using two big gas cans like in the picture instead of the water box till this spring.

The project manager is checking the water. Behind her is the water box which was built in middle of the village with the six bags of cement which were left from the project of Walo and Yajiong villages. The villagers did not take wooden boards yet because winter was coming soon when they finished building it and they are going to take wooden boards to use the water box starting this spring.

Delays, Difficulties and Lessons Learnt
Delays
After implementing the project, the project manager needed to see the project and interview the local beneficiaries. However, the project manager decided to delay that phase for about a month so she could use one stone to kill two birds and interview the villagers when she went home for the Tibetan New Year. Otherwise, the project site is very far from the where project manager works and it takes at least ten days to get there. Also, the project manager would need to take days off work. Therefore, the project manager delayed the project for about one month. 

Difficulties
During the process of implementing the project, the project manager encountered a few little problems, but no serious problems. One small problem was that first all the villagers( except very old people and very small children) dug the ditches together for two days, but the villagers soon discovered that it was impossible for them to finish digging the ditches within warm whether (in autumn) without the other villagers’ help. Therefore, the villagers got together to discuss how to dig it faster, and finally agreed to divide the ditch length to dig and divide it up between the families. Then each family called their relatives to dig the ditches from dawn to dark.

Another small problem was that the villagers needed to dig very long and deep ditches for burying the water pipes from the spring to the village, so at that time the villagers had to divide the labor to work hard and fast because the winter was coming soon. Unfortunately, one family got a hard and difficult place to dig, then that family refused to dig it and asked the project manager to divide the labors again. It was really hard for the project manager, but finally she convinced the family and they all agreed and the project continued successfully.

Lessons learnt
Through implementing the water project, the project manager Tashi Hlamo had learnt two important things that were different from other projects that she has done so far. One is that she realized that making the community have a harmonious relationship is very important to making the project go successfully and it is also the first step for doing a project. For instance, during digging the long and hard ditch the villagers worked very hard from dawn to dark and they took everything very seriously. That made it easier for the project manager complete the project and she was impressed by the villagers’ endeavors and the harmonious cooperation for the project.

The project manager had done several projects but not water project. So during implementing this water project, she learnt what materials are needed for a water project and also the prices of water pipes. She also discovered that there are many kinds of water pipes (small, big, thin and thick) with different prices. She got experience in buying water pipes; for instance, she now knows which type of water pipes are needed if she wants to do a water project for ten households. Thus the project manager got good experiences and more confidence for doing water projects.

Interviews

A Duo: The project manager Tashi Hlamo interviewed the girl in the picture during the Tibetan New Year. A Duo is 25 years old and she is from Nuri Village. There are ten people in her family: her parents, four younger sisters, two younger brothers, an uncle and herself. During the interview, she said before the project the villagers needed to fetch water from down valley, which is more than one kilometer from the village. One of her sisters was in charge of fetching water for her family, and if her family asked some monks to chant then she needed to spend the whole day carrying water for her family. Also, before the project their livestock could only drink water in the pastures, not the village. However, with our help, they now have water; since her sister doesn’t need to fetch water anymore, she went to a nunnery to become a nun. She said what a great help it is for the people and the livestock, and she thanked the project manager and donor very much.

A Nuo: He is the old man who is wearing red hat in the picture. He is from Walo Village. The project manager also interviewed A Nuo during their Tibetan New Year, so each person has a bottle of sweet drink and a plate of seeds in front of them in the picture. A Nuo is 67 years old and there are eight people in his family: his wife, two sons, sister-in-law and three grandchildren. He says: “The project incredibly helps us and I have no words to describe the thankfulness to you and the donor who gave the money for the project.” Before the water arrived in the village, his sister-in-law was the only one who could fetch water for them because one son is a monk in the monastery, another is not always at home, and he became disabled when he was 12 years ago. So fetching water is very hard task for his sister-in-law. When his sister needed to go somewhere, then she stored water for them before she goes. However, with the project manager and donor’s’ help every family has water taps in their yard. Even though he is disabled, he can still fetch water for his family when other members are busy now. He said they reached the happy days and he thanks and wishes to thank the project helpers and donor cordially again.

Thank you letter

Translation of thank you letter

Thank you letter

Dear kind and generous donor, Shem women’s Group and the project manager,

This year some incredible thing happened to us, and that is your generous and kind help which solved our serious water problem. From the time of our ancestors until this year, we could not do the project even though we always faced the same water problem for years and years. Before the project, the water was a very serious problem for both our livestock and us. There is a saying: “If girls don’t obey their parents then send the girls to Jiara Township (our villages is included in this Township)” This means if the girls go to to Jiara Township, then they need to fetch water and it is a very heavy work. Since fetching water was a very heavy burden for the villagers, it also made it hard to get wives from other villages and townships.

However, with all of your kind help, we have water taps in each family’s yard and there is enough for both our livestock and us. From now on, we are released from the burdens of fetching water by your compassion and we really appreciate your great help. Your generosity and kindness has erased our hellish history and led us into heaven. Therefore on behalf of all three villages – Walo, Yajiong and Nuri – I would like to say thank you so much for your kind support from the bottom of my heart.

From all of us, we send the best wishes for your following days and future work.

From Walo villager Tsering

December 10^th2009

The list of receiptsReceipt #1

It is 510 RMB for sand, 510 RMB for gravel and 600 RMB for the skilled worker. So it is 1,620 RMB in total.

Receipt #2

It is 58,695 RMB in total for cement, different types of water pipes and collections:

Cement: 100bags×40=4,000 RMB Plastic pipe#30: 3250m×9.5=30,875 RMB

Plastic pipe#25: 2900m×7.5=21,750 RMB （ 1,650 RMB is local contribution for the five households’ project. Connections (metal wire, screw spigots, nails and valves): 2,070 RMB 

Receipt #3: The project management expenses:

It is 10 RMB for taxi fee from Shem office to Xining train station.

It is179 RMB for the train ticket from Xining to Chengdu

It is 20 RMB for taxi fee from Chengdu train station to Wuhouci bus station.

It is 10×3=30 RMB for the hotel fee for one night in Chengdu.

It is 300 RMB for each person from Chengdu City to Xinlong county town by small car.

It is 10×3=30 RMB for the hotel fee for one night in Kangding.

It is 100 RMB for phone call fee for during the implementing the project.

Detailed explanation: As shown above, the expenses are for a one-way trip from Xining (Qinghai) to the project site (Sichuan), totaling 569 RMB, including transportation and hotel costs. The project manager went to see the project two times so then 569 RMB×4=2,276 RMB plus phone call fee100 RMB. In total it is 2,376 RMB for the project management expenses.

Original Proposal
Project Location
The project is located in Walo Village and Yajiong Village. Walo village is about1 km away from Yajiong Village and they are on the same mountain slope, and both villages are in Jialaxi Township, Xinlong (Nyarong) County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. These two villages are about 18 km from Xinlong county town, this is about 700 km from Chengdu City, the capital of Sichuan Province.

Back ground
The project is located in a very rural township which is called Jialaxi Township. There are about 35 villages in Jialaxi Township; about 7 villages are located at foot of the mountains and other 28 villages are perched seperately on high mountain slopes. There is no road, even for motorcycles, for the villages on the mountain slope. There is a hand tractor road for only Walo Village and another village called Gere and the other villages on the mountain slopes don’t have traffic road. 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 three to four households. According the education level of Jialaxi Township, there were only six people who received government jobs in the whole township. Only about 40 children are going to school among 480 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 get to school on time and they can not return home before dark.

Population
Nine households made up Walo Village and two households made up Yajiong Village. There are 69 people in the Walo Village and Yajiong Village, and among these people there are 25 men, 21 women and 23 children.

Education
Among the 69 people in Walo Village and Yajiong Village 57 people are illiterate and only 12 people are can read and write. These 12 literate people in the village are 11 monks and 1 college graduate. There are 16 school-aged children in Walo Village and Yajiong Village, but only 4 children are going to Yinlong Primary school and the other 12 children stay at their home to help their parents herding livestock and fetching water. No one in either village has an official job. Some parents of the villages also say that nowadays it is difficult for the children to get an official job and to send their children to school it just wastes their children’s lives and family’s money. Some parents cannot deal with outside and indoor works such as fetching water, herding livestock and chores at their homes, without their children’s help. Therefore the children have no time to go to school and they have to help their parents to fetch water and herd livestock.

Cash Income
Walo Village and Yajiong Village are farming villages. Both villages are perched on a slope of a mountain separately. On average each household has 10 acres of land.
The other 7 villages who are living at foot of the mountains (in valley), where the land is very good and each acre of land can produces about 200-300 jin (1jin=o.5kg) of barley. But Walo Village and Yajiong Village are very different from the villages at mountain foot and each acre of land can only produce about 80 jin of crop. Because Walo Village and Yajiong Village are perched on a mountain slope, the land is not as arable as the land in the valley. The villagers can not grow vegetables on their unfertilized land without water. In the villages each household can produce about 500 jin of barley, 300jin 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.

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 out and the third was that the villagers went out 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” 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 from digging caterpillar fungus. 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 from construction work. On average, each family can earn about 4,500 rmb in one year. Each family spends at least 6,000 rmb for 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
Both Walo Village and Yajiong are agricultural villages, and the villagers grow barley, wheat and potatoes. Each household average has about 10 acres of field land. The fields are on the mountain slope and they are terrace fields. They can not grow vegetables without water in their fields, and the fields can not produce the barley well in that village on the mountain slope because of dried land.

Herding
Walo Village and Yajiong Village are farming village and they also have some live stock. On average each household has 5 cows, 2 female yaks and 1 bull. Each household can produce about 30 to 40 jin butter from their milk cows and milk yaks. People in the village just keep the butter for themselves to eat and they don’t sell it out.

Weather
In the villages the altitude is about 3080 meters above the sea level and the climate is very changeable there. Especially in recent years there were few rains in the summer, thus their barley and wheat can not grow well. The villagers can never grow vegetables in their field.

In the winter it is very cold. Sometimes it snows heavily and the road which the villagers use for fetching water is covered by snow. Therefore it is very dangerous for the village women and children to fetch water and they sometimes slip on the snow with their water buckets. Instead of risking the dangerous snow-covered roads village women and children collect snow and melt them into pots for cooking and washing..

Project goals
The immediate goal of the project is to build a running water system for Walo Village and Yajiong Village, in Jialaxi Township, Xinlong County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province.

The overarching goal of the project is to supply clean water for Walo and Yajiong Villages to reduce the villager’s burden, increase enrollment of school children and improve their living condition.

Beneficiaries
This project will directly benefit 56 people from Walo Village and 13 people from Yajiong Village. In total 69 people will get benefit from the project.
Problems
1. No water to drink
In May and June, the villages’ young people and children go far places to dig caterpillar fungus and they can not return homes until 7 or 8 days from the mountain or high altitude grassland where they dig caterpillar fungus. So they have to stay on the mountains. At that time, only older people and small children stay at home for those 4 or 5 months. They can not fetch water and drink water without the young people’s help. So every two and three days the young people who go to dig caterpillar fungus have to come back home to save water for the older people. The digging caterpillar fungus is their main income and time for digging caterpillar fungus is very important. .

2. Time consuming
The distance between the villages and the water source is about 1.5 kilometers. Fetching water is customarily women and children’s work in the whole Jialaxi Township. Therefore, when the women and children of the village go to fetch water it takes at least one and half hour for one time. If a family invites some monks to chat in its home then one of the family members has to spend her or his whole day to fetch water. Some times one person can not catch up fetching water for the monks’ and the family members’ drinking and two people should fetch water for the family. The children have no time to go to school and the women have no time to do other works like weaving and spinning.

3. Dangerous path for fetching water
The path which the villagers use for fetching water is located on a mountain slope. Its sharp zigzag turns makes it very hard to fetch water. (You can see the picture on the last page) Especially in winter, the path becomes covered with thick snow and it fetching water becomes a more difficult task for the village children and women. Sometimes they cannot see the path clearly and they lose their way. Sometimes they slip on the snowy road with their water buckets and the water buckets break. Two years ago, Songlong Qingcuo fell on the fetching water path and her water bucket rolled down to a valley. At that time some other village people were herding in the valley and they thought a tree log was rolling down to them and they ran once when they heard the sound and it scared them badly; luckily no one got hurt.

4. Health problems
The distance from Walo and Yajiong Village to the water source is very long as I mentioned above. Therefore the village women always have to carry water buckets on their backs for long time, which leads to back problems. . The location of the water source is a windy and cold valley. The women and children often get colds again and again from fetching water in winter. They think that medicines can cure their colds and they always eat medicines, but the medicines can not help them a lot because they always have to go to the windy place. Last year in winter, one woman from Yajiong Village went to fetch water two weeks after she gave birth to a child. Then her breasts got swollen from the fetching water and she could not nurse her child well. Finally she went to see a doctor and the doctor said that she must not fetch water in cold, windy conditions.

5 Increased deaths of baby cows
At end of winter and spring, two- year -old calves can not get water to drink. Because the water is at least 1.5 km far from the villages and the calves are not able to go far from the pastures to drink water as other livestock go. Fetching water for the livestock is a hard task. Therefore two- year- old baby cows slowly died from thirst. Sometimes in spring, the villages ask the neighbor villages that have water in their yard to raise their calves until they get old enough.

6 No vegetables
The villagers can not grow vegetables in their field land without water even in summer because the land is not fertilized and it is dry. The villagers buy vegetables from Xinlong county town and they seldom can eat vegetables. Sometimes the villagers are even not able to get enough water for themselves to drink, so getting water for vegetables is just an impossible thing.

7 Poor hygiene
The villagers are not able to get water for washing their clothes and bodies because of the long distance from the villages to the water. In their minds, they are grateful to get enough water for people to drink; to get water for washing clothes is just kind of dream because it is really so hard for them to get water from the far-away water source. Some villagers don’t wash their heads and clothes for more than one month, and some older people don’t wash their bodies for years. Therefore sometimes their clothes have bad odors and they are very dirty. When they want to wash their clothes then they have to carry their clothes to the water source in the valley to wash them. Sometimes in winter time, women and children wash their heads in the valley even though the water is for the villagers to drink.

8 Poor living conditions
The village women have to do house chores like fetch water and also field work. Especially fetching water takes most of their time. The works which I mentioned above always hold the women back from doing other outside works and they don’t have time to go out of the village to look for extra work to earn money. They also don’t have time to do spinning and weaving at their homes to earn cash. In winter time, the children and women get colds again and again from the fetching water in windy places, as I mentioned before. Therefore they need to take medicine and each family might spend at least150 rmb during winter just for medicine.

9 Few children go to school
Fetching water is women’s and children’s work in Jialaxi Township. The children’s parents keep them at home and let them fetch water and herd the livestock. Therefore some children have no time to go to school.

Benefits

1. If there is water in Walo Village and Yajiong Villages, then the villagers will not need to travel the long distance to fetch water and they can use water as much as they want. Especially during the time of digging caterpillar fungus, the older people and the small children can drink water without young people’s help.
2. Fetching water is the villagers’ most difficult work and they spend most of their time fetching water. If the villagers have water in their yards, then the village women and children can save their time to do other things such as weaving and spinning, and they also will have leisure time to rest instead of fetching water.
3. The village women and children will not need to go through the dangerous road to fetch water. They will not need to think about the dangerous road any more.
4. The children will not get colds again and again as before and they will not need to take as much medicine. The village women will not get backaches, because the water will be near them and they don’t need to carry water buckets on their backs.
5. The calves can drink water whenever they want to and they will not die from thirst in the spring. The villagers will have more livestock to produce milk and butter.
6. Generally the other villages on the mountain slopes have water, so they can water their vegetables in their yards and they can grow vegetables to eat. If Yajiong Village and Walo villagers also have water, then they cloud grow vegetables in their yards. The villagers will be able to eat vegetables that they grow by themselves.
7. The people will be able to wash themselves and their clothes each week. They don’t need to carry their clothes to far places to wash and they can wash their clothes at their homes whenever they want. The people will not get illness from bad hygiene.
8. If there is water in front of their houses, the women will not need to spend time fetching water. They can go out to earn money from construction work and they also can do weaving and spinning at their homes. The children and women of the village will no longer need to go to the windy valley to fetch water in winter and they get less colds. Overall the villagers’ living conditions will be improved.
9. The parents will not need help from their children to fetch water. Therefore the children will have a chance to go to school.

Gender equality
In Walo Village and Yajiong Village house chores like fetching water and other field works are mainly done by the women; women become very tired from those works.. Therefore if there is water in the village 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 do as men can do and they respected women .Before I did 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 do important things and they ask me to help write proposals for them. Some people tell my father to ask me to write proposals for them while I am not with my family.

If this project is funded, then in my hometown more and more people will believe that if women get education, men and women have the same ability to do meaningful things. More parents will send their girls to school and they will have high expectations for girls. The girls will also have higher expectations to accomplish more meaningful things.

Project steps

1. Discussed with the villagers why the village needs water and collect information for the project. (Done.)
2. Visited the water spring and see whether it is big enough. (Done.)
3. Discussed the project’s needs with Sangjia (who is more knowledgeable about water project than other people in the villages) and see what kinds of materials we need.( Done)
4. Contact the firm’s leader to get specifications and prices for the water pipe. (Done.)
5. Asked the local government leader, Banggeng Duoji to get permission to do the project. (Done.)
6. Decided what labor the villagers could complete, i.e. digging ditches and burying pipes. (Done.)
7. Take pictures for the project.
8. Write proposal (Done.)
9. Receive funds.
10. Have a meeting with the villagers to decide the starting date of the project.
11. Buy the water pipe and cement and transport them to the village.
12. Dig the ditch and bury the pipe in the ditch.
13. Interview the village men, women and children about the project and take photos.
14. Write final report.
15. Send final report with photos and receipts.

Time frame
(The villagers need 68 days to carry out the project with 30 people for each day)

1 day. Hold a meeting with the villagers to assign them tasks.

7 days: Go to buy the materials in Chengdu and Xinlong county town and transport them to the village.

41 days: to dig ditches.

11 days: to bury the water pipe in the ditches.

7 days: to build three cement boxes.

1 day: hold a meeting with the villagers, interview them, and take pictures of them.

Detailed budget

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TheTotal contribution is 114,015.5rmb

The donor contribution is 64,055.5rmb

The local contribution is 49,460 rmb

Shem contribution is 500rmb

Project Sustainability
The quality of the water pipe which the villagers are going to use for the water systems is very good. Yajiong’s neighboring village, Gere village, used the same type of pipe to build a water system for their villagers and it has been five years now and the water system still does not have any problems. The spring which the villagers planned to drive to their village is very big and it is enough to supply water for the whole village. Every body knows that fetching water is hard for them in that village and they will take responsibility for the water system well. If it breaks the villagers will be responsible for it and they will ask other skilled people to repair it.

Government support for the project
The project manager called the local government leader Banggeng Duoji on May 3^rd, 2008. He was very happy about the project and he said that several villages have difficulties with water in the Jialaxi Township. But the local government doesn’t have enough money to do water projects for them and if the manager can implement the water project for a village that would be great. The local government leader is very happy to give permission to complete the project.

Additional 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 Water project for Walo and Yajiong Villages is her third project. Now she is working in Shem Women’s group in Xining City, Qinghai province.

Pictures

This is the water source where the villagers fetch water. The child and the woman in the picture are a son and his mother. Villagers always come to this spring to fetch water and it is located in a valley. In winter times, other villagers cut trees from the top of the valley to build houses and for fuel. Then they roll the tree logs from mountain top to this valley, making the water dirty. Sometimes the water is covered by logs like the situation in the picture, and it is very hard for the villagers to get water.

In the picture, the villagers are taking rest on the way with buckets full of water on their backs. The distance from the village to the water source is about 1.5 kilometers and they have to take a rest five or six times each time they go to fetch water.

The steep path in the picture is used by the villagers to fetch water. Especially in winter, the path is covered by heavy snow and the villagers can not see the path well. Sometimes they slip on the road with their water buckets. It is very dangerous for the villagers.

The child is carrying water on his back. His name is Garong Tashi and he is eleven years old now. He is not going to school, because he has no time to go to school and he has to fetch water and herd livestock for his family. He always fetches water on his back like this.

The man on the left is the child’s grandfather and they are in their kitchen. The family’s life is really hard and they have no water or electricity.

Diagram

Map of the project Location