ADIRE

I have very good news about the work that our partner NGO in Odisha has been doing. As some of you may already know, Dr. Durga Prasad Kar took a professorship position last year at the University of Odisha in Bhubaneswar last year. He has a Ph. D. from Colorado School of Mines in Mechanical Engineering. Shreemayee Kar has joined him in SHAMA's work in Jahangirabad. Many inspection teams of Indian Central Government evaluated their work and selected it as one of the models for Village Development for the rest of the country. One of the professors from IITs (a group of prestigious Institutions of higher Education) is developing a data sensor machine to be launched with an Indian satellite later this year to collect data from one hundred villages, which will be shared amongst other NGO's that are involved in similar work.

Helping to provide inexpensive and environmentally friendly energy for undeveloped villages in India is SHAMA WELL’s latest project. We helped with the purchase of a digester that uses a bacterial process to convert cow manure to biogas to be used for cooking stoves, thus saving trees. 

This creates a local economic boom: farmers sell manure to the SHAMA WELL Cooperative, which in turn sells the biogas and the fertilizer generated as a byproduct.

The biogas plant employs five families. SHAMA WELL loans also help families purchase cows, whose milk and manure can be sold to the Cooperative.

The women still hoping for loans have a variety of ideas for ways to earn their livings. Click here to see these women and their ideas:  SHAMA WELL-ADIRE.

NOTE: ShamaWell made loans through ADIRE to 15 women in three villages (Jahangirabad, Balabhadrapur, and Ganeswarpur) in the state of Orissa. All of the women (8) who started their business in August-October, 2006 fully repaid their loans by February 2007. Seven more women were given loans to begin their business in December, 2006. Again they have followed the same trend and percentage of payback.

Click on pictures for larger views. 

Animals purchased with ShamaWell loans

Stirring digester that makes biogas

Cooking with biogas

Meeting of cooperative

 Vertical gardening

Gardening with upright structures is called vertical gardening. One can grow more plants in a smaller area. In Indian villages poor farmers have very little space to grow vegetables. Vertical gardening is ideal for such villagers to make the maximum use of their small land holdings and make it most productive. Vertical gardening also provides excellent air circulation for the plants and one may have fewer problems with pests and diseases, since many pests cannot even reach the plants.