Facing Fear and Loss Together
January 18, 2024
Chainpur Village | Education | Food | Income | Nepal | South Asia | Sustainable Development | Wellness
This month, I taught about safety measures the village could take before or during an earthquake. Community members were worried and frightened of earthquakes after the earthquake disasters in Rukum, Jajarkot, and West Nepal. We even felt earthquakes in Chainpur Village, so community members were distraught and filled with fear. Through our Transformational Community Development (TCD) counseling and teaching, I did my best to make community members feel safe and have a healthy mentality for the future.
This month, I continued to teach community members about healthy living. Nowadays, food, air, and water can become polluted and not good for one’s health, so community members have to be careful how they handle anything connected to health. Health is wealth, so this class taught community members the importance of proper sanitation behaviors. Good sanitation saves lives. There were more than 25 participants, and every single participant promised to raise awareness about healthy living in the community.
TCD members have made plans this quarter to raise kitchen gardens and make the community self-sustainable with vegetables. I worked towards the rising “community family kitchen garden” by visiting houses and inspiring them to plant vegetables and seeds according to the season. The community got behind this initiative, and as a result, we can see vegetables growing all over the community this month.
TCD Income Generation members faced the loss of their goats this past month because of the animal flu. Since last month, problems have appeared in goat herds, and community members have given medicine and care, according to a veterinarian, but the disease could not be controlled. In order to support and encourage the community to continue with Income Generation and not give up, TCD gave them extra time to return the seed money and recover their losses. In this way, TCD has done helpful work for the whole community’s Income Generation.
I visited Luina Village, where our TCD seed project is running very well. Community members have really progressed in their Income Generation projects through goat keeping, beekeeping, and other agricultural farming. I am very excited to share that the TCD committee president taught community members how to make kitchen rags by using bamboo fiber. The rag is very important to keep the kitchen dishes clean and safe. He suggested that all the community members who don’t have them should make them. I also noticed that if TCD trains community members to make bamboo tools, they can make them properly and with a good appearance. By selling them, they can generate some income.
Lubania* told us her story. She is a good wife, a mother, and a very hard-working woman. She has a beautiful family of six, but they are a poor family. Sometimes, it was very difficult to buy vegetables at the market and manage family expenses, but since she started TCD, her financial status has changed. She came and learned the lessons from TCD, but she didn’t ask for seed money. Through hard work, her family members became involved in pig keeping, goat keeping, and kitchen gardening. Now, they have a good income source, and Lubania can easily cover their family’s expenses. All the family members are happy and thankful for the TCD program because they have changed their lives through the lessons.
Thank you!
Written by: Shakta
GHNI TCD Worker
*For the purpose of safety and wellbeing, “Lubania” is a pseudonym for the individual being helped by this project.
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