Asia-Pacific Program Profile Regional Context and the pwrdf program Response

The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF) has been working in the Asia-Pacific region to address the root causes of poverty and injustice since the mid 1970s when concern grew over the extraction of resources from the Tiruray tribal lands in the Southern Philippines. In response the Episcopal Church in the Philippines initiated a cooperative movement for the betterment of the rural population and invited PWRDF to join them as partners. Since then the program has supported the livelihoods and rights of marginalized farmers, fisher-folk, plantation youth, migrant workers and Indigenous communities through capacity building workshops, access to micro-credit and community health care, food security, gender justice programs, and Indigenous language, culture and rights protection.

Asia is struggling to meet the ambitious UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of the region’s greatest MDG successes has been a reduction in the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day from 1.5 billion to 947 million between 1990 and 2005. However the region remains home to two-thirds of the world’s poor and hungry, with one in six malnourished and it has been slow to reduce child mortality and to improve maternal health. While women occupy several key positions in governments in the region, discrimination against women is common in both the public and private sectors.

PWRDF enjoys long-term partnerships with many faith-based and secular organizations in the region including the Philippines, the Thai-Burma border area, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. During the period of PWRDF’s 2012-2015 Strategic Plan the Asia-Pacific development program will be working towards focusing its activities in PWRDF’s three priority sectors: 1) community health, 2) food security and 3) micro-credit. The Asia-Pacific program is currently in dialogue with all partner organizations to evaluate their program priorities and how best they can advance PWRDF’s Strategic Plan objectives.

In Sri Lanka, PWRDF is currently engaged with the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR). MONLAR coordinates a network of farmer organizations focused on developing an alternative sustainable agrarian development approach. 50 members of its National Farmers Association (NFA) developed their capacity in the use of appropriate technological practices for sustainable farming. They are better organized to advocate for food security and have become “seed sovereign”. 3,600 farmers from 48 villages and 600 plantation workers’ families are engaged in ecological home gardening and agriculture.

In the Sri Lankan village of Rathmale half of its 250 families are engaged with MONLAR’s Peasant Information Centre (PIC) program. The program works with farming communities in implementing eco-friendly small holder farming methods of food production as well as providing training for skills and business development. PIC also conducts mandatory gender training with its beneficiaries. The gender training is attended by both men and women in the villages.

MONLAR worked with local government agriculturists to prepare the soil in homestead gardens that had been rendered infertile from the heavy use of chemicals. Villagers were trained to prepare their own compost to regenerate the fertility of the soil. They were also taught how to prepare natural pesticides. Both homestead gardens and small paddy fields were targeted for affordable, eco-friendly chemical free farming. The planting of a variety of fruits and vegetables has been key to developing eco-friendly agriculture. Various natural moisture retention techniques have been adopted and water tanks built to catch and store rain water. The use of indigenous seeds has been instrumental in eco-friendly farming as farmers can preserve their own seeds and thereby do not depend on commercial seeds which are costly.

As an additional source of income to farmers and to facilitate pollination in the homestead gardens, farmers were trained in bee keeping and women farmers were trained in food processing such as mango jam and pickles, which help them in processing and preserving the surplus produce for their own consumption as well as to sell in the local market for additional income. The farmers use improved energy efficient stoves for food processing.

Farmers were trained to develop craft products from the fibers of Pang (a local tree) and palm tree leaves which they dye themselves. They produce mats, baskets and handbags, as well as decorative flowers. Many of these trained farmers now train others on behalf of PIC.