Spirulina Flood Damage

    The Evergreen Spirulina farm located between Pondicherry and Chennai, is a beautiful sight with tanks of dark green spirulina.

Spirulina Farm

        Spirulina is used as a food supplement to combat malnutrition.1 gram is said to be as nutritious as 100g of spinach or carrots.

      Spirulina is an alga which grows in hot climatic conditions (The optimum temperature for growth being 35°C). The heavy rains and flooding that came with the Nov-Dec 2015 annual monsoon rains lead to severe flooding that affected the Coromandel Coast region of the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and the union territory of Puducherry.

      Evergreen Spirulina, a Social enterprise set up by a group of 15 women in July 2014, started harvesting Spirulina in May 2015. Evergreen Spirulina farm which is located in KN Palayam, Marakkanam about 35 Kms from Pondicherry, has also been affected because of the flooding.

       There has been zero harvest since 10^th November. The tanks that the algae are grown overflowed because of the rains along with the chemicals and the algae causing a lot of loss. After the rains the algae takes more than 15 days to grow back and they are at this stage now. Usually about 4 people are usually employed everyday in a shift basis. But now with no harvesting only 2 women are employed.

Woman stirring the Spirulina Tank

          Though the women are disheartened at the present condition, they have not lost hope. They have been working tirelessly since the rain stopped, stirring the tanks every 30 minutes for the Spirulina to grow back. They have learnt much from the flood as to how to protect the tanks from heavy rains, how to recover from this and so on. 

Women who work at Evergreen Spirulina with their children

          Unlimited Tamil Nadu is helping them with flood relief and is also assisting them in marketing their product.

      The Evergreen Sprulina farm employs about 15 women. They hope to expand so that they can employ more women and lift them out of poverty.

Alcohol De- addiction - a step towards empowering women

   Alcohol addiction is a huge problem in the society. It does not just affect the health of the addict but also hits the economic and psychological well being of the whole family. In India, it is predominantly men who are alcoholics and men are usually the sole or major bread winners of most families. Men being alcoholics hence affects the whole family. 

   There have been major debates over the ban on alcohol in Tamil Nadu since 1937. The ban usually leads to alcohol being brewed illegally and this leading to deaths due to poisoning, therefore banning liquor is not the solution to alcoholism rather it is de-addiction.

 

        Bala Devi, who lost her husband to alcohol addiction resolved to make sure that the same plight did not fall on other women. A graduate in nursing and pursuing her B.Sc Psychology, she noticed that she had a knack to make people listen to her and take her advice.

 

    Hence she came up with the NGO, Christ Rural Women Developmental Trust (CRWDT) in Tindivanam District in Tamil Nadu. The idea is simple, she, with her volunteers go to villages and counsel men to give up alcoholism.  

    Though the idea is simple, the process is not a cakewalk. She faces a lot of problems from the addicts; asking her to ‘mind her own business’, asking her to get out of the house, not even looking at her and so on. She also dishearteningly recalls how a man died out of alcoholism in spite of the repeated efforts to help him get over it.

 This certainly does not deter Bala, she says that it takes a couple of weeks to a month for the addicts to even start loosening up to her. She says that she has helped about 60 men to completely give up alcoholism. Bala has earned respect and well wishers among the people of the community and she is very happy about what she does.

    Though she is working towards the de-addiction of men, her end goal is to help women and make them self reliant. She has started tailoring and beautician training courses and about 500 women have benefitted from it in the past 6 months.

Tailoring class

She is full of ideas and plans to coordinate with companies so that she can export garments. She also conducts cultural competition for kids to identify and encourage talent.

She has come to Unlimited Tamil  Nadu  to  help  her  with  coaching,   networking, fundraising support and training. She says that she has learnt a lot from the advice that receives from Unlimited Tamil Nadu and by networking with other NGOs.

Women Learning Tailoring

          Bala says that men who are not too addicted tend to give up alcoholism after counselling, but the ones who are severely addicted need to go through a de- addiction programme for which she is setting up a De- addiction centre. She is in the initial stages of setting up the De- addiction centre and is highly optimistic about it. She decides to make it different from the regular de- addiction centres and has a lot of innovative ideas in mind. She already has experience of working as a nurse in a de-addiction centre.

           Efforts have been in progress to ban alcohol in Tamil Nadu, but this has not lead to anything fruitful. Bala has been making changes in a small but steady manner and has certainly achieved a lot.  

Supporting farmers through organic farming - A day in the village

UnLtd Tamil Nadu has recently partnered with a UK based social enterprise - _SocialStarters. Together the team and the volunteers have been working at driving change by supporting local social entrepreneurs. Our investees from the CARE society worked with two consultants over the period of 5 weeks. Anna, the programme manager from _SocialStarters, recently reviewed the steps and efforts that went into the project. 

By Anna Buchmann (for original post click here)

I am a sucker for organic products. If I had the money, I would buy everything organic. Sometimes I just wonder around farmers markets and look at the produce – and get a kick out of it – and hence I was very excited to learn that one of the clients from the _SocialStarters programme are organic farmers.

Kumari and Shivalingam established CARE society about 2 years ago with the aim to support farmer’s livelihood and promote organic farming. They teach organic farming techniques, set up a seed bank, and inform people about the benefits of organic produce. In India, farmers struggle to make a living nowadays and often do not see any other escape than taking their own lives. Failed crops, illness, unexpected expenses – because their income is already very small, and volatile depending on weather conditions, any form of bigger payments threatens their livelihood to the extend that suicide becomes their only option. Kumari and Shivalingam try to give the farmers a more positive outlook by supporting them, and improve soil quality as well as produce quality through organic practices.

Ruth and Andrea, the consultants that are working with CARE society, are working on cutting out the middle man and getting the products directly to the consumers. They discovered that Auroville is actually experiencing a shortage in organic millet, one of the main products grown by the farmers. Furthermore, the consultants are developing a price and cost structure, and started the process of obtaining an organic license. Finally, they are preparing for a funding presentation, as Kumari and Shivalingam will have the opportunity to pitch to a group of CEOs for financial and non-financial support.

The office of CARE society is further outside in the countryside, in the village of Vilappuram. Together with Naveen, our local coordinator and translator, Andrea, Ruth and I left Auroville at 9am. In the car we listened to out favourite Tamil songs and watched the music videos. When we arrived at the village, Kumari proudly took us around and showed us the newly obtained millet processing machines, which were donated by an NGO. On the way we also had the chance to see some local traditional handicrafts being made.

Then the real work started: together the team went through the power point presentation, filling in costs and deciding how much support to ask for. Kumari, who is an amazing cook, prepared lunch for us, and as is the case every day in India, I ended up eating far too much. After lunch they went through the brochure for the pitch, which will hopefully make them stand out. Fingers crossed for India, farmers in India really need the support!