AGRICULTURE
building a sustainable lifestyle

Our staff

We have a team of two hilltribe staff, one each from the the Akha and Lahu tribes. Not only does this support the hilltribe economy, but it also helps us communicate with villagers in remote areas who may not have learned to communicate in Thai.

Our projects

We offer villages a menu of projects (including training and ongoing support), according to villager needs, with priority being given to the poorest 20% of families in each community. Recent projects include:

10 families planted 50,000 pineapple plants  and will shortly pass on 50,000 new shoots from the earlier plants to another group of 10 families.

over the last three years, 100 families have borrowed a total of 340,000 baht (US$10,000) via our  microcredit scheme to grow corn and rice to increase self-sufficiency.

77 fishponds now built in 16 villages

178 families have planted vegetable gardens using our donated seeds, fencing and training

63 families have planted a total of 750 fruit trees, 32,000 Jatropha (biodiesel) trees and 400 banana trees

We also offer microloans to villagers who want to start growing crops on a slightly larger scale (up to 4 acres/2 hectares). Over three years, we have lent a total of US$10,000 to 40 families, including some landless families who we helped find land to rent. (So far, 100% of the loan have been repaid in full.) 

We are now working with 30 villages (Akha, Karen and Lahu) in the Mae Yao and Huay Chompoo subdistricts (close to Chiang Rai City), involving around 400 families.

Developing people

We are also developing the leadership capacity of two project leaders (usually one man and one woman) from each village. The village project leaders receive a small allowance each month to compensate for the time taken by the project, and attend a monthly meeting with all the other village project leaders to allow mutual problems to be discussed, receive technical and personal development training, as well as study visits to villages with exceptionally well run projects.

Donors

We gratefully acknowledge funding contributions from the Canada Fund, and many private donors to support our activities.

Future plans

Our plans for the future include:

• expanding into more remote areas where poverty and deprivation levels are even higher than around Chiang Rai
• building water-filtration tanks in villages with no potable water supply and supplying materials for simple bathrooms to 300+ households who do not currently have a bathroom 
• gathering and raising in a nursery, seeds from forest plants used by hilltribes in order to increase the yield of community forests