December 2010 News

December was a busy month at Shalom, with lots of farming activities and some maintenance work on the buildings. Global Development Group staff dropped in for a visit, and to carry out our first monitoring and auditing review. They inspected the buildings and farming activities, interviewed staff, talked with the boys, and discussed future sustainability and development targets with Israel.

The feedback we got was quite positive. They commented that Israel was doing a good job managing the project and gave a few recommendations that will help improve our facilities and future project activities. One recommendation was to change the name of the project to J514 Shalom Sustainability Farms to better reflect our emphasis on helping orphans, widows and the rural poor through the development of sustainable farming activities.

This month's featured photos show some of the local villagers employed to plough our fields and transplant the rice seedlings. Thanks to good monsoonal rains, and daily water releases into the irrigation channel that runs beside our property, our well is full again, and we have plenty of water to keep our rice paddies well irrigated.

The extra rain has also provided more fresh green fodder for the cows and goats. Now that the cow is pregnant, she has entered into a "dry" phase, which means no milk production and no income from milk sales until she gives birth in April. Hopefully by then we'll have bought another two cows and calves.

During December, about 50 ladies and 8 men from the local village were employed to assist with farming activities. The end result was 2.5 acres of rice under cultivation. If weather conditions remain favourable, the rice should be ready for harvesting in March and will produce 6 months supply of rice for the children and staff.



Once the monsoon finishes, we're planning to start work on a small cottage to provide on-site accommodation for some farm workers to look after the cows and goats. At present, a man from one of the local villages comes to oversee management of the crops, but we need skilled livestock workers to live on-site to guard the animals and be on hand to attend to any problems during the night.

Local villagers will continue to be employed to assist with planting and harvesting as well as construction work. Unemployment is high in our village, with many women relying on day-labouring work in the fields to help support their families. As we increase our farming activities we'll be able to provide more employment opportunities and income to these women.

While all these farming and building activities were taking place, the boys attended school and studied hard in the evenings. They had a small break over Christmas and enjoyed caroling and drama actitivities with other children from pastor Daniel's Church in Madurai.

PS Sorry about all the different font styles showing in this post. Not sure why it's doing that and have tried unsuccessfully numerous times to fix it but gave up. Karen