Bóthar establishes families in micro-farming units by giving them the living gift of a farm animal. However, this gift is given as the last stage of a long and important process.
Step 1: Village and Community Groups
Bóthar works through local community groups these groups vary immensely in size and form. These groups vary from being church groups to a group of neighbours who have come together to support each other and seek solutions to common problems that they all face.
Villages and communities that wish to take part in the Bóthar project are asked to form a committee specifically for dealing with the Bóthar project. That committee must then decide which are the neediest families in their community and who should receive animals first. In this way the community has ownership of the project from the beginning.
Step 2: Training
Together with our project partners, Bóthar ensures that all families are equipped with the knowledge and skills to manage the animal. The majority of farmers that receive Bóthar animals are illiterate, and unfamiliar with a classroom situation, so training is done in groups using picture cards, demonstrations and stories to aid in explanation.
Training is adapted to suit the needs of different groups, Bóthar endeavours in its training to equip the farmers with the knowledge they need such as Looking after livestock: building animal shelters, growing fodder, animal health and welfare issues, environmental practices, record keeping and marketing of their produce. Bóthar also provides families with training in how to deal with the cultural issues that they face such as gender and AIDS awareness.
Step 3: Zero Grazing Units and Environment Management
Each family must build the correct housing facilities for their animal. In the case of the dairy cows and dairy goats that housing is called a zero-grazing unit. The zero-grazing unit is constructed of locally available material. It has several separate areas, one each for milking, feeding and sleeping, one for only offspring and also an enclosed exercise space.
The family must grow the correct crops to feed their animal and must learn how to harvest the crops at the right time of the day so as to avoid the spread of tick-borne diseases. The fodder is brought to the animal in the zero-grazing unit. Bothar livestock projects are integrated and include development and care of farmland side by side with animal husbandry. Bóthar project farmers are taught simple contouring and terracing techniques by which small earth banks are constructed on their land following the contour lines of any slope. These have the effect of arresting the erosion and conserving the soil.
Bóthar farmers are also asked to plant trees on their land, the benefits of trees are multi fold. Trees provide firewood, fodder, wind breaks, fencing and they are nitrogen fixing and carbon absorbing while helping to prevent soil erosion.
The holistic approach that we take with our livestock micro enterprise farming programme is, in many cases, as dependent on the presence of trees as it is on the presence of the stock themselves. This environmentally friendly, holistic approach to farming is self sustaining and ensures that our recipient farmers can feed their families, share with others and care for the earth in a natural way.
Step 4: Farmers receive their animals.
Finally when all the preparations have been made, the family is given the gift of their animal. . The families are also provided with full veterinary back-up including assistance with breeding on a declining basis for up to three years.
The Impact: milk, honey, meat and eggs not only improve a family's diet but the surplus can be sold thus giving the family possibly their first opportunity to earn an income. This income allows them to feed, clothe and educate their children. The impact that one good quality farm animal has on an impoverished family in the Developing World can mean the difference between destitution and security.
Beneficiaries become Donors Each family that takes part in Bóthar projects must formally agree to pass-on to another selected family the first female offspring born to their animal. (In the case of the bee, rabbit and chicken projects the recipient family must save money earned from the sale of produce and offspring and with this must purchase breeding rabbits, flocks of chicks or hives to pass on to other families that have trained to receive them.). In this way the gift is multiplied and over time many families and even whole communities benefit.
Biogas
Bóthar encourages project beneficiaries to construct biogas plants and use animal manure to produce methane gas for cooking and lighting. The use of biogas plants creates a clean cooking environment, reduces the need to cut down trees and conserves the natural environment.
Biogas is a gas, rich in methane, which is produced by the fermentation of animal dung, human sewage or crop residues in an airtight container. In order to have a continuous gas production the fermentation chamber should be fed manure twice a day. The plant is cheap to construct and has an average life span of thirty years.
Biogas plants collect cow dung from specially adapted cattle sheds, mix it with water and channel it into fermentation pits. The resulting gas (of which 65% is methane) is produced as a by-product of this fermentation and is collected in a simple storage tank from where it is piped directly into the farmer's home to provide energy for cooking and lighting.
Simple Sustainable Development
The beauty of the Bóthar approach is in its simplicity. As the old adage goes: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man how to fish and he will feed himself for the rest of his days." Once a family has fulfilled the terms of their contract and passed on an animal the family may keep all subsequent stock, and so the gift grows. The families have control over their farms and futures, and, over time, can lift themselves up to a position of relative comfort with dignity and pride.
