Tel: (02834) 223253, 230902 | Mail: contact@vrti.org


OXFAM PROJECTS

Agriculture Scale Up Programme(OXFAM-India)

VRTI has been working with small and marginal farmers of Lakhpat, Abdasa and Nakhtrana blocks with the support of OXFAM India since last two years. OXFAM as a part of its Agriculture Scale up Programme (ASP) supported VRTI to implement a programme for the small and marginal farmers for the period, May-08 to June 2011. This year mainly work done on capacity building and organizing farmers and fishing community for solving their basic issues.

See Annual Report for more details

Information Communication Technology (OXFAM-India)

To manage the records of various activities manually is a cumbersome task and that is the major work load for the operators. With this regards, VRTI has established an electronic method with the support from Oxfam India Trust in two steps. One is developing software for data management and second is procurement of data logger instrument for data collection. This will collect the data of each group activity from village to reduce the manual work and to increase the accuracy and efficiency of work in less time.

The software has been designed and developed for CFC to capture the information at grassroots level. The data feeding process is in progress for project operational areas.

Community Business Organisation (eCBO)

Gopalak Pashupalan Sangthan is federation of 1789 members (including 72 women) of smallholder livestock rearers nurtured by VRTI. This federation with annual turnover of approximately INR 15 million comprises of 25 active (total of 29) Cattle Feed Centres run by change agents. These change agents organize cattle rearers regularly conduct meeting to discuss day to day issues, collect membership fees, place purchase orders of various types of cattle feeds at bulk price at Distributors, Pulse processing units, Cotton oil mills and sale it at retail price to members as well as non members, maintain record on behalf of the CFC committee at pre agreed charge. This CFC was initiated with Oxfam and CARE’s revolving fund.

This may sound small or no significant news to many who will read this case study. But it means lot to the change agents like Mr. Jam Indrajitsinh Gagubha (+91 9428683052) of Cattle Feed Centre (CFC) from Pipar village of 160 households located at West most end of India bordering Pakistan to NGO VRTI headquarter based at Naliya situated at 65 km away where he takes monthly records (three registers weighing 1/2 kgs) to update federation level (Gopalak Pashupalan Sangthan) records & plan for next month. These cattle feed centre can now onwards do all of this plus order, generate all performance reports & plan far better for the next month without those registers.

Thanks to the ICT project initiated by Oxfam which has replaced these registers and the calculator by a new tool called GSM data logger which he has started using for recording all economic transactions (sale, purchase, stock at CFC).

How this helps bring efficiency in business (CBO & NGO)?

With reduced work burden & enhanced accuracy it addresses transparency issues, brings in standardization of operations. These two factors multiply CBO’s ability to consolidate its operations, at the federation and CBOs at ground zero level. The federation is now aspiring to become far more efficient social business centers which will not only compete, negotiate with other players, add more services like credit, but also take up “social role” of NGO providing early warning organizing advisory sessions, health camps, education while possessing ability to adapt to changes in the market. Whereas VRTI is much happy to play new role of mentoring the organization it nurtured also looking forward to support expansion plans of federation in the area, use the reputation with men to closely work with women than they could do in the past.