Project Objectives:

• Aims to improve food security & nutrition of 20000 (5000 in India & 15000 in Bangladesh) marginal farmer households
• Funded by European Union and implemented by Concern Universal, HSI (Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation), RGVN & DAM.  Concern Universal, Bangladesh and Helvetas Swiss Incooperation, Bangladesh, who would be providing guidance and technical inputs to implement this project. RGVN and DAM are the implementing partners in India & Bangladesh respectively.
• Project specifically to cover – agriculture (crops, vegetables, horticulture), livestock & fishery

Project includes:

1. Technology Transfer

• Floating vegetable cultivation through water hyacinth beds
• Multi layer cropping
• Sandy soil cultivation using gunny bags

2. Human and Institution Development

• Building up a cadre of Local Service Providers (LSPs) in the villages
• Formation of Service Providers’ Association
• Building linkages with Govt. departments through DRPs (District Resource Pool).

3. Market and Enterprise Development

• Market Extension Exercises for the Groups
• Identification of input & output market actors
• Match Making Workshops with LSPs, district level Govt. officials & input/output market actors.

4. Knowledge Transfer

• Special project website to be designed by Concern Universal.
• Evidence based learning documents to be prepared by Concern Universal, with inputs from implementing partners. Hence detailed documentation carried out in RGVN through various formats developed under the project.

Coverage in India: The project is carried out in 6 districts of Assam, covering 5000 marginal farmers.

The project period is 36 months from January, 2012 to December, 2014.

Activities undertaken so far in Assam:

• Area offices in six districts set up with basic infrastructure as per project.
• Project staff recruited & oriented by CU & HSI officials from Bangladesh periodically.
• Beneficiaries identification & selection done after household survey. Baseline survey of beneficiaries is ongoing.
• Core Occupational Groups (COGs) of beneficiaries formed. 250 groups in 34 villages formed.
• Govt. line dept.s being briefed on the project.
• Local Service Providers (LSP) identified locally from amongst progressive farmers & training being provided to enable them to provide services to the beneficiaries. Training manuals are also developed for the LSPs.
• Market Extension Exercises are carried out for the groups formed. 180 such exercises completed.
• 33 Farmers Field Days completed (26 were on SRI and 7 were on vegetable seed bed preparation) and 70 LSP trainings to beneficiaries done till now.
• Detailed documentation of the project ongoing – various booklets & formats developed for collecting household and other information.
• Vegetable seeds and paddy seeds transferred to 2500 and 1250 beneficiaries respectively. Poultry (16 birds to each beneficiary) given to 244 beneficiaries.
• RGVN is aiming financial inclusion of all the 5000 beneficiaries, so that working capital can be transferred through bank.  RGVN has been partially successful in this regard.