You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2008.
The 2004 tsunami swept away lives of over 40,000 people in Sri Lanka, leaving the survived in a physically and economically vulnerable situation. Many coastal livelihoods sectors were severly affected by the disaster. 
In the Thalalla village in the Matara district, 72 acres of rice cultivation was destroyed due salinity and this caused many rice farmers to loose their livelihoods. Even though there had been projects to rebuild the barriers for saline water intrusion but due to two years of abandoning of rice farming the farm land was invaded by a common reed species, and the 2 km long irrigation canal got buried under clay and weed. Today the Thalalla rice farmer’s are at the brink of loosing there livelihood inheritance.
Thalalla being a project site for the SRTAC, the project intervened by helping the village to re-excavate the 2Km long irrigation canal in order to restore disaster affected paddy sector. The uniqueness of this intervention is not due to mere livelihood restoration, but also due to introducing of disaster resilient livelihoods as a Disaster Risk Reduction measure to the village. Saline resistant traditional paddy varieties has found to be yielding successfully in saline affected soils. After the canal restoration traditional paddy varieties will be introduced to the fields as a solution for salinity.
On the 10th of May 2008, the village Sarvodaya Shramadana Society and the Thalalla Farmer Associations, in collaboration with the Department of Irrigation and Disaster Management Centre will officially start work on the canal excavation. The Lanka Jathika Sarvodaya Shramadana Society and Practical Action south Asia fascilitated the resources and the technical support for the implementation. This collaborative approach has united a 250 volunteer village labor force to support the process through a “Shramadana”. The Canal excavation will start with a three day village campaign that will host about 350 village, government and private stakeholders’ collaborating in the spirit of “Shramadana”. The villagers contributed to the project volunteering through their unskilled labour by sharing 20%of the Direct Project Expenditure. This is another example of development through community participation and empowering the grass roots. This is another event which marks the 50th anniversary of the Lanka Jathika Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya, the largest people’s movement in Sri Lanka.
If you guy want to know the reality of sustainable Development thats is happening in some places in Sri Lanka. [ Atleast My point of view] just see this….. Thanks Vajira of Practical Action for sharing this with me.
"Building inner spiritual resilience is the primary coping mechanism to external disasters "
Dr A T Ariyaratne, Founder President, Sarvodaya
"Is small still beautiful? We think it is. In an increasingly divided and fragile world, Practical Action aims to demonstrate and advocate the sustainable use of technology to reduce poverty in developing countries" -PRACTICAL ACTION
