Comment by Riaz Haq on December 8, 2012 at 10:28pm

Here's an excerpt on the history of RSPs from the Aga Khan Development Network website:

Before the Karakorum Highway was built in the late 1970s, the areas of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral were isolated from the rest of Pakistan. Most people lived from subsistence agriculture. When AKDN first came to the area, it made community mobilization, experimentation and innovation hallmarks of the early programme. Later, when solutions were found for development challenges, these programmes scaled up with the help of national and international partners.

Often described as a process of “learning by doing”, the AKRSP approach of working in partnership with communities has made remarkable changes in the lives of the 1.3 million villagers who live in Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan region – among some of the highest mountain ranges of the world, including the Karakorum, Himalayas, Hindukush and Pamirs.

Most of these beneficiaries are widely dispersed across a region covering almost 90,000 square kilometres, an area larger than Ireland. Among many notable achievements have been a significant increase in incomes, the construction of hundreds of bridges, irrigation channels and other small infrastructure projects, the planting of over 30 million trees and reclamation of over 90,000 hectares of degraded land, the mobilization of over 4,500 community organizations and the creation of savings groups which manage over US$8 million.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement has been its pioneering community-based, participatory approach to development. For over 25 years, AKRSP has successfully demonstrated participatory approaches to planning and implementation of micro-level development in rural areas, including the mobilization of rural savings and provision of micro-credit; the application of cost-effective methods for building rural infrastructure; natural resource development; institution and capacity building; and successful partnership models for public-private sector initiatives.

The development model adopted by AKRSP has itself been widely replicated both within AKDN and outside it. A network of Rural Support Programmes now exists all over the country with the mandate to design and implement strategies for alleviation of rural poverty. In South Asia and other parts of the world programmes based on this model have been set up to promote grassroots development.

http://www.akdn.org/rural_development/pakistan.asp

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 23, 2012 at 8:28pm

Here's a report on Sarhad Rural Support Program:

Operating in this region since 1989, the Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP) has quietly pioneered a model of development suggesting a viable pathway for transition to sustainable, post-carbon prosperity. The model is based fundamentally on participation of the marginalised rural poor at all levels — as planners, designers, implementers, and maintainers. Grassroots communities are empowered to self-mobilise into local community organisations which then become the vehicles of building ‘self-help capacity’, identifying the needs of households and procuring the training, skills and resources to undertake diverse development projects.

One of the SRSP’s flagship projects involves micro-infrastructure. So far, the impact has been astounding. Over 4,028 small-scale projects have been planned, delivered and maintained by communities themselves across the region, establishing micro-hydroelectric plants that allow communities to finance their own development — in turn generating new local jobs and service providers, clean water and sanitation schemes, farm-to-market roads, and new opportunities for small-scale agriculture.

Farming communities utilise water from the hydropower plants, diverting it to fields for kitchen gardening, multi-cropping and fish ponds. As the plants store rain and river water, they also provide effective disaster mitigation against monsoon rains and flooding. Through such projects, SRSP has enabled 308,540 men and women to, literally, transform their own lives.

In the Swat valley and Chitral district, for instance, SRSP has played a leading role in providing emergency humanitarian relief to local communities affected by floods in recent years. While this has involved providing tents, food packages and essential household non-food items, it has also involved longer-term recovery programmes to rehabilitate and strengthen local livelihoods.

SRSP staff began these programmes with extensive consultations with the local communities, many of whom had lived without electricity for nearly 60 years. Based on their vision and aspirations, households were organised into local community organisations, which determined the projects they needed and began implementing them. With SRSP bringing in some external funding from outside donor agencies, local communities provided the rest through a combination of in-kind contributions in terms of cash, labour and local materials.

Just this month, in the remote village of Mian Jair Wajoor Bandai in Swat, SRSP oversaw the completion of the village’s first 20 kilowatt micro hydro-electric power plant, producing electricity and 24 hour hot water for over 80 households. In September, a similar but larger project was inaugurated in the Kalash valley in Chitral, with a 200 kilowatt plant, meeting the energy needs of over 7,000 people across six villages.

One local Kalash resident from the village of Bumbarate, student Shah Nawaz, recounted the impact:

“At last we have come out of the darkness. For me, my joy knows no bounds as my friends from other areas would do their research on the internet and download study notes of an international standard, but here we could not. Now I’ll also be able to connect to the internet and will have an opportunity to do online research.”

Another resident and local elder, Abdul Aziz, explained that the government had neglected local facilities in the valley.

“We have spent our whole life in the darkness. We would face many problems when we traverse these hilly areas, and one can easily slip down. But now we will have so many benefits. Our children will study in the night and we will carry out domestic chores in lights.”
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So successful is this model, it has been widely replicated in developing countries. .

http://news.yourolivebranch.org/2012/12/23/pakistans-rural-poor-on-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 5, 2013 at 10:42am

Here's a Telegraph report on rural support program in Gilgit-Baltistan:

We were on the road from Gilgit to Sost, in the far north of Pakistan, a journey that follows the Silk Route taken for millennia by merchants on the road to China.

We passed the site of the battle of Nilt, where three Victoria Crosses were awarded after a desperate fight in 1891 between British forces and local tribes.

We reached a great gorge where, according to geologists, the subcontinent of India crashed into Asia, the catastrophic event that threw up the Karakoram mountain range through which we were travelling. Around us were glaciers and great snow-packed mountains of 25,000ft or more.
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My travelling companion, 79-year-old Shoaib Sultan Khan, was taking me back to where the final stage of his awesome life story had begun.

Exactly 30 years ago, when General Zia-ul-Haq was in power in Pakistan, Khan was commissioned by the Aga Khan to combat the endemic poverty and backwardness of Pakistan’s northern areas. Khan, who was working in a Sri Lankan forest village when he was hired, had spent his life in development work. He was already convinced that democratic village institutions held the key to releasing the rural masses from poverty. He set up the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme to put his insights into practice.

Khan stayed for 12 years in Gilgit and Chitral, a town 100 miles to the west, moving from village to village and living among the people. The only money he had at his disposal came at first from a $400,000 annual grant from the Aga Khan – a pinprick in such a vast area. Though other donors (including Britain’s Department for International Development) followed, the small sums involved meant the only way he could bring about change was by persuading local people to do it themselves.

Yet during this period living standards improved more than twofold, according to World Bank figures. Literacy rates soared from a negligible three per cent in 1982 to 70 per cent or more today. Women – hidden from view across much of the rest of Pakistan – have obtained a fuller and more confident economic and social role.
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This model subverted the conventional model of social development, which assumed that either central government or outside agencies would lift people out of poverty. Years of experience had taught Khan that this method never worked, and that only the villagers themselves understood what they needed. Central to his vision were the community activists.

'The basis of our system is to identify leaders,’ he told me. 'I had no more than 200 of these at most at the start. Now we have 10,000. These were the ones who developed this area. I used to say these community activists are our diamonds. They gave the shine, glitter and permanence to our organisation. The qualities we looked for were twofold. First, they needed to be honest, because they had to do the work themselves and, second, they should be prepared to act for others besides themselves.’

It was the activists in Sost who came to Khan and told him that they wanted to build an irrigation channel deep into the mountain to reach the glacier.

'Our engineers had a look and said that it was not possible,’ he said. 'But when we came back three months later we found that they had started work by themselves and dug 200m without our help.’

Incredibly, no machinery of any kind was used. The villagers had hacked into the mountainside with the aid of nothing more than rudimentary equipment: shovels, pickaxes, digging bars and hammers of various sizes. 'We thought, if they can dig 200m then they can dig for a kilometre and a half,’ Khan said. 'So we gave them assistance.’ ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9897739/Esc...

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 29, 2013 at 9:09am

Not long ago, we put out a podcast that asked the question “Would a big bucket of cash really change your life?” That episode looked at whether winning a land lottery in antebellum Georgia significantly altered a given family’s financial future. University of Chicago economist Hoyt Bleakley, who studied that 1832 lottery, told us this:
BLEAKLEY: We see a really huge change in the wealth of the individuals, but we don’t see any difference in human capital. We don’t see that the children are going to school more. If your father won the lottery or lost the lottery the school attendance rates are pretty much the same, the literacy rates are pretty much the same. As we follow those sons into adulthood, their wealth looks the same in a statistical sense. Whether their father won the lottery, lost the lottery, their occupation looks the same. The grandchildren aren’t going to school more, the grandchildren aren’t more literate.

http://freakonomics.com/2013/11/27/fighting-poverty-with-actual-evi...

Now enough of these (cash to the poor) programs are up and running to make a first assessment. Early results are encouraging: giving money away pulls people out of poverty, with or without conditions. Recipients of unconditional cash do not blow it on booze and brothels, as some feared. Households can absorb a surprising amount of cash and put it to good use. But conditional cash transfers still seem to work better when the poor face an array of problems beyond just a shortage of capital.

When Give Directly’s founder, Michael Faye, went to traditional aid donors with his free-money idea, he remembers, “They thought I was smoking crack.” Silicon Valley, though, liked the proposal—perhaps because Give Directly is a bit like a technology start-up challenging traditional ways of doing things (in this case, aid). Google contributed $2.4m; Facebook, $600,000

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-money-d...

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 15, 2014 at 5:12pm

Here's another microhydro success story in rural Pakistan:

BAHRAIN, Pakistan, March 14 (UPI Next) -- Installation of a micro-hydropower station on a stream in Serai has brought electricity to the people of the remote village in the highlands of the Upper Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan for the first time.

Residents of Serai, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province's Malakand Division, about 60 miles north of the Swat district capital of Mingora, say the introduction of electricity has provided them with benefits most people take for granted, such as allowing them to walk at night without fear of tumbling off steep paths to their death.

Similar power plants are in the works for the area, a move that could pave the way to solving Pakistan's increasing energy shortage.

Micro-hydropower stations require less water than do conventional hydropower stations, so a single family can install one producing 5 to 10 kilowatts for personal use.

The power station was built by the European Union and the Sarhad Rural Support Program, a development organization working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

"A total of 240 micro-hydropower plants are to be installed with a production capacity of 21.7 megawatts in the parts of Malakand Division that have no access to electricity from the country's national grid," Zahid Khan, a Sarhad program project manager overseeing the installation of the plants, told UPI Next.

Most micro-hydropower plants in Pakistan can produce 5 to 100 kilowatts. The next size up, mini-hydropower plants, produce between 100 kilowatts and 1 megawatt. Small hydropower plants produce between 1 megawatt and 10 megawatts, while large plants can produce much more.

Energy experts in Malakand Division are urging government and non-government organizations to use micro-hydropower projects to tackle the country's increasing energy crisis.

Serai's 80-kilowatt power plant is among the first to be successfully installed, providing electricity to more than 700 households.

"It is something of a miracle. This is the first development project installed here. We are the most neglected and ignored people in Swat," Serai elder Abdul Qadoos told UPI Next.

"People say electricity is the source of every social development."

Another elder, Zareen Gujar, also praised the introduction of electricity.

"Our women, who used to perform household chores by torchlight, will now be able to work longer under brighter light from electric bulbs," he told UPI Next.

"Our women are now learning to use electric irons to iron our clothes too.

"We in Serai have never seen any development activity since this country came into being, as we had no roads, no middle school or high school, not even a dispensary. We have been living a life of deprivation."

Serai is in rough terrain and climbing up to houses can be difficult.

"At last, we are not blind during the darkest nights. Many of our people have died after falling at night," Gul Zada, a local community leader, told UPI Next.

"We have streetlights installed now to walk freely in at night."

Zada said no official or non-government organization had shown villagers the power potential from the water around the village.

The power plant was completed in nine months at a cost of $105,000, of which about $9,000 was raised locally....

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2014/03/14/Micro-hydropower-sta...

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 15, 2014 at 5:23pm

AEDB is actively working with Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) to install 103 Mini/Micro hydro power plants at Chitral and other places in Gilgit Baltistan. UNDP-GEF have committed US$ 1.00 Million for Productive Use of Renewable Energy (PURE) for which AEDB is the Implementing Agency.

http://www.aedb.org/Microhydel.htm

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 16, 2016 at 8:41am

Poo-powered biogas pumps help #Pakistan farmers grow richer, greener. #renewables http://reut.rs/1OuV42D via @ReutersIndia

For farmer Mujahid Abbasi, switching the power source for his irrigation pump from diesel to biogas has brought economic and health gains.

The 43-year-old from Fateh Jhang village, some 26 miles (42 km) from Pakistan’s capital city Islamabad, has benefited from a pilot project led by the Punjab provincial government to provide biogas equipment at a subsidised rate.

Abbasi uses dung from his 30 buffalo to produce nearly 40 cubic metres of gas per day, which powers his irrigation pump for six hours and his family’s cooking stove.

The father of five says cutting out diesel has saved him around $10-$12 daily over the past 13 months.

He has used the money to plant seasonal vegetables on five additional hectares that had lain fallow for several years due to a lack of funds.

Turning a lever to start his groundwater pump, Abbasi recalls how the 20-horse power engine used to consume around 13 litres of diesel each day. But he has not bought diesel since he installed the biogas-run pump in March 2015.

“This is a brilliant saving,” he said. “This means additional income of $1,150 for me annually. It has helped improve our family’s economic well-being.”

Close to 20 other farmers in his area have followed suit and are also running their irrigation pumps on biogas, thanks to the government-backed project.

Vegetable farmer Naeem Raza Shah uses slurry left over from the biogas production process to fertilise his 19 hectares, cutting out chemical fertiliser which previously cost him around $850 per year.

“The organic fertiliser from the biogas plant is an economic blessing for me,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

SUBSIDIES FOR SMALL FARMERS

Abbasi and Raza are among nearly 17,000 beneficiaries of the $67 million programme that aims to convert 100,000 irrigation pumps from diesel to biogas by the end of 2017 across Punjab province.

According to Punjab Agriculture Minister Farrukh Javed, the initiative aims to reduce dependence on diesel and boost farm productivity by improving access to irrigation water and promoting the use of bio-fertiliser, while fighting groundwater contamination from chemical inputs.

The government is paying half of the conversion cost for diesel-powered pumps, which ranges from 200,000 to 400,000 rupees ($1,912-$3,824) per tube well.

The subsidies are weighted in favour of farmers with less land, who usually have lower incomes and would struggle to afford the pump conversion without additional financial support.

The programme is expected to avoid the use of 288 million litres of diesel, worth 30 billion rupees each year.

It will help cut the diesel import bill and boost farmers’ profits, while reducing environmental pollution. It is expected to shrink the sector’s carbon footprint by more than 5 percent.

Agriculture accounts for nearly 39 percent of Pakistan’s annual carbon emissions, which are increasing at a rate of 6 percent per year.

According to a 2010 census by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, farmers operate 1.1 million irrigation pumps across the country to exploit groundwater, more than 70 percent of them in Punjab. Of these, 900,000 are run on diesel.

Meanwhile, in Punjab alone, there are 32 million cattle and buffalo, which produce 117 million tonnes of dung annually - enough to produce around 6 billion cubic metres of biogas.

“The government should encourage the private sector to join its efforts to capitalise on the untapped opportunity the biogas sector offers in view of the millions of tonnes of unused dung from 180 million head of cattle across the country,” said Arif Allauddin, former head of Pakistan's Alternative Energy Development Board.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 28, 2016 at 11:35am

#Pakistan Red Crescent fosters #community ownership of risk reduction programmes. #RuralDevelopment http://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/pakistan-red-crescent-fosters-... … via @reliefweb

At the crack of dawn, Ghulam Haider and several of his neighbours from Gulhatra village in Mansehra District, climb a steep hill to repair a broken pipeline after a landslide damaged their water source. Ghulam and the other community members have been trained by Pakistan Red Crescent as part of an Integrated Community Based Risk Reduction (ICBRR) programme, supported by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Norwegian Red Cross.

Under the programme, two water supply schemes in Mansehra district have been rehabilitated, ensuring access to clean water for about 2,800 people in the community. As Joint Secretary of the Community Based Organisation of his village, which was created with the Red Crescent’s assistance, Ghulam manages the repairs of two of the four-kilometre long pipeline.

“With help from other community members, we usually do the labour work ourselves to maintain the water supply scheme instead of hiring professionals for the job, which proves economical,” Ghulam explains.

For Marina Bibi and the villagers of Takia Bela in Neelum District, living near the river means facing annual flooding and the threat of losing their homes during the monsoon season. Through the programme, the Red Crescent has helped to build an 80-feet-long stone wall as an extension of an existing 500-feet wall that protects the poor, minority community from the surging river.

“My relatives and I used to provide meals for the labourers,” Marina says. “It feels good to be able to help in any small way, and we look forward to the completion of this wall. I spent many sleepless nights with my family, fearing that the overflowing river would wash away our home.”

Apart from encouraging community ownership, the ICBRR programme incorporates disaster risk management, health, water and sanitation and first aid. It also helps to build the capacity of the National Society’s local branches and inspires them to liaise with local stakeholders to build stronger, better-prepared communities in the face of disasters and other hazards.

For Kausar, a shy teenager from Bagh district in the state of Pakistan Administered Kashmir, going to school was once an arduous task. Located on top of a hill, the track leading to her school would become slippery after the rain, and was often dangerous to traverse.

Now, thanks to the programme, the Red Crescent constructed a cemented foot track on the winding paths of her village to enable everyone, especially the children and elderly, to access the school and other facilities around the village.

The projects, which cost five to ten thousand US Dollars each, cover a range of initiatives such as the construction and rehabilitation of water supply schemes, the construction of a suspension bridge, foot tracks, a stone wall, latrines, the installation of hand pumps and solar pumps, and the rehabilitation of hand pumps and a dispensary.

The three districts have been chosen for the programme based on a set of multi-sectoral criteria, comprising the country’s Human Development Index, health profile, and a listing of prioritised districts by the country’s National Disaster Management Authority. The selection was made after analysing the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction Policy and Pakistan Red Crescent’s existing infrastructure. The ICBRR programme also gives high priority to the most vulnerable communities, and promotes the integration of gender considerations to ensure that aid reaches even those who are marginalized.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 10, 2018 at 5:49pm

Community-built #hydropower projects lighting up remote areas in #Pakistan, generating 5 to 100 kilowatts of power. Most micro-hydropower projects have a shelf life of up to 20 years but it's extendable. #renewable #energy #electricity https://scroll.in/article/888241/in-pakistans-mountains-community-b... via @scroll_in


Two winters ago was the best winter Zulekha Begum can remember in her 42 years in Swat valley, 150 kilometres northeast of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. “It was the most comfortable winter; our rooms were nice and warm and we had hot water anytime of the day.”


For the first time last winter, her village of Jukhtai, in the idyllic alpine valley, received an uninterrupted supply of electricity thanks to the 65 KW of the micro-hydropower project that the Sarhad Rural Support Programme, an independent development organisation, helped install in their village of 2,300 people.

The Sarhad Rural Support Programme has been working in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since 1989 with the aim of reducing poverty and ensuring sustainable means of livelihood. And since 2004, it has built more than 250 micro-hydro units supplying off-grid communities with cheap, environmentally-friendly and uninterrupted power supply. With financial support from the European Union to produce over 19 MW of electricity, it has benefitted over 570,000 people.

Six years ago, in 2012, the EU (in collaboration with the Pakistan government) started a four-year programme to “revitalise” rural economy and promote renewable energy for sustainable livelihoods in Malakand division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. This was later extended to 2018.

Pumping in 40 million Euros into areas affected by conflict and natural disasters, the project planned to cover 100 union councils of seven districts (Swat, Shangla, Buner, Lower Dir, Upper Dir, Chitral and Malakand) to benefit 2.7 million people affected by conflict and floods.

This fitted closely with the work of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, which was also planning on initiating over 350 units to produce 35 MW of electricity benefiting over 700,000 people by 2017.

In Pakistan, micro-hydropower projects have been led and popularised by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme and the Sarhad Rural Support Programme, both of whom have been recipients of the Ashden international award for their work in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Pakistan’s Kashmir region.

“The way we work with the community is that the latter provides us with land, labour, time even local material like stone, and earth which comes to 20% of the cost while 80% is borne by the SRSP [Sarhad Rural Support Programme],” said Dildar Ahmad, Sarhad’s district programme manager. The micro-hydropower project at Jukhtai (in Swat), cost Pakistani rupee 8,152,154 ($64,275) and provides connections to 315 households and some shops.


According to the Sarhad Rural Support Programme, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government gave them 105 micro-hydropower projects to be completed by December 2018, of which they have completed 90, and the rest are 78% complete. All the EU funded projects were completed by March 2018. Overall, the Sarhad Rural Support Programme says that, since 2009, it “has constructed 332 micro hydro projects, as of July 2017, benefiting approximately 900,000 population in rural areas of Malakand Division and Northern Districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.” (Oddly, the graphic accompanying this claim suggests only 331 projects have been completed.)

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