Sunderban Trail Day - 1

The first day started little late due to delayed arrival schedules of the team but ended with a positive, hopeful and inspiring note  after  the late evening meeting and presentation by the local NGO Sabuj Sangha who has done credible work in Sunderbans  as a registered society since 1975 .The trail has been hosted by GOAL Ireland who is also one of the funding partners of Sabuj Sangha.
To get to the south 24 Paraganas from Calcutta, we travelled by car driving through the refreshing breeze of rural Bengal. The diamond harbour on the way tempted us to stop for a quick look at the sea and of course the much awaited Jhaal Moodhi!
Upon reaching Raidighi, we travelled by autos to Sabuj  Sangh office at Nandkumarpur. 

The Sunderban trail team was linked through GOAL to Sabuj Sangha to learn from their work in the area of disaster preparedness, mitigation and rehabilitation, low carbon & cost effective rural technologies, livelihood, Climate Change adaptation etc.
Sabuj Sangha  has 4 offices including an Urban office in Kolkata, Peri unrban office in Sonarpur (Kolkata) , Registered office at Nandakumarpur and an Island office at Herambagopalpur in District South 24 Parganas.

The trail team reached at 1830 hrs at the Registered office of the NGO at Nandakumarpur village in District South 24 Parganas.  The inaugural meeting took place at 1900 hrs with  a round of introductions by the members of the NGO and the trail team. A token of LAY was presented by the team to the NGO partner.
Later Mr. Sudipto Burman (Incharge of the model village Programme of Sabuj Sangha) presented a brief on the vision and mission of the NGO, projects and activities, strategies and future plan of the organization.

The organization is working with villages in 7 administrative blocks under South 24 Paraganas of West Bengal including 24 pilot villages.  The organization’s main objective is to work for the poorest of the poor and those most exposed to the new vulnerabilities posed by climate change.

With the challenges of having very little options for quality of life, poorest of the poor community, limited/no past strategies developed/work to deal with such communities, the NGO has done credible job based on strategies of bottom up approach, full participation of community in planning and implementation, institution building, livelihood generation, training and capacity building to ensure sustainability, policy linkage, replication and scaling up of the programme in similar areas.

With the strengths including good infrastructure, rapport with the community, long experience to work in the area, the NGO has designed, developed on ground solutions and implemented activities with full participation of the community. The NGO presented examples of work done in the area of:

• low cost, disaster resistant housing technologies
• water and sanitation tools 
• Health and nutrition 
• Awareness activities
• Institution building and women empowerment
• Training and capacity building in area of health, Income Generation Activities, formation of women  SHGs, low cost disaster prone technologies etc.
• Education based on accelerated learning methods through bridge resource centres.

Formation of water committees, mobilization of youth, involvement of children in awareness programmes, establishment of rural technology park, establishment of low cost and disaster prone housing technologies, providing alternative livelihood options are some of the achievements presented by the NGO.

Though the presentation was quite crisp and provided a good idea of the initiatives and achievements of the NGO there are many such areas which require more discussion in the 2nd day of the trail.

The presentation was followed by Mona giving a brief background on LAY and screening the documentary on central region trail.  This was followed by a Q&A round.

The meeting ended with the finalization of the schedule for day II and listing out few documents required by the trail team from the NGO so as to understand the technical details and impacts of the project more accurately.

Day II looks forward to a field visit to the island village, meeting with artisans, visit to technology park and other demonstration sites for low carbon, cost effective technologies.

The trail team will be accompanied by the senior members of Sabuj Sangha in day II of the trail.