From the UBUNTU LEADER Blog we just wanted to wish you a Happy New year 2012. 365 new opportunities of changing the world from the local environments to the World.

Ngikufisela uKhisimusi oMuhle noNyaka oMusha oNempumelelo

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012

"The Common Strategic Framework: adding value to rural development? Bridging the gap between the CAP and the cohesion policy"

The conference "The Common Strategic Framework: adding value to rural development? Bridging the gap between the CAP and the cohesion policy" will take place in the European Parliament on the 22 November 2011.


In view of ensuring more coherence between the EU Funds, the European Commission launched a proposal for a Common Strategic Framework in order to maximize the use of the Structural Funds, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).

The aim of the conference is to contribute to the debate on the dynamic coordination between the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy and Cohesion Policy with a special focus on the impact of the new Strategic Framework on rural developme. ELARD has been invited to give a presentation in this event in order to bring the local actors point of view to the discussion.

Source: http://www.elard.eu

LEADER TOOL KIT.

Here you will find the LEADER Tool Kit that the European Network for Rural Development (EN RD) has just recently aired on its website.

As they say on their website : "The Kit is targeted to the EU’s local level rural development practitioners. It aims to explain the bottom-up LEADER methodology in concrete and practical means utilizing texts, illustrations, interviews, presentations and case projects documented over the 20 years’ history of the method."

This Tool Kit is a guide book for a beginner and a reference material / memory list for a more advanced rural developer. Mr. Petri Rinne, the President of ELARD, was involved in the drafting process of its content.

Click on the next link to have access to this useful kit.

http://enrd.ec.europa.eu/rural-development-policy/leader/leader-tool-kit/en/index_en.cfm

HEIFER INTERNATIONAL

Here you will find the experience of Heifer International about Passing the gift.Their work inspired the idea of including the managing of the dairy goat and the garden within the Ubuntu LEADER project of APRODEL.

Here you could have more information about this international organization as well as other projects they are developing around the world:

http://www.heifer.org/

We recommend you to visit their website as well as to watch their videos presenting how through livestock it could be changed the future of the whole community and reduce vulnerability.

Presentation of the Ubuntu LEADER APPROACH in Durban

Last March 11th, the Ubuntu LEADER blog was presented within the programme of the meeting held in Durban with most of the CDW (Community Development Workers) of the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The meeting was organized by the COGTA (CO-Operative Governance and Traditional Affairs) and AECID/APRODEL. The event brought together more than 80 people among the proffesionals of local development.

UBUNTU LEADER: PASSING THE GIFT

UBUNTU LEADER: Passing the gift from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Goat 5: Circles

Managing the goat: Circles from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Goat 4: Gathering other green waste.

Managing the goat: Gathering other green waste from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Goat 3: Walking around the community

Managing the goat: Walking around the goat from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Goat 3: Walking around the garden.

Managing the goat: Walking around the garden from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Goat 3: Walking the goat

Managing the goat 2: Walking the goat to eat from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Goat 2: Feeding the goat from Community Waste

UBUNTU LEADER. Managing the goat 2: Feeding the goat from the community waste. from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Goat 1: Measuring the waste to feed the goat

UBUNTU LEADER: Managing the goat 1: Measuring the waste to feed the goat. from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Home-Farm 2: The Compost Heap

UBUNTU LEADER: Managing Home-farm: The Compost Heap from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the Home-Farm 1

UBUNTU LEADER: Managing the Home-farm 1. from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

Managing the goat: How to take care of a milky goat?

A milky goat needs better nutrition  than regular indigenuos Nguni goats, and is not convinient at all to have them free in the bushlands because this can cause them injures in their udders.

Proper conditions to manage a single (or a couple of) milky goat are:

• It must be treated as a home goat, like a pet. Go for a walk with it, look for the best grazing twice a day. Tie it close to home under the best and shorter grass.
• Taking it for a one and a half hours walk could provide 80% of their nutrition needs. But remember, it will always need more that just grass. (as we’ll see on the videos)
• Provide it with the waste coming from garden and home:  fruit peelings, leaves  and, if possible,  hard bread or wastes from corn. The waste that people use to feed the hens must be used for the goats (Urban people or, if the municipality gives a hand, organic market garbage will be provided as a nutritional complement every week). 
• Cut branches of trees and high leaves where other rumiants cannot reach.
• You would need around 3 kg a day to feed a milk goat (near 40kg). 

◦     a part from grassing (50-80%),

◦     from garden and home waste (yours or from urban garbages or from other families). (50-20%)

• You will milk the goat once or twice a day. It's better to keep away the offspring after the 3er week (the RAG will engaged on that throught a herder who collaborates with them, from 1st to 6th  month, period that  the goat will be pregnant).

Elements of the Home-Garden-Goat (HGG) : The Goat

Milking a goat?.

The goat is more efficient than the cow at producing milk.

1)      Nguni (and Zulu) people are probably the only African population who are not taking advantages of milking goats .  Namibian, Tanzanian, Chad, Mauritania... all around Africa there are people milking goats. The most significant goat races are Namibian and Nubian... the Nguni goat race has lost that potencial.

• In comparison with cow’s milk, the milk from a goat is more diggestive and largely recomended to elders and baby children.
•  The goat milk molecule is smaller, like human milk, unlike larger cow milk molecule that can cause problems in small or weak digestive systems. 

• It has 13% more calcium and 50% more vitamins. It has even more fat and proteins.
• The goat produces more milk per animal/Kg and per Food/Kg than any other cattle animal.

It is for the reasons above that using milk goats is the most convenient way to improve nutritional conditions in vulnerable families with special needs in rural areas.

We recomend you the next sources/links in order to get further information:

http://www.grandeurnaturesafaris.com/en/video-traite-chevre.php

http://www.ehow.com/facts_5541863_goat-milk-benefits.html

Elements of the Home-Garden-Goat (HGG) : The Garden

This is the spatial dsitribution of  the model of Vegetable Garden we are proposing to create in our Home. 

Video Introduction to Ubuntu LEADER

Here you will find the introduction of the UBUNTU LEADER elements and concepts.


UBUNTU LEADER: Introduction from Ubuntu LEADER on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/20457120

Elements of the Home-Garden-Goat (HGG) Pilot project

Along the next  posts we are going to introduce to you the three main elements of the HGG pilot project belonged to the phase 4 (UBUNTU III) of this project.

1) The Deep Patch vegetable Garden,

2) The Milky  Goat  

3) The synergies created at Home that we will use to increase the productivity of our Garden and Milky Goat  (Compost, waste water, green waste, etc…).

UBUNTU LEADER....from 2009 until now.

Ubuntu LEADER is a mixed approach in which the RAG explores other systems financially efficient and sustainable.

The LEADER methodology, as a deep integrated approach, is  aimed to create self-supported system with minimum incomes. This methodology has been  adapted and integrated to the South African context as far as cultural, social, environmental and local policies are concerned.

The word UBUNTU, as we have seen before, means in Zulu and Nguni languages (with common root with African languages) “we are with the others”, creating and encouraging community and rebuilding in solidarity.

The UBUNTU – LEADER method is organized in 4 steps.

 1) LEADER  Conventional approach. Granting through the Rural Action Group (RAG)   

    (Implemented between 2009-2010)

2) UBUNTU I. RAG creating and supporting a “community rotating fund” managed through Loan, in order to complement the grants for people with difficulties to access to banking services.

(Started to be implemented in 2010 and 2011)

3) UBUNTU II.  Creating community through linking small enterprises. (Current beneficiary projects or small enterprises already working). Through “compost” used in a synergic way as well as other elements as complementary “alternative currencies”

(Considering to be implemented through a pilot experience in 2011)

4) UBUNTU III. Food security and itinerary to agro-ecological entrepreneurship. 

                                Home- Garden- Goat (HGG) 

Considering its implementation as a Pilot Experience along 2011, with 10 families in every RAG, System of managing inside homestead:

The proposed method involves managing a triangle of exchanges among Home, the milking Goat and the Deept patch vegetable garden as we will see described in the following lines:

1)  The garden provides fresh vegetables to the family all along the year, and leafs and other green garbage will be provided / fed to the goat.

2) The goat provides fresh milk to the family (or to ferment it as amasi) and waste to compost that will be used to fertilize the Garden

3) The homestead and family will provide to the garden the waste water all over the year, and if necessary a supplementary water during the dry season in order to guarantee  the provision of fresh vegetables all over the year, mainly maize, beet, pumpkin  during the summer, and cabbage and other leaves during the winter.

UBUNTU LEADER BLOG

This Blog has been created as a part of the communication tools within the Rural Development project based in Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa from 2007. Implemented by APRODEL (Professional Association of Local Development Advisers) and financed by the AECID (Spanish Agency for International development Cooperation).

This blog was born to continue with the collaboration between APRODEL and the rural municipalities of Kwazulu-Natal after already three years of working together focused on the local development and with the objective of empowering population and reducing poverty within the territory.

European LEADER Methodology and Participation-Action- Research, among others,  have been one of the pillars of this common work, and this blog will provide us with a virtual place to continue with this participatory and "sharing together" process.

Along the next months we will be posting aspect about this experience and the evaluation of these years, as well as the present activities which we have named as UBUNTU LEADER, as an expression which joins the deep feeling of a community along with a open and participatory methodology.

“I am cause we are, and we are because I am” is one of the aspects reflected  on the Ubuntu concept , and for us it is cristal clear that is impossible to find the way to social and local advance without joining all the members of the community to this objective. 


This is a place to participate. This is a place to share. This is a place to meet and keep on working together. A virtual cross-cultural bridge between South Africa and Spain.

Ngyabonga kakhulu!