Palar Guttahalli Eco-restoration Program

A Joint Project of

Rotary Club of Bangalore  Vyakti Vikas Kendra  Rotary Koti Nati Initiative

Rotary Environment Foundation

About Rotary Club of Bangalore

• In 86th year of service to the community
• 270+ members
• Focused on uplifting communities
• Seven Focus Areas

Significant Projects

ACHIEVEMENTS OF AOL – YouTube Links

Documentary on Art of Living Naganadhi River Rejuvenation Project

Eco India_ How an army of women in Vellore resurrected a river that once served as their lifeline

HAL’s CSR on Kumudhvati River

Naganadi River Rejuvenation _ Women led initiative _ MGNREGA _ The Art of Living

River Rejuvenation Model – Vedavathi River – The Art Of Living  https://youtu.be/aGiLw7YWJJM

Activities

• Surveys and preparation of detailed plan & estimate
• Community mobilisation through gram sabha
• Awareness and training for local youth, representatives and volunteers
• Soil moisture and water conservation, preparation for planting
• Selection and procurement of saplings, create local nurseries
• Planting saplings during monsoon months
• Identify suitable sites for fodder growth and grazing of livestock
• Awareness and monitoring to prevent fires during summer
• Prepare villagewise water budgeting and water security plan
• Training farmers to implement the plan under various govt schemes
• Continuous monitoring and impact assessment
• Ensure continued involvement of local community

Timeline

• 2020-21 – Advance works (preparation of trench/pit and saplings)
• 2021-22 – Raising of plantation during monsoon months
• 2022-23 – First year maintenance of plantation
• 2023-24 – Second year maintenance of plantation
• 2024-25 – Third year maintenance of plantation

Categories of Work

CATEGORY C

Activities

Rearing Sheep

Sheep can be reared as free range (where there is no shortage of land) or under housing inside a shed. It is a very important component in dry land farming system. With very low investments can be made in to a profitable venture for small, marginal farmers and landless labours.

Sheep with its multi-facet utility for wool, meat, milk, skins and manure, form an important component of rural economy particularly in the arid, semi-arid and mountainous areas of the country. It provides a dependable source of income.

The advantages of sheep farming are:

• do not need expensive buildings and require less labour than other kinds of livestock. The foundation stock is relatively cheap and the flock can be multiplied rapidly.
• will eat varied kinds of plants compared to other kind of livestock. This makes them excellent weed destroyer. Unlike goats, sheep hardly damage any tree.

• The production of wool, meat and manure provides three different sources of income to the shepherd.

• The structure of their lips helps them to clean grains lost at harvest time and thus convert waste feed into profitable products.

Poultry

Rural poultry production may be an important tool and can play an important role in the rural development. In comparison to commercial poultry farming rural poultry farming has the following advantages

• It needs minimum use of land, labor and capital.
• Assured availability of eggs and meat in rural areas.
• Employment generation for rural people.
• Improve socio- economic status.
• Avoid cruelty of intensive system of poultry production.
• Assured availability of protein through egg and meat to rural people.

Tailoring

In India, about 47 percent of rural women are illiterate. Living in poverty with a limited education greatly hinders these women from finding quality jobs to support their families. They are often at risk of being trapped in dehumanizing professions (like the sex trade) in order to feed their children.

• Empower women in with valuable sewing skills and machine.
• They can earn a respectable living and help their families.
• To get trained for 6 months and develop skills and business sense.
• To have basic literacy to deal with markets.

Scholarship program

Teaching a teacher is like educating the community in India, and more so Karnataka.  Teachers are at the heart of our educational system and the success of education depends upon them and the question is really how to create quality teachers and make them believe that they are professionals. The solution lies in a transformation — and extension — of teacher preparation and development.  

The majority of those who enroll for teacher education programs are not driven by a passion to teach; rather they enter the profession for reasons of convenience of time, holidays and a lack of high expectations at the workplace or they choose the teacher education program because of constraints in getting better jobs.   

Teachers need to be exposed to actual classroom teaching throughout their pre-service program to understand what happens in reality. They also need special support during their early years of experience to promote their retention and development as effective teachers .

The education Industry always needs quality teachers, and so do our children. 

It’s RCBs vision to create a world where teachers  are of high integrity and quality, the schools are fair and progressive, and the children are motivated to be positive and knowledge seeking. Such an ecosystem needs to be created where each element feeds off the other. To change the way society treats a teacher and make it professional.

To provide for scholarship to the economically challenged families and also value add by bringing in experts who will train the teachers in motivation and personality and the mind development of children

Agri – millets and source the markets

Millets are highly diverse, resilient  and nutritious crops, intrinsically linked to the landscape of a particular region.

Due to inherent resilience, it is best grown in dry land.

In the past 60 years, our agriculture policy has focused mainly on rice and wheat and neglected millets , especially minor ones such as foxtail millet, little millet, brown top millet etc.

Supply of subsidised rice and wheat through the public distribution system and state nutrition programmes have also played a big role in changing the dietary habits of people in rain fed regions from millets to rice.

To support millet cultivation and provide suitable markets

Seed Bank

The concept of Village seed banks envisages self sufficiency in production of quality seed by and distribution to farmers.

Though this is not an entirely new concept to villagers, it is being promoted to reduce their dependence on external non-reliable sources, including government subsidized seed distribution.

The VSBs as a micro seed enterprise at the village level can be efficient. Some will have the potential to expand into specialized, small- or medium-sized local seed enterprises.

Farmers were mostly positive about the improved varietal trials, but felt uncomfortable when the model spelt out self funding for procurement of seed and storage of seed

The ICRISAT team conducts a couple of focus group meeting with SHGs to create awareness and explain the objectives of the VSBs .

SHGs can be invited to invest in the VSBs as a micro seed enterprise for procuring seed  produced in the village and storing it in the VSB for sale next season.

This had two-pronged benefits to the communities: a dividend for the SHGs and good quality seed supply to farmers.   

Rudiseti Training Programmes:

• Training Program on Entrepreneurship Development-to SHGs.
• Appreciation Program on RUDSETI approach to develop Rural Entrepreneurship Development to NGO’s.
• Skill up-gradation/Refresher programme.
• Training programme on Counselling & Business Development Services to Micro & Small Entrepreneurs.
• Capacity building Training for self employment promotion / entrepreneurship development organizations.
• HRD training program NGOs and development agencies.
• Research and development in the field of Entrepreneurship development.
• Designing and conducting the programs for capacity building of organizations involved in promotion of micro enterprises.
• Training the eligible women SHG members in RSETIs and enable them to appear for IIBF Exam in the implementation of Mission one G P – One B C Sakhi program of the MoRD, R L Division, GOI.

Social Forestry

Social forestry is a plantation made on lands outside conventional forest areas for the benefit of rural and urban communities, with objectives to supply fuel wood to divert cow dung from village hearths to village fields. Small timber for housing and agricultural implements and fodder for cattle of the rural. To identify land and plant cattle feed grass  and practice a balance feeding program in a phased manner extensively . To promote planting trees of fruiting and timber and medicinal.Overall Benefits of THE ration balancing programme

• Efficient utilisation of locally available feed resources.
• Improvement in milk production and quality (fat and solids-not-fat).
• Possible reduction in daily feeding cost and Increase in net daily income.
• Improvement in reproduction efficiency of animals.
• Reduction in calving interval, and as a result increase in productive life.
• Improvement in the growth rate of calves, for early maturity and calving.
• Better immune response, hence better resistance against diseases.
• Reduction in methane emission and nitrogen excretion . 

Social Forestry

The fact is undoubtedly established that the production of livestock particularly that of ruminants depends on the availability of quality feeds and green fodder and lion part of the management cost of cattle rearing is expended on feed.

1.Feed & fodder cost constitute about 60-70% of cost of milk production thus cultivated fodder has an important role in meeting requirement of various nutrients & roughage to produce milk most economically as compared to concentrates. 

2.Fodder crops like Combo Napier, Guinea, Congo Signal, Stylosanthes, cow pea, Tapioca  etc. are  very cheaper source of nutrients and  provide all the critical elements like highly digestible protein, carbohydrates, fats and minerals. Green fodders are a very good source of B-carotene (precursor of vitamin A).  Thus green fodders are useful in bringing down the cost of feeding and reduce the need for purchase of feeds/ concentrates from the market.

3.Shrubs and small trees (like Leucaena, Sesbania spp ) are very good and cheap source of protein and minerals and can be introduced between farm plots and have multipurpose utility.

4.Azolla , being a protein rich aquatic fern has been proved to be effective in supplementing animal nutrition.        

Rainwater harvesting

Rooftop rainwater harvesting (RTRWH) is the most common technique of rainwater harvesting (RWH) for domestic consumption. In rural areas, this is most often done at small-scale. It is a simple, low-cost technique that requires minimum specific expertise or knowledge and offers many benefits. Rainwater is collected on the roof and transported with gutters to a storage reservoir, where it provides water at the point of consumption or can be used for recharging a well or the aquifer. Rainwater harvesting can supplement water sources when they become scarce or are of low quality like brackish groundwater or polluted surface water in the rainy season.

Advantages

• Users can maintain and control themselves their systems without the need to rely on other members of the community.
• Local people can easily be trained to build RWH systems themselves. This reduces costs and encourages more participation, ownership and sustainability at community level.
• Rainwater is better than other available or traditional sources (groundwater may be unusable due to fluoride, salinity or arsenic).
• Costs for buying water and time to extract from the city water supply can be saved.
• Not affected by local geology or topography.
• Almost all roofing material is acceptable for collecting water for household purposes.

CATEGORY B

Activities

• Refurbishing Govt  primary and middle kannada  schools
• Refurbishing Anganwadis
• Refurbishing PHC s
• Adult literacy
• Health camps
• Solar high mast lights 
• Bus stands 
• Village libraries
• Immunisations
• Village sports for schools 

CATEGORY A

Activities

• Rock and soil management 
• Trenching with JCB and Manual
• Pitting and manuring 
• Procuring Plants and planting 
• Maintenance and replenishing
• Survey of bore wells and water bodies
• Revive Kalyanis and refurbish