Livelihood Assitance in Sri Lanka

During the past 10 years since the end of December 2004, we have been able to support living of more than 200,000 people by receiving about 620 million yens for emergency aid from Ajinomoto Co. Inc., the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kao Corporation, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance Inc. , Japan Platform, Japan Team of Young Human Power, Chabo!, Felissimo, Smile Heart Club of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., Ltd. Management Organization for Postal Savings and Postal Life Insurance, Yomiuri Light and Humanity Association and many other individuals.

3 year- assistance to the victims of the tsunami in the south of Sri Lanka
More than 30,000 people died in Sri Lanka due to the tsunami occurred in December 2004. Just on the next day of the tsunami, JEN dispatched its staff to the affected area and started to distribute urgent daily necessaries to the households that were going to move to the temporary housings in Hambantota District.

For the affected people who were living a brutal life because they had lost not only their family members, house and household goods but also their income source, we conducted job training (making coconut rope, fishing net, vegetable garden and so on) and group counseling for children through after-school activities in order that they could get new skill and regain positive force.

We have been able to rehabilitate living of more than 33,000 afflicted peoples during 3 years, and completed final self-reliance assistance project in the South by the end of 2007.

Holding a marketing workshop to increase incomes

A month after JEN held the Agricultural Training Workshop during mid-December, we held the next one that will contribute to increasing the incomes of our beneficiaries—the Marketing Workshop. Our main objective was to have our beneficiaries learn about how to efficiently sell agricultural products by gaining knowledge and skills in rural marketing.

To do so, we invited a facilitator who specializes in rural marketing in Northern Sri Lanka, and included topics such as:

1. 4 pillars of marketing (product, price, place, promotion)

2. Rural markets and customers

3. Quality improvement, price determination, distribution, selling techniques

4. Developing business plans

The workshop included lots of group works so that we could avoid too much lectures and have the participants were well-focused throughout the day. For example, the participants did role-playing. They were grouped and did a selling competition game by holding shops for fruits, vegetables, bags, stationary, etc. JEN staffs acted as consumers and walked around the room to see if they are convinced into buying products from each shop. It seems hard for our beneficiaries to practice any selling techniques and they just mentioned, “”What do you want? That is xxx rupees,“ as they lacked the knowledge. So the facilitator was able to assess the knowledge level of the participants based on this activity and include useful topics and group activities in the workshop.

At the end, the participants developed business plans using the marketing knowledge and skills they learned during the workshop. Each group was able to explain about their target customers, selling points of their products, price determination and selling methods.

Most of JEN’s beneficiaries live in areas where access to the local markets are limited, which deprives them of communicating with consumers directly. And they have to be dependent on middlemen who, in many cases, offer an unfair price to buy their agricultural products. We hope that the beneficiaries come up with better selling methods to increase their incomes by using the knowledge and skills they learned in the Marketing Workshop.

Interview to a beneficiary in Mullaitivu District

I’m living at Manakandal GND in Mullaitivu District with my three children. I got injured by shelling during last battle in my stomach. There are shells into my stomach without remove. I had problem to do hard work, out of my home to cate my family. I struggled a lot to manage daily life without fix income.

I am walking up and down every day around 1 km, to fetch water for my domestic use. JEN choose my family as beneficiary and provided seed, long term plant, barbed wire and workshop to start agriculture activities. I attended three workshops so far, such as community strengthen, agriculture and marketing. Workshop on agriculture gave me enough confident in my life. Especially training on compost making and organic pesticide killer are the new to me. Currently, I have started to make compost and organic pesticide killer. It is take time to make it. But, it is cost effective and healthy for our life.

I have cultivated black gram. I hope, I will be able to use organic pesticide killer to the black gram. Once black gram cultivation over, I will do land preparation for vegetable garden. At the time, I will use compost to fertilize land.
My dream is to build my life without dependability with the support of JEN’s assistance.  My joy is working into my garden with my children in a non-organic free environment. I thank to JEN and Japanese people a lot once again.