Organic Pig Breeding for local education Soe Nay Zaw
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Soe Nay Zaw is from Ayeyarwaddy Division in Myanmar. He graduated from NEED-Burma MFI school in 2013. He is creating a community development project based around organic agriculture, animal husbandry, empowerment and livelihoods training. He will raise organic pigs for youth education. Check out his project and description below:
The program is a pig farm that will help subsidise teacher salaries and educational expenses at the Shwe Hintha Primary School. The money generated from the sale of the pigs will be used to fund the school and supplement school fees. The program will also teach the children about sustainable agricultural practices and provide tuition scholarships for local middle school and high school students.
The program will utilise the school's existing investment in land and buildings. It will become completely self sustainable in its first year and will provide salaries for five new teachers. It will grow in subsequent years and continue to supplement school fees indefinitely.
Two staff members and the students will breed, raise and sell the pigs. We will hire and train new staff from the community as needed.
We will sell the pigs to wholesalers, who supply restaurants and markets, utilising our existing contacts. Pigs will be sold when they reach the age of 6-7 months, the peak of their profitability.
Currently, the wholesalers are looking to purchase additional 6-7 month old pigs in the villages, but supplies are not available. Our products will be competitively priced. They will be organic and humanely raised. Buyers and consumers will enjoy supporting the community school. The pig farm will generate additional income from the sale of organic material and compost, which we will market to farmers, as an alternative to chemical fertilizer.
The program will benefit 200 children who would otherwise be unable to go to school as well as their families. Additionally it will create jobs for 5 teachers and two farm workers. Students will be able to take advantage of multiple opportunities when they get older due to both their vocational and academic training. We will invite other organizations to visit and learn about the vocation of breeding pigs, particularly with respect for funding community education. The prospect of an abundant future for the children will provide hope for the entire community.
An economically sustainable community school, in Shwe Hintha, will provide a ray of hope for an otherwise desperate community, where villagers struggle to provide food for their families.
The villagers work hard, accepting any job that is available, and spend all of their income on food but still they do not have enough. The children suffer from malnutrition. Spouses and families fight among themselves over money for food. Families are unable to buy clothing. They live in flimsy, makeshift, bamboo houses that leak. During the rainy season families with young children sometimes find temporary shelter in a monastery. People borrow money to pay for medical care and for religious services. They become indebted and with 120% annual interest rates they repay the debt many times. Many people have tried to commit suicide.
With such overwhelming problems, funding the local school is often neglected and paying tuition is virtually impossible. This is tragic because academic and agricultural education gives children the skills they will need to help themselves and their community out of poverty.
Children come of age with no education so they are not able to get a job in the city. There is no capacity for development of civil society where the children have no education and not enough to eat. We must break the inter-generational cycle of poverty so that children will not live in poverty like their parents. The community built the primary school, twenty years ago. The facility consists of a large plot of land and two buildings, which are currently used only to 50% capacity. The school currently serves 400 students with ten paid teachers whose services are supplemented with volunteer teachers. The project will enable us to raise funds to hire five new teachers and increase the student body by 50%.