Message from the Country Director

I am pleased to present the annual report of Practical Action Nepal Office for the year 2011/12. The reporting year 2011/12 has been an exciting one for Practical Action, as it was the final year of the five years strategic period, and we have plenty of reasons to be proud with the achievements that we had. The noteworthy achievements to mention here are the gravity goods ropeway works, which are now being taken over by a number of organisations including the national government and other bigger programmes. Likewise, through the Disaster Risk Reduction works, we have been able to establish early warning systems as one of the effective means to save lives and assets from flood disasters and the concept has been widely taken over by the government, UNDP, and international non-government organisations.

Despite the challenging national political scenario, Practical Action has made utmost efforts and valuable impacts to make life better for the people of Nepal in its working areas. Like in the past years, Practical Action has put its efforts in the areas that are critical and essential to the most under privileged people. We are proud of the impacts that we were able to generate during this reporting period in our objective areas like agriculture, markets, food security, urban sanitation, rural transport, and disaster risk reduction among others.

The "HELP Food Security" project reached its completion during this period making significant impact in the lives of 17,779 households of the target districts – Dailekh, Doti and Kalikot. There has been considerable increase in the food security situation through interventions like; construction and rehabilitation of irrigation systems, providing access to improved variety of seeds, distribution of cereal, cash crops and livestock, introduction of metal bins and super grain bags for food storage, and also providing training to people in agriculture and veterinary sector. Similarly, the effective and practical approaches and technologies introduced by our Disaster Risk Reduction programme has been saving lives and assets of the people by providing them with the knowledge as well as technologies to stay safe from life threatening disasters. The improved early warning system has been established by SCORE project under DIPECHO programme in partnership with Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, which we believe is a very significant achievement having greater prospect for scaling up in other river systems in the country as well as in the South Asia region.

We successfully concluded the Access for Opportunities project in early 2012 which was being implemented since 2007. The project accomplished remarkable work of installing 15 gravity goods ropeways and 18 improved tuins in the four project districts – Achham, Gorkha, Kalikot, and Tanahun. This has played a substantial role in improving access of 50,843 people to the rural infrastructures increasing their access to markets and consequently providing them with better earning opportunities.

Our ‘SWASHTHA’ project community in Chitwan has been declared as the first 'Healthy Community' in Nepal. With the overall approach in improving the sanitation condition of the community, the declared community now has all the facilities like; safe drinking water, improved sanitation condition, better hygiene practice, proper waste management, and better kitchen management. In the same way, MASF-Dairy project has continued its success from the last reporting year, working to increase the quality and volume of the milk production and simultaneously increasing smallholder dairy farmer's access to commercial market. Seventy one existing milk collection centres were strengthened and 48 new ones were established in coordination with local authorities as well as cooperatives
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In this reporting period we have started PRISM project focusing on providing recognition to Informal Waste Workers (IWWs) and ROJGARI project to work in the job market systems. PRISM project has already started making positive impacts for this group of vulnerable urban population by supporting in different aspects like education and occupational safety and health of the IWWs. ROJGARI project works with the objective of creating and increasing access to employment opportunities for rural youths and has launched a job information web portal www.rojgari.com targetting the job seekers and providers.

With the completion of this reporting period, we have completed five years strategic period of 2007-12. The five year period was an important one for us as we worked through four Aims approach to contribute to Nepal's poverty reduction. In the new strategic period of 2012-17, our strategy has changed to some extent where we will be focusing our good works through four core programme areas: Access to energy; Agriculture, markets and food security; Urban waste, water and sanitation; and Disaster Risk Reduction. Climate change and Making markets work for the poor are embedded as cross cutting issues in all the four sectors. Hence, with the beginning of the new strategic period, we look forward to more fruitful, exciting, and impactful period.

Regarding the past year, I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all who has supported us to accomplish our goals. I would like to extend my appreciation to all the generous donors who believed in us and supported our work. Also, I would like to thank all our partners, without whom we would not have come this far. Likewise, I express my gratefulness towards the Government at both national and local level. And most of all, I truly thank the people from the communities who worked with us, welcomed us in their lives and became a part of the change that we wanted to create. I wish you a happy reading.

Achyut Luitel
Country Director

Contact us

Practical Action Nepal Office
PO Box 15135,
Narayan Gopal Sadak, Maharajgunj
House no. 2677
Kathmandu, Nepal

Telephone: +00 977 1 4720 803, 4720 804 and 4720 761
Fax: +00 977 1 4720 402

e-mail: nepal@practicalaction.org.np