This week COAM met with the Director of Seasons Honey company, one of the biggest honey producing companies in Afghanistan.
Mr. Manzoor Ahmad learnt beekeeping from his father and grandfather and then seven years ago, combined this knowledge with his business experience and built the Seasons Honey Company- www.seasonpurehoney.com. Seasons currently produces over 90,000 kg of honey per year from over 35,000 hives in eight provinces in Afghanistan.
“There is not enough honey to meet the market demand in Afghanistan”
Manzoor Ahmad
Manzoor has plans to expand his production factory and develop new honey based products.
Oxford Microfinance Initiative is a student-run consultancy providing a link between microfinance institutions and the Oxford student population. As part of a small team working for COAM, we have been involved in conducting research and developing a marketing strategy over the past four months. This has been an incredibly interesting experience thus far, offering a real insight into the various aspects of the beekeeping programme launched by COAM and the different challenges it faces as a newly established project and indeed as a relatively new organisation, set up less than four years ago.
Our initial sessions were spent learning more about the work of COAM’s Bamyan office in community-based conservation, natural resource management and sustainable livelihood development so that our later work would be sensitive to the organisation’s vision and to the ground realities in Afghanistan. We developed a mission statement as a team to ensure that we all had shared goals and we have now constructed an information base report. This research has looked at a range of areas, including an exploration of domestic bee production, both national and international market access, packaging and value added products, and an examination of the potential constraints to marketing and sales. We are now currently working on the development of a solid and reliable marketing strategy which will enable the beekeeping participants to maximise their profits in light of sustainable and growing marketing opportunities. The framework employed has been adapted from private sector firms and we are confident that these will be helpful in a development context. We will be looking at both short-term and long-term potential strategies. It has been particularly rewarding to collaborate with COAM on this project and we are hopeful that the partnership will be mutually beneficial.
COAM has been generously supported by the Linda Norgrove Foundation for two years and we are very grateful to their ongoing support and encouragement.
The Linda Norgrove Foundation is a grant-giving trust that funds education, health and childcare for women and children affected by the war in Afghanistan.
The Trust was set up in memory of, Scottish aid worker, Linda Norgrove who was devoted to ensuring that the people of Afghanistan would achieve prosperity and stability as their country was rebuilt. She was completely committed to her development work and she loved Afghanistan and its people. Linda was kidnapped and subsequently died during a failed rescue attempt in Afghanistan in October 2010.
Yesterday, COAM team accompanied by the Programme Manager of BORDA NGO visited the home of Mr. Sha Mohammed, the bio-gas inventor of Lala – Khil village in the Koh-e-Baba mountains, Bamyan.
Mr. Sha Mohammed is a unique and inspiring man. He heard about biogas technology from a friend in Kundus and made it his mission to bring it to Bamyan covering all costs and expenses himself.
Mr. Sha Mohammed and his biogas unit.
People in the community thought I was a mad man, but now they are all coming and want to learn how to build something like this.
-Mr. Sha Mohammed
Biogas is produced through the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen, which is referred to as anaerobic digestion. Biogas provides a non-polluting and renewable source of energy, it saves fuels consumption, it reduces the time it takes for women and children spend collecting fuel for cooking and it produces a by-product of rich organic fertiliser.
“I want everyone in Bamyan to have access to this technology, it is good for the women and the children and is really sustainable for the future”
-Mr. Sha Mohammed.
BORDA advises and facilitates projects in the sectors of decentralised sanitation, wastewater treatment, water and energy supply, and solid waste disposal in Asia and Africa and has over 30 years of experience and is part of a network of international research and development organisations (http://www.borda-afg.org). COAM Design Team is now in discussions about what we can do to help promote this valuable technology in the Central Highlands of Afghanistan.
COAM is excited to announce the launch of its new Fellowship Programme for Conservation and Sustainable Development enthusiasts. For more information go to http://www.myafghanmountains.org/jobs/
COAM is seeking new people to join our rapidly growing team in the Bamyan office. We currently have two vacancies Environmental Project Manager and Finance Assistant.
This week the COAM team welcomed our new Progamme Manager, Mr. Mustafa Najib.
Mustifa was born in the Central Highlands of Afghanistan and has joined us all the way from Australia. Mustifa speaks perfect Hazaragi, Dari, Farsi and English and has worked in program management, community development, cross-cultural communication, education management and international development both in Afghanistan and in Australia. He has studied law and politics in Kabul University and has a Masters in Asian Studies from Monash University as well as a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from RMIT University. He is passionate about sustainable development, human security and social justice. Mustafa loves the natural environment particularly the rocky mountains of Afghanistan which started with his first job at the age of nine when he was looking after his family goats and sheep in the mountains of central highland.
We are sure he is perfect for the position and are delighted he is part of our team working together to help the people people of Afghanistan.
COAM team is delighted to be able to partner with the Afghan Red Crescent Societies (ARCS) to bring first aid training to the women of the communities in Bamyan vulnerable to disaster.
As part of the Ecosystem Disaster Risk Reduction project that COAM is implementing in partnership with UNEP, Disaster Response Teams are being trained in the vulnerable communities in the Koh-e-Baba. The goal of this project is to help build safe and resilient communities through a number of ecological interventions and providing training in disaster preparedness. The communities in the Koh-e-Baba suffer numerous natural disasters every year which cause damage to property, livelihoods and sometimes deaths.
Disaster Risk Management Teams have been established in each of these communities. The women in the communities will form part of these teams as First Aid Responders. After a disaster takes place in a community, it is the women who will form the focal point for the receipt of aid.
It is thanks to the ARCS that we can offer First Aid training to these women so they can play an important role in the welfare and management of disasters in their communities.
On Wednesday the 2nd of October, COAM welcomed the UNDP-GEF-SGP team from Kabul for an inauguration ceremony of our Rangeland Conservation Project. It was a successful event, to which many other small local initiatives attended who, with the help of COAM, may apply for a grant from the UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme as well.
COAM has been establishing an environmental center in Bamyan which is ever growing. As part of this center we are developing a library, which will contain books, journals, reports, policies, articles and any other educational material such as DVD’s, CD’s and games. The aim is to provide a free-of-charge-loan-service that will help to educate the entire community in particular in the area of environmental issues, but also in areas such as human development, gender issues, and general education for children. We would be very grateful with any donations, from small to large, of books and other material in Dari or English. Would you like to contribute? Please contact: admin@myafghanmountains.org and put ‘Book Donation’ in the subject line. Thank you so much!
