On the eastern edge of Assam, almost 57 km away from district headquarter Golaghat, 62 Adivasi families with a population of 274 lives in No 2 Tengaholla village. This patch of land might seem like an unlikely place to find inspiration for others, but that’s exactly what makes this village different.

Here, a 5 member farmers group take up various works like gardening, cleaning of roads, paddy plantation or harvesting for families that are unable to support themselves due to poverty. They have some guidelines for the work which includes fundraising to sustain the group. For one-hour work in gardening, they deposit Rs 10/- per member and Rs 100/- per member for harvesting.

The group has extended their services to a family for 97 days to do gardening and 12 days for harvesting and earned a total sum of Rs 10,850/-. This type of arrangement helps the family to save money because the standard daily labour charge is Rs. 300/-person.

Seva Kendra Dibrugarh (SKD), the implementing partner of the Caritas India FARM III programme in working in this village since Nov 2019. This forgotten practice was promoted by the team to encourage group work among farmers groups.

This has been a replication of a successful model carried out SKD during FARM Phase II in the Jorhat district.

The collected amount was spent on land preparation for group cultivation facilitated by the FARM team where SKD supplied seeds. Moreover, the group of farmers could easily do a kitchen garden and other works in a short span of time without tiredness and unity built among them. The changes were seen in their families they are consuming their own vegetable product, families pending works are completed, they are able to spare extra time for daily wage work. Seeing this group work the adjacent project village Lotajuri farmers were inspired and they too have started this system of work.

Through this system of work, the farmer’s group are surprised to see that they can reduce expenses and can work out fundraising for their developmental activity. Many of the activities evolved out of necessity and adaptation to survive by keeping the indigenous practices alive.  In addition, the farmers whose land remains vacant will take an interest to produce. This is a model of empowering animation which eventually can lead to community action. The FARM team has planned out for exposure, for such farmers group to other project villages so that other farmers will witness their testimony.