Partners for Facilitating Agriculture Regeneration Measures (FARM) North East (NE) will offer Natural resource management with a blend of People Led Empowerment (PLE) approach in the next phase.

The first phase had revived various indigenous agriculture practices with enhanced understanding and techniques. Community learnt newer agricultural techniques like SALT, Poly film Technology Farming and Weed Compost making etc. and showed remarkable results in terms of communities accessing benefits from Govt. schemes and programmes.

A three days’ workshop with 15 implementing partners from 14 Dioceses of North East India was organised to refine the proposal and budgetary provisions for the next phase at Guwahati from June 15-17, 2016.

Stressing on understanding the basics of PLE approach with partners, Fr. Paul, Assistant Executive Director, Caritas India said that learnings from phase one will help us to design the present phase in a better manner.

Being the second largest cluster programme of Caritas India across the country, FARM Northeast covers all seven sister of North East region informed Ms. Shimray, Assistant HoD, PSS. She said “Though in the 1st phase the programme initially took some time to translate the concept on the ground but toward the latter part of the 1st year strong people led processes were observed in the programme”.

Caritas Chairman, Bishop Lumen Monteiro gave the reference of FARM project in kerala and said FARM NE is a perfect blend of traditional farm activity, economic development and traditional health. He further elaborated the role of NGO and community and said that NGO work as facilitator and community are the doer. Strengthen community based organizations, Collective action, Sustainable action, Peoples’ ownership are the major elements of this initiative. Bishop expressed his interest to visit the project areas as he has been visiting the other zones of Caritas India. Chairman also released two publications made by Diocese of Kohima and Tura respectively on FARM NE phase I.

The workshop included programme progress update by the individual partners followed by feedback and suggestions by the team of experts from Caritas India. Empowering Community through revival of traditional farming and health practices along with socio- economic and self-governance were the major highlights of the workshop.