Peace By Peace Cotton Project

Operational Area: Kalahandi, Bolangir, Koraput districts in Orissa

Felissimo Corporation in collaboration with Chetna and technical support from JICA, designed a collaborative program – Peace by Peace Cotton Project to complement the existing efforts of The Organic and Fair Trade Cotton Intervention Program(since June 2009) to support the smallholder cotton farmer households in Odisha. Project activities have been planned around the following two broad and yet critical thematic categories in the context of the overall program objectives based on the detailed need assessment;

• Transitional support for the organic farmers mainly focused on:
  (a) ensuring productivity enhancement through asset creation
  (b) reducing dependence on external inputs like seeds
  (c) enhancing capacities and confidence among farmers towards undertaking ecological/organic cotton farming practices by setting up demonstration models to reduce anxiety among in-conversion farmers and further help them in a smoother transition to organic.
• Education fund for promoting education among children of small and marginal cotton farmers and wage labor. The focus is mainly on
  (a) Facilitating rural communities to undertake school enrolment campaigns to ensure 100% enrolment of children in schools;
  (b) Capacity building of the farmer SHG on local school education monitoring and exercising rights for demanding accountability;
  (c) Set up vocational training centres, esp. for girl children (school dropouts) leading to skill development
  (d) Scholarships to outstanding children for higher education (+2 onwards) with specific emphasis on girl children.

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