Martes, Hunyo 28, 2011

Urine as Fertilizer, anyone?


May I introduce our initiative which is “Eco-Pee, Rain and Grey-water Conservation and Vegetable Gardening Initiative”.  The concept is simple and includes the collection of urine and using it as fertilizer, promoting vegetable gardening among youth members and their families and rain and grey water conservation with water to be used in the vegetable gardens.  The project gets its cue from cases around the world on the usefulness of urine as fertilizer and the fact that commercial fertilizer nowadays is very expensive with urea (45-0-0) at more than 2,000 pesos per sack. The WAND Foundation (www.wandphils.org) provides guidance and advice as well as small fund support for the implementation of the project.  Technical advice is also provided by Robert Gensch, ecosan expert based in Xavier University.  The sustainable sanitation website (www.susana.org) is one of our useful references.

At present we have distributed 120 Eco-Pees’ to 3 elementary schools and local farmers and 75 rainwater collectors mainly to local farmers.  The local farmers are youths who have stopped schooling and engaging in farming activities.  Our target for this year is to distribute a total of 1,000 Eco-Pees’ and 500 rainwater collectors and to enlist 300 youth-farmers to engage in vegetable gardening.  With the upcoming local elections, we will try to engage political wannabes to support us, and with their pictures pasted in our Eco-Pees’.  Our Eco-Pees’ are made from 20 liter-recycled containers with an inverted 2-liter container glued at to top.  The rainwater collectors are recycled 200-liter drums.  One Eco-Pee costs 65 pesos while a rainwater collector costs 390 pesos.  We plan to scrounge local households and commercial centers in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City and ask donation of empty containers and drums for this project so that our cost can be reduced further.

Our plan by October 2009 is to start selling urine as liquid fertilizer, following the experience of Linus Dagerskog (linusdagerskog@yahoo.fr) in Burkina Faso, albeit ours will be on a limited scale.  Our main target market will be small-scale vegetable garden and flower garden enthusiasts.  We will do this by installing Eco-Pees’ in public places such as chapels, market and barrio centers and collecting the urine then place it in mineral water recycled plastic bottles, label and sell it. The income we will use to fund our operation and send some of our members to school.  Our preliminary analysis shows that we will get 200 percent return of investment (ROI) with this project.    





ALEY-NM Living Museum Initiative



Our organization the Association of Locally-Empowered Youth in Northern Mindanao (ALEY-NM) support the youth in developing poor, marginal, upland communities with the main aim of empowering local youth members so that they take care of the environment at the same time earn from the low external input sustainable farming ventures. Our goal is to stem rural brain and manpower drain and to make the youth active promoters in rural development.

The practices that we will be imparting include the following;

a) Use of high-quality seeds and planting materials in tree planting resulting to high quality and production of trees with good genetic quality.
b)  Improvement of knowledge in the control of pest and diseases in the nursery resulting to good quality seedlings.
c)  Proper management of the seedling nurseries and field crops. 
d) Proper field planting techniques (spacing, holing, fertilizing, pest and disease control).
e)  Increased appreciation of the economics of tree planting and the management of fruit and timber trees.
f)  Promoting low external input sustainable agriculture (LEISA) technologies such as using human waste as fertilizer, vermi-composting, contour farming, among others.

Activities:

a.  Building of a modest bamboo and nipa training/ biodiversity center and office.
b. Nursery development and the planting of high-valued fruit trees.
c.  Training on ecology, leadership and biodiversity for local youths. 
d. Packaging at least two herbal remedies/nutritional supplements from local plants.
e.  Marketing our seedlings and scaling-up our efforts to include other organizations.
f.  Operating the biodiversity center that is able to cater to training and study requests, sell seedlings and use the funds to raise more seedlings.

Areas for Implementation:

Youth Livelihood and Training Center – Gimaylan, Libertad, Misamis Oriental
Youth-led model farms  - Tagpaco, Initao, Misamis Oriental and  Digkilaan, Manticao, Misamis Oriental

Project Management:

The project will be managed by the association’s staff with support from local experts and advisers.



Why Ecological Sanitation?



a. It utilizes urine-diverting, dehydration toilets (ecosan) as a means to improve management of human waste in waterless communities such as upland areas and use this in order to improve nutrition among poor populations. Due to climate change, some area in the Philippines have less and less water and flush-pour toilets are no longer an effective way to manage human waste so people do open defecation thereby spreading diseases and helminths. The Philippines is number 3 in Asia with an epidemic in helminths infestation especially among children;

b. Ecosan toilets is not new and so many are advocating its use, but the problem is that these proponents are focused on using materials purchased from the cities/towns (eg. cement, rebars)  and are thus expensive and inaccessible by the poor who needs it most. Our approach is to custom-design ecosan toilets using locally-available materials and there is no need to purchase from the town anymore;

c.  Most ecosan proponents have not considered how to re-use human waste in agriculture and small-scale gardening for food, thus mountains of human waste are left unprocessed and poses a danger to the community and environment. In our case, we have devised a system of organic fertilizer production using local micro-organisms (eg. lactic acid bacteria) to decompose waste and render it safe for re-use as fertilizer and producing what we call “terra-preta biochar sanitation (tpb-s) fertilizer”.   Terra Preta is the anthropogenic black soil that was produced by ancient cultures through the conversion of bio-waste and fecal matter into long-term fertile soils and the amazing thing is that terra-preta soils do not need fertilizer anymore. Our early experiments show a lot of promise in the production of terra preta fertilizer and we will be producing terra-preta mix taking into consideration carbon-nitrogen ratio and organic matter content.

d. . While others are implementing dry toilet projects for the poor as dole-outs which the poor sometimes resent, we are doing ours on a micro-financing scheme and integrating it into the larger micro-finance initiative and local livelihood development of poor households. Thus when a beneficiary take a loan to support livelihood projects, he can also take a loan for a dry toilet.

Biyernes, Hunyo 17, 2011

My Story

My Story

Intro

Many youth in the countryside are not engaged in gainful employment. They are vagrants or just whiling away the hours in doing nothing because in the first place there is no opportunity for them. Some of them migrate to the cities having seen on TV and heard in the radio that there is money to be made in urban jungles but being of low education and no knowledge of city life, most end up as vagrants, cigarette vendors and even pickpockets or prostitutes, prey to men of low morals. Jed formed an organization that provides young people with a source of income in their rural communities, while tackling issues of climate change.

About Me

I am Jed Christian Sayre a 20 years old entrepreneur and student from the Philippines. My parents are NGO leaders and social development champions and early on I was immersed and mesmerized on what they are doing and the impact of their work to the communities they serve.  Theirs is not a 8-hour job and the pay is low and irregular but I see in them the happiness in being able to help others and in imparting the value of selflessness, dedication and love of neighbours.  My parents are my heroes and inspiration and prodded me to follow the same path as theirs.

Aside from heading ALEY-NM I am still a student taking up BS Developmental Communication at Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City. After taking some basic subjects in agronomy and animal husbandry I saw a lot of potential but also challenges in the countryside like massive soil erosion, poor soil condition and low agricultural productivity coupled with extreme poverty. Than I  found out more about climate change and greenhouse gases and the importance of trees in combating these. This is how I came up with the idea to develop a ‘Living Museum” which will be a repository as well as source of knowledge, farm inputs as well as income for the youth. Subsequently I founded the Association of Locally-Empowered Youth in Northern Mindanao or Aley-Nm, which provides socio-economic services to the youth mainly in the province of Misamis Oriental in Mindanao with the vision to empower youth to be partners in rural development and not a liability to society.

Besides my studies and Aley-Nm my biggest hobby is photography and my camera is always with me wherever I go.  I love reading good books, going to movies and meeting friends and other people. I love also to travel and to join competitions especially if it is about rural transformation.

My Venture

My NGO establishes and nurtures “Living Museums” in poor, marginal, upland communities with the main aim of empowering local youths so that they take care of the environment while at the same time earn an income from the low external input sustainable farming activities.  The Living Museums are areas from 5,000 square meters to 2 hectares in size where the local youth association grow and nurture ASEAN’s most important trees such as rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum), mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), lanzones (Lansium domesticum), as well as Philippine medical plants approved by the Department of Health (DOH) such as bitter gourd (Momordica charantia), horseradish (Moringa olefeira) and more. Young people learn how to care for trees, ecology and the environment thereby helping in improving biodiversity, while improving the incomes for their families.

The ALEY-NM identifies and negotiates rent or lease a land area to be made into a Living Museum then when this is consummated, a local youth association is formed or when there is one already, mobilized and strengthened. We will than disperse a loan to the youth association to manage the Living Museum. The young people than access different income streams comprising, a) sale of farm produce and planting materials, b) fees levied during local trainings, c) eco-tourism activities, d) sale of herbal plants and products, eg. cough remedies, de-wormers, vitamins, e) sale of offspring of small animals.

The main objective of my NGO is to empower the local youths, give them hope and roots in the barrios where they are living by making the barrios productive, vibrant and a repository of local knowledge at the same time improving the local biodiversity by nurturing the land in a low-external input system (as opposed to high-chemical agriculture) and incorporating crop-trees-animals in a nutrient-cycle, sustainable manner.  The impact of my project is 3-fold, a) producing a sustainable way of life, b) empowering the youth, and, c) combating climate change and improving local biodiversity.

Mindanao Ecolife Cafe

The Mindanao Ecolife Café is organized with the main aim of bringing the power of the web to positively affect the lives of poor and marginalized youth.  The youth are very vulnerable to climate change and are mired in poverty and joblessness and the web has a wealth of solutions for job creation and linking with experts and organizations that can pump-prime their local livelihood initiatives. We will start mainly with youths who have the basic skills and bent to surf the web. Their learning, on a multiplier effect, can then be used to start small, doable local livelihood projects that will benefit themselves and their families.

Internet Café’s abound in schools, urban and rural centers, but these are mainly used for simple emails and gaming. The power of internet café’s is not harnessed to the fullest, when in fact advanced knowledge is there at the tap of the keyboard. No one has thought about this and this is an innovative concept. It has the capacity to equip the poor to search for knowledge in order to adapt to launch new jobs using local resources. Aside from generating knowledge from the web, the user can also interact with the various social networks, with experts from around the world relatively for free. These experts and contacts are a handful in the backwaters of Mindanao, with our best and brightest embarking on their Diaspora in search of a better future in foreign lands. There are so many organizations, network, individuals out there willing to help be it in social forestry, promotion of local livelihoods, green technology, coastal resource management, ecological sanitation, and so on, the list is endless.  Then this will become a South-North dialogue. Tackling climate change should be the concern of everybody because with the ill-impacts of climate change, we sink together with our only planet.  The Mindanao Ecolife Café provides this avenue for mutual dialogue and mutual help.

White Beauty Flies to Freedom

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Misamis Oriental, April 27 (PIA) -- A tropical white-tailed bird which was accidentally caught at sea has just been released to its natural habitat and is now free.
The bird, for a short time, was kept at the Regional Wildlife Rescue Center, after it was turned-over, last April 8, to the Protected Areas, Wildlife and Coastal Zone Management Services (PAWCZMS) of the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), region 10.
The migratory bird had a most interesting fate, when by chance, it came into a collision course with a cargo ship bound for Cagayan de Oro City (CDOC) from Metro Manila, Dr. Belen O. Daba, Officer-in-Charge, Regional Technical Director for DENR’s PAWCZMS, in the region, said.
Called “white beauty,” due to its extra long tail which actually doubles its size in length, it’s a beauty to see when flying, the bird was discovered by porters in the CDOC’s Macabalan Wharf.
It was believed to have accidentally swooped into the ship’s cargo bay as the ship passed along a portion of its route exposed to the China Sea.
The White-tailed Tropicbird (Phaeton lepturus) freely flies across three oceans, namely the Atlantic, Indian and the Pacific and scours the open ocean in search for food, and can even float to rest, tropicbirds also seldom fly near the shore.
Meanwhile, Daba said aside from its many advocacies and responsibilities, it is also tasked by the Philippine government to look after all wildlife, be it from land, sea and air.
Thus, Republic Act 9147 or the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, prohibits the collection and hunting of threatened wildlife.
Along, this line, PAWCZMS is in charge in rescuing and handling animals who has lost its way, after being caught in mishaps or perhaps illegally kept, Daba added (DENR/PIA-10)

Asia Society announces Philippines 21 Class of 2010

Young leaders from business, civil society and government are among the changemakers selected for the Philippines 21 Class of 2010. A flagship program of Asia Society-Philippines, the Philippines 21 Young Leaders Initiative aims to develop a nationwide, multi-sectoral network of changemakers to meet, educate and inspire each other; collaborate and share ideas on public service and other meaningful initiatives, and build relationships of trust and understanding.
The new Fellows are: Regina Irene Gaza (Business-Fair Trade), Therese Clarence Fernandez (Business-Social Enterprise), Maria Concepcion Hernandez (Government), Bryan Albert Lim (Health), John Piermont Montilla (Non-profit/Civil Society), Jed Christian Sayre (Government), Jason Roy Sibug (Non-profit/Civil Society), Cecilia Clare Reyes (Government), Erika Tatad (Business-Social Enterprise), and Mark Anthony Yu (Business).

The Fellows convened in a 2-day Forum on August 26-27 at the AIM Conference Center. Organized with the support of Metro Pacific Investments Corporation and Philamlife Insurance, the forum provides a venue for discussing issues of national and regional importance, with the ultimate goal of developing projects that address these concerns. Among the speakers invited to share their insight with the Fellows were 2010 Ramon Magsaysay awardee Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima, and Asia Society Philippines trustee Dr. Carolina Hernandez, chair of the Institute of Strategic and Development Studies.
Philippines 21 Fellows serve as the country’s official delegation to the annual Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit, a regional leadership conference organized annually by Asia Society New York. This year’s Summit is slated for December in Jakarta, Indonesia.