HIMALAYA SMILES – An Appeal
…and How You Can Help !
They give us their smiles – will you help give them light?
AN APPEAL FOR THE SMILING PEOPLE OF JHUNI
Jhuni lies at the edge of Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, a UN-recognised biodiversity hotspot of international importance. While the villagers have traditionally used the forests and pastures of this high Himalayan range in sustainable ways, the past two decadeshave seen their increasing involvement with the cash economy of the plains.
The benefits– schooling and medical care – cost them money, and cash is hard to come by. The first result of this, twenty years ago, was the virtual extinction of the protected musk deer (its musk pod used by the European perfume industry) by poaching.
In the last ten years, local people have pursued an intensive hunt for Cordyseps sinensis (a strange caterpillar/fungus co-species) that occurs below ground in the high pastures and is valued by the Chinese for its supposedly aphrodisiac properties. The villagers’ presence in this fragile ecological zone, disturbing the thin soils and burning whatever bushes can be found to cook and keep warm with, has had serious environmental consequences. Needless to say over-harvesting has resulted in ever-diminishing returns, until today most Jhuni villagers say that it is no longer worth the effort. This leaves them with a final option to raise cash locally: growing cannabis. While this native plant has traditionally been used by them as a minor part of their diet and medicine, it is of course illegal, and brings them into contact with some of the least desirable elements of the plains economy. Every field planted with cannabis is a field less for food growing, and this inevitably increases the villages demand for edible wild speciesfrom the Reserve.
WHAT JHUNI NEEDS
• solar electric light. The children’s schoolwork will benefit most from it, but everybody enjoys being able to see each other in the evening, don’t they?
• smoke free stoves. Many health issues will be solved overnight from their introduction, plus who wants to cough the whole night?
• alternative livelihoods. The legal ways to earn cash from harvesting wild animals and plants are now exhausted. No one in Jhuni actually likes the illegal ways – they’ll give them up at the drop of a hat if given the chance!
• two SOLAR PANELS (or solar trees…) to run 2 laptop computers (the latter already donated), one at the school, the other in a room within the village. Although these computers will mainly be used for off-line learning through CD-ROM and videos, there are one or two places near the village where a weak mobile phone connection sometimes allows a slow connection to the internet. These computers will literally be an opening into a wider world.
Who are we? Avani is a fifteen-year old non-governmental organisation (NGO) specializing in bringing solar power to and developing textile production in remote villages of Uttarakhand. AVANI FOR A BETTER WORLD
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