Apart from ensuring financial stability, SWAPNO initiated several climate-adaptive livelihoods and interventions to make the rural women more climate-resilient. Some of the interventions are the following:
Vermicompost production – Vermicompost is the product of the decomposition process using various species of worms, usually red wigglers, white worms, and other earthworms, to create a mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste, bedding materials, and vermicast. This process is called vermicomposting. It is used in farming and small-scale sustainable, organic farming.
Plinth raising – The development of climate-resilient homesteads particularly raising plinths of homesteads in low-lying char areas is one of the significant interventions of SWAPNO. The raised plinth will protect those houses from inundation by the flood. It also allows household members to opt for year-round vegetable cultivation and rearing livestock and poultry in the homestead.
Low-cost Hydroponic technology – Most of the SWAPNO beneficiaries are involved in cattle rearing. But they often face difficulties in collecting fodder, overgrazing of the commons, and prolonged inundation by regular floods in the targeted districts. The cost of fodder is getting high in the market and sometimes becomes unavailable. To mitigate this crisis, the project introduced low-cost Hydroponic technology that helps to produce low-cost fodder. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants in water rich in nutrients instead of soil. The project has provided extensive training to the interested beneficiaries in 4 working districts – Jamalpur, Gaibandha, Lalmonirhat and Kurigram on this technology. After producing fodder, beneficiaries fed their cattle and noticed significant changes.
UDMC training – Strengthening the local institutional capacity is one of the core outcomes of the SWAPNO project to reduce the vulnerability of distressed women and available services for the community. SWAPNO trained 5472 Union Disaster Management Committee (UDMC) members from 171 Unions on Gender-responsive Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation strategies. The primary focus of the training is to provide an understanding of gender roles that need to be included in all aspects of disaster risk reduction activities. They are able to provide support to the local communities to adapt resilient technology and coordinate among the development partners and service providing departments to implement the action plan for risk reduction.
