SAK Nepal

Scaling up

Problem: Terrace farmers live in remote regions that are less accessible to NGOs and governments. Many development projects reach only hundreds of farmers, at great cost, in regions inhabited by millions of needy households. A scaling up strategy is needed for remote, mountainous areas.

Our Solutions:

•We aim to scale up to 100,000 people in Nepal.

•To scale up best farming practices, we are creating and testing a SAK picture book of ~100 best practices (indigenous and scientific) targeted to illiterate women which will be sold at a nominal cost.

•Snackfoods are available in remote areas around the world. Therefore, we will test the efficacy of using a pre-existing snack food/stall-based distribution system to sell SAKs in remote regions. Using this approach, we will attempt to disseminate at least one SAK component (e.g. corn grain sheller) to 25,000 households (100,000 people) within the project period.

•For more expensive machinery, we will work with villages to develop a for-rent model, as part of products that constitute “Community SAKs”.

•We will test the effectiveness of a commercial startup company (Anamolbiu Pvt Ltd, Nepal) originating from an NGO (LI-BIRD) as a vehicle to procure and sell products for farmers.

•Using cell phones, we will conduct consumer satisfaction surveys with farmers in remote regions of Nepal to gain feedback on the above products and to understand which scaling up marketing and distribution