Sustainable livelihoods

It all began with a fruit

There were 20 kg in the sack of a mix of wild fruits collected from the forest. The brief had been to bring all edible fruits and there they were. The team at Kaigal steamed, pitted, crushed and filtered and watched the mixture boil over a wooden stove for 5 hours, making the first jam from forest produce.

As they bottled the jam, several ideas there were a hundred questions bubbling in the minds of the team. Can the local and forest produce be converted into products that would fetch more value than the raw produce the communities take to market? Can it increase the shelf life of the produce? Will a higher return on their products incentivise the communities to conserve and harvest sustainably?

Thus began the community enterprise for livelihoods based on forest and local produce, empowering local communities and strengthening the biodiversity conservation efforts.

Objectives of the livelihoods program

Develop and nurture a community centred approach to biodiversity conservation through the development of sustainable livelihoods based on locally available bioresources

Empowerment of women and youth through locally relevant skill building and increasing economic opportunities

Strengthen the local rural and tribal communities through procurement of
local bio-resources at fair prices

Support community led enterprises that can be exemplars for scalable and replicable models of sustainable harvesting of bio-resources

What have we achieved

Kaigal Trust, an organization we have nurtured, is now an independent entity with a turn-over of more than Rs 35 lakhs. The organization is run by the local community – women and youth – who have been trained in various skills of value addition, craft skills as well as enterprise management skills. With a product range of over 40 products, Kaigal Trust is a recognized and trusted brand of products being sold in regional markets. In 2018, Kaigal Trust was recognized by the Andhra Pradesh Biodiversity Board as a community based model for Access and Benefit Sharing from local bio-resources.

Procurement of Jamun fruits from tribal collectors

Planning meeting in progress

Products of Kaigal Trust

Supporting skill building training for local communities

Presentation about Kaigal Trust

Simple value addition to local bioresource