Wew Diyawara Aswaddannata - Assess the background

“WEW DIYAWARA ASWADDANTA” is one of the most incomparable projects implemented by the Rotaract Club of Uva Wellassa University - Badulla with the objective of uplifting rural agriculture centering on Nochiyagama-Katumulugama village and we also focused on the farmers who are currently engaged in farming. 

The major goal of this project is to provide farmers in Nochchiyagama-Katumulugama village, who are also the project's primary players, with a general understanding of how to make organic fertilizer using a consistent way. Furthermore, the project will allow villagers to generate their own manure on a minimal budget, encouraging them to employ organic fertilizers. In addition to these main objectives, we focused the importance of providing clean, cleaning tanks and eliminating pollution to provide irrigation facilities for agricultural operations in the Nochchiyagama-Katumulugama area, reducing the amount of harmful chemicals and materials released while farming and a sufficient supply of drinking and sanitation water.

Our research team discovered lakes and other water resources covered in water hyacinth In the Nochchiyagama-Katumulugama area. Then the team explored the feasibility of using water hyacinth as an organic fertilizer while executing the water resource cleanup process with the help of villagers. Water hyacinth samples from the Katumulugama area's water resources were gathered and evaluated for fertilizing quality at Uva Wellassa University. Previous research has indicated that water hyacinth contains nutrients and can be used as a fertilizer for the soil. As a result, the primary goals of this project were to clean the "Thalgaswewa" tank and make organic fertilizer from that raw material in order to enhance the villagers' agricultural life as well as their economic situation.

So in this project, we did our community assessment under six tools. Here we used community meetings, asset inventory, surveys, interviews, focus groups, community mapping. Here we mainly focus our focused community’s strengths, weaknesses, needs and assets is an essential first step in planning an effective project. 

During community meeting, we visited with the local councils several times and expressed our idea with them. Villagers formed their own farmers' society (Govi Jana samithi) and fishery associations in support of the programmed (dheewara samithi). A discussion with Agri officers and senior citizens was also held. And also we got the help of Rotary members as well. 

So next under asset inventory, we use people and knowledge as our main resources. We did a ratio analysis by the 4th year undergraduates of Uva Wellassa University and they did research about this organic fertilizer. To this they get support from their lectures also. 

We create a questioner to do a survey of the project. And we collect answers from villagers to our survey. So how we created it is, we choose 25 questions under four categories. So within first 5 questions we asked about their economic background, their needs and wants. Through them we tried to inform them that whether they need economic support and as the solution for that they can make this organic fertilizer. And the next 5 questions ask if they aware about the project or not. And next questions about if they like to do this project continually and at last asked about the impacts and the satisfaction level of the project. 

As interviews, we did interviews with Agrarian Service Development committee and get their ideas. We did that interview with technical instructors of the Agrarian Service Development committee and get technical advice from them. Not only that we did interviews with senior citizens, AG office, Grama Niladhari, the young Ground of the village and the temple. From all these interviews we collected so much data and information about their background, economic level, social and cultural background and their ideas of them about the project. 

Farmers from Ayagama village served as our focal group for this research. We recognized their individual demands and how we might improve the project by engaging with the villager's traditional agricultural expertise as a result of the thoroughly guided conversation that we initiated. And also all the villages who live in Ayagam village. There are about 30 families in that village. So this all about the focus group. 

So at last we did our community assessment under community mapping. As here we above mention they created a committee called Agrarian Service Committee. The president of that committee created a map of this project and he noted down all the things that they done. From that they can identify how they use their resources, how they upcoming their challenges and everything regarding to the project. 

So this is all about the community assessment of Wew Diyawara Aswaddannata Project done by Rotaract Club of Uva Wellassa University-Badulla.