After the end of a horrific civil war in Sri Lanka, Tearfund came alongside the local people to help them get back on their feet. War completely decimated this entire region but we serve a God who turns evil intentions into good and brings healing.
You can join us in that. For many families living in the north of Sri Lanka, dairying was never more than a secondary income option. But we saw an opportunity that would transform the dairy industry - using NZ expertise.
Ten years ago we started with just eight farmers. Today, we have over 4,500 farmers, 7,500 children and 1,500 women in our programme!
How did it all begin?
Working through our local partner, we began by giving farmers cows to replace the ones they’d lost in the war. We trained the local farmers on how to best take care of their cows and provided milk collection points for them to sell their milk. Slowly but surely incomes increased – sometimes up to five fold!
Even better, we came alongside the entire community with Women’s Empowerment Groups, young farmers clubs, a training farm and children’s clubs.
Then What?
Shortly after we began, the New Zealand Government heard about our pioneering work in Sri Lanka and decided they’d like to support it too! Soon that snowballed into private Kiwi organisations that specialise in dairy wanting to get involved, and finally some amazing private donors.
Thanks to their involvement, eight initial farmers went from producing 150L of a milk a month to around 1500 farmers producing almost 400,000L of milk each month. For the last eight years, we’ve been testing, refining and improving the project.
But we hope the next chapter of this story will involve you so we can reach 10,000 farmers! Will you help this life changing project to expand for people like Pathmanathan?