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Asia Network News
Edited by
Rick and Ellen Burnette
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ECHO's Mission is to equip
people with resources and skills to reduce hunger and improve the lives of the
poor.
ECHO's Vision is to honor
God through sustainable hunger solutions.
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This Newsletter is For You!
Send announcemnts, employment opportunties, and your stories to echoasia@echonet.org for inclusion in our next newsletter. |
NEW!
Access Archives of ECHO Asia Notes and News here
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Waiting on the Rainy Season
An ECHO Asia Blog
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ECHO Agricultural Conference 2010
Dec. 7-9
Fort Myers, FL
For More Information
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A Snapshot of You!
The ECHO Asia Regional Office recently conducted a partner survey during the 2009 ECHO Asia Agricultural Conference. From 81 completed surveys we learned:
- 42% of those responding are citizens of Asian countries.
- 29% work for secular non-profits or NGOs and almost 45% are associated with religious non-profits or NGOs.
- The top five activities of those responding are
- Agriculture
- Health
- Capacity building/community empowerment
- Education (literacy, vocational)
- Water/Sanitation
- The combined estimated impact (or potential impact) of respondents' organizations is between 5.5 and 8.7 million people.
- 61% of respondents reported that the approximate income level of families in their focus area is less than $2/day.
- 80% of respondents work in rural communities.
- 46% of respondents' focus groups are legal owners of land. 42% do not own land but have some degree of legal access/tenure, whereas 12% survive as squatters.
- Regarding access to water, 59% of focus groups have limited or no access to water.
- Only 5% have ready access to low-risk financing (banks, micro-finance groups). 39% have limited access and 55% have little or no access to low-risk financing.
- 86% of respondents were attending their first ECHO Asia Agricultural Conference.
- Almost 75% of those responding indicated that they would benefit from an ECHO agricultural meeting in their own country and focus group language.
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Feedback from our Partners
ECHO Asia Notes Issue 4
A couple of ECHO Asia's regional partners provided response to ECHO Asia Notes, Issue 4.
Noeng in Cambodia wrote:
"Thank you for your mail. This document is very important. I will share this with other farmers. God bless you."
In response to the article Preserving Bamboo with Borates by Thomas Singer, Paedring Gillespie wrote:
 "Thank you for the latest newsletter. Just another bit of information that we have observed and practiced for preserving bamboo; The Hmong in the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the Kingdom of Thailand have used a natural method for bamboo preservation. This entails bamboo usually of 3 years or older being harvested. If the bamboo is to be split into flooring it is harvested and then submerged in the nearest source of available water (e.g. fishpond, reservoir, rivers or streams) for 20-30 days. The bamboo then naturally sours (possibly due to a change in the starch content?). Insects generally will not eat such bamboo unless it is has been buried in soil, such as house posts. Bamboo to be used for other construction projects can be soaked in whole lengths or fashioned into different forms such as lashing, strapping and strips for weaving and then soaked." |
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Contributions from partners used in ECHO Asia Network News are printed with permission. Technical approaches shared in these updates do not necessarily reflect ECHO recommended practices. |
Saying Goodbye to Phoebe Mbuvi
 The ECHO Asia Regional Office bids a reluctant farewell to Phoebe Mbuvi, our most recent ECHO intern. Phoebe arrived in Chiang Mai in July 2009 soon after completing a one-year internship at the ECHO Global Farm in Ft. Myers, Florida where she was exposed to various agricultural development approaches, particularly rooftop gardening.
Following basic Thai language learning, she was engaged in many activities at both the regional office and the Upland Holistic Development Project (UHDP), including:
- Helping with the organization and implementation of the ECHO Asia Agricultural Conference in September.
- Teaching students from the Chiang Mai International School and The Learning Center about container wick gardens.
- Setting up container garden demonstrations at both the ECHO Asia Regional Office and the UHDP Center.
- Assisting with the establishment of the new ECHO Asia Seed Bank.
Besides her helpfulness, Phoebe will be remembered for her wit and laughter. Upon her return to the US, Phoebe will be involved in an urban agriculture initiative in Chicago.
May God bless you in this next venture, Phoebe. Thank you for your hard work. |
ECHO Agricultural Conference
for Northeast India
The ECHO Agricultural Conference for Northeast India, the first of its kind in the region, will be hosted by NEICORD (North East India Committee on Relief and Development) in collaboration with the ECHO Asia Regional Office. The conference, organized for those engaged in agriculture development in Northeast India, will focus on sharing among participants, particularly with regard to improvement of hill cultivation, eco-forestry, SRI and preserving the environment. The conference will include plenary sessions on important issues provided by excellent resource persons. Participants will be able to network and exchange skills and knowledge. Date: 6-8 October 2010 Venue: CBCNEI (Baptist Centre) Guwahati For more information contact: Joshi Tuisum Phone - +919436102076 Email - jtuisum2003@yahoo.com, charity@neicord.org |
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Supporting ECHO
ECHO is funded by individual donations and gifts from churches, clubs and civic groups, generous businesses, and private foundation grants.
If you value the work of ECHO as we seek to honor God through sustainable hunger solutions, then we invite you to consider making a contribution through this link to the ECHO website ECHO Online Giving (Please do not attempt to "Create Profile" as there are difficulties with accessing this feature from outside the U.S.)
If you would like to specify how your donation is used (i.e. Asia Regional Office), please do so in the box next to "General Donation".
Thank you for supporting the work of ECHO. |
International Conference on COOLING THE EARTH TACTICS FOR RESTORING CLIMATE ORDER AND SAVING THE LIVING PLANET 15 to 17 November 2010 Sponsored by Department of Biotechnology Government of India Organized by Department of Environmental Sciences College of Basic Sciences and Humanities G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology Pantnagar-263145, U.S. Nagar (Uttarakhand) India www.gbpuat.ac.in
For more information regarding registration, meeting objectives, topics/themes and the submission of abstracts, please contact
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LANDCON e-LIBRARY: Our Gift to the Earth.
The World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (WASWAC) is producing LANDCON e-LIBRARY: Our Gift to the Earth, a set of 4 DVDs offering a collection of digital technical papers and documents that will serve to facilitate research and implementation in the fields of land, soil & water degradation, management, care, restoration, conservation, and improvement. The goal of this project is to preserve valuable works for the long term and to enhance the visibility of contributing works, authors, organizations and publishers. The DVD set will be sent initially to over 3,000 people worldwide, to serve people living in every type of facility of internet, including those with high speed internet, slow internet and without any internet at all.
We invite you to be a part of this project by submitting works, including, but not limited to the following:
- papers/articles from meetings, proceedings, books, magazines, bulletins
- whole books, reports, journals, magazines, bulletins, newsletters
- presentations (PowerPoint or PDF files)
- posters, brochures, flyers, paintings and other forms of art, calendars, maps, video-movies, audios (e.g. songs related to land, soil, water, river, forest, mountain), poems, photographs and any other media that are worth publicizing broader.
Note: For technical papers with copyright restriction, only the first page will be published with contact information for the author/publisher.
With a target completion date of mid-2010, our goal is to collect at least 10,000 papers/ documents. Please join Our Gift to the Earth by sending your relevant materials to us by one of the following means:
Contributors will receive one complimentary set of DVDs. Additional sets will be available for purchase. WASWAC will include the organizational logo on the box and offer discounts on purchasing copies for any organizations joining as co-publishers.
Thank you for being a part of Our Gift to the Earth.
Samran Sombatpanit
Past President of WASWAC
(sombatpanit@yahoo.com) | |
The ECHO Asia Regional Office operates under ECHO, a non-profit, Christian organization that helps you help the poor to produce food in the developing world .
ECHO
17391 Durrance Rd.
North Fort Myers, FL 33917 USA
Phone: (239)543-3246
Fax: (239)543-5317 |
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