by Morgan Phillips (UK Co-Director, The Glacier Trust)
Mandan Deupur Agro Forestry Resource Centre (MD-AFRC) was established by EcoHimal, TGT and the people of Mandan Deupur in 2019. The project was made possible by a three year start-up grant from the Marr Munning Trust. Last year, we secured another three years of funding, this time from Margaret Hayman Charitable Trust Fund.
Progress at MD-AFRC has exceeded expectations. Over 2,000 people have been trained through practical and theory workshops, a schools programme, and one to one on site tuition. Five model organic villages have been established, funds and support from local government have been secured, and For more information on the first three years of this project, please download this five page illustrated summary report. A full detailed report is available on our project reports page.
MD-AFRC have launched into 2022 by starting work on three new buildings. These will expand the AFRC’s infrastructure and provide more space and facilities to meet the growing demand for training and support. Our new volunteer, Amy Wilson, will be visiting MD-ARFC in the coming weeks, she’ll be able to report back in more depth, but we wanted to share some of the photos that EcoHimal have sent us this month - they illustrate the project work that has been going on, as well as the upgrades that are being made to buildings.
Mandan Deupur AFRC is the second community-led centre of its kind that TGT has established through our partnership with EcoHimal. The original AFRC, in Deusa, Solukhumbu, the Everest region of Nepal, was created in 2013 and has withstood two earthquakes and a pandemic to achieve financial self-sustainability. We have written at length about this in our book ‘Great Adaptations’.
Four more AFRC’s are currently being established by EcoHimal and partners in Khotang (east Nepal), proving the replicability of the model. We are hoping to create AFRCs in other parts of Nepal in the coming years, and possibly over the border into Bhutan!
If you would like to learn more and support our work, please get in touch. We would love to work with you to spread this model further and make climate change adaptation possible for more people and communities as temperatures continue to rise.