In the heart of Nepal’s easternmost Kankai Municipality, braving the summer heat is a 35-year-old Dipa Kafley who is making flattened bamboo sheets for bamboo walls and plyboards. A mother of two, Dipa has been working in the SDF-funded bamboo Community Facility Centre (CFC) for the last four years.
Earning NPR 100,000 every six months, women like Dipa have taken up jobs that were traditionally reserved for men in Nepal and are providing materials to build bamboo homes and other products.
This is part of SDF’s Social Window project – Promoting Integrated Bamboo-Based Enterprise Development among SAARC countries. The project, which is implemented in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal, has successfully completed in Nepal benefiting thousands in this Member State. SDF had partnered with ABARI Foundation, Nepal with a total approved SDF grant of USD 640,400. The project began on 30 March, 2017.
While it may seem like just another completed project, the reality is that bamboo, with its versatile properties, continues to provide employment opportunities, valuable skills, and sustainable livelihoods to some of these farmers who call this community facility centre their home.
Bamboo, often referred to as the “green gold,” is a remarkable resource known for its rapid growth, strength, and adaptability. Rural communities around the world have tapped into its potential to create projects that go beyond their initial objectives, ultimately becoming catalysts for long-term economic growth and social development.
The project was implemented by our partner ABARI Foundation with the objective to promote community-based bamboo resources development, management and enterprise development.
According to ABARI’s Director, Nirpal Adhikary, the project fulfilled the objective of providing a source of income and generating employment opportunities for its people.
Some of the project highlights are as follows:
He added that Bamboo is a cheap, very resistant and easily available material to build homes in Nepal. This project has leveraged the fact that bamboo is one of most environmentally friendly construction materials and one of the fastest growing plants in the world. The trainee artisans from this project are now working mostly in the construction sector.
The project has supported the construction of over 55 affordable but quality prefabricated bamboo homes to poor and homeless people in Kankai municipality alone. A model of the low-cost bamboo home was constructed as part of the SDF project, located next to the CFC, which is being replicated by the local government and the people. The Acting Mayor of Kankai Municipality, Sushil Kumar Pokhrel, said that they have allocated NPR 20 million in this fiscal year to build more such bamboo houses, which are structurally safe and affordable, to support low-income households
Meanwhile, Dipa and her fellow artisans such as 34-year-old Bishnu Nepal, said that they look forward to continue working in the bamboo CFC, gain more expertise, and explore other bamboo related work to grow their earning opportunities.
