Green houses help the whole village
In many respects, Jangsan ri in Sinyang County is typical of rural areas of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The scenery is an intensely cultivated river valley fringed by steep barren mountains. Fields of corn edge up the steep hillsides and in the valley below maize cobs with maize cobs are drying on the roofs of identical single-storey homes.
Food security is the priority here and every available patch of land is used for agriculture. According to data gathered by the UN in 2016, 18 million people in DPRK are food insecure (81% of households) and 10.5 million are considered to be undernourished.
Increasing levels of food production is one of the country’s development goals and the DPRK Red Cross Society is contributing to this aim. Four years ago Jangsan ri was amongst a number of communities across the country selected to be part of the Red Cross Integrated Community Development Programme which takes a holistic approach towards tackling many of the humanitarian and development challenges faced by rural communities in DPRK.
The programme serves as an umbrella for a range of projects which are improving nutrition and livelihoods; providing access to clean water and improved sanitation; tackling deforestation and reducing the risks and impact of disasters.
Inclusion in the programme depends on a communities’ vulnerability to natural disasters and its socio economic status. Jangsan ri qualified because almost every year it faces seasonal floods which destroy harvests and have a long term impact on local livelihoods.
Now, greenhouses funded by the Red Cross are helping to transform the community. Fifty tons of high value vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, chillies and lettuce are being grown all year round in eight poly-tunnels. This produce is not only improving nutrition in the community, it is also being sold or traded so that the greenhouses can be financially self-sustaining.
Red Cross volunteer Jo Kum Ju works as a manager on the project. Her husband is disabled and she faced difficulties in looking after the family alone.
“Taking care of a child alone was not easy. I went to the Red Cross and told them I had some education in agriculture and I was accepted to work here”, she says.
She supervises production in the greenhouses and also trains people from neighbouring ri’s who are interested in starting their own greenhouse enterprise.
Jo Kum Ju arranges vegetable deliveries for local people who are considered to be particularly vulnerable. They include the elderly and disabled and families with large numbers of dependants.
“When I’m delivering the vegetables and see how happy it makes people. That’s when I feel very proud,” she says.
Attaching a full basket of cucumbers on her bicycle she cycles through the village to visit Kim Yong Ae who lives high up in a small village on the hill side. For the last few hundred metres she has to push her cycle along the steep, rough path.
Kim Yong Ae damaged her back in an accident and is unable to do manual labour. Although she cannot cultivate her own kitchen garden she has collected some edible wild berries which are drying under the mountain sun. The weekly delivery of vegetables from the Red Cross is the only fresh produce her family will eat through the long winter months.
“Ten years ago, the old water storage system was completely destroyed during heavy floods. Since then people have been collecting water from shallow wells and the local river”, explains Kim Jong Hyon.
Now, Dongyang ri is an inspiring example of the benefits that a low cost gravitational water system can bring to an entire community.
Red Cross volunteer and head of the local collective farm, Ji Yong Jin, proudly explains how the mountain stream is directed through a soil and sand filtration system into an underground water tank. The water is then fed by gravity, directly into 100 homes sitting in the village 2,000 metres below.
“Before, each household had water buckets and a carrying yoke which they used to fetch water but now they’re not using them anymore. The incidence of waterborne disease has decreased from 10% to 3%.” explains Ji Yong Jin.
The water system was constructed in 2015 and is maintained by a Community Project Management Committee. New latrines have also been built for individual households to improve sanitation in the community.
In the front yard of Pak Yong Hyi’s house a carpet of chillies is drying in the sun. Chickens scratch in the dirt and three pigs grunt contentedly in their pens.
Pak Yong Hyi explains the difficulties she faced with water before the new system was installed.
“When we came back late after work. It was very difficult to fetch water, it took normally one hour as we needed 12 buckets. The problems grew worse when it was raining. River water became contaminated by soil and bacteria. Many of us got stomach diseases, especially elderly people were suffering”.
Now Pak Yong Hyi doesn ́t have to spend hours each day going back and forth from the well.
In Dongyang Ri, Red Cross youth are also active participants in the Integrated Community Development Programme. When the school day ends, Pak Yong Hyi’s daughter, 16 year-old Ji Guk Hua, changes her school uniform for a DPRK Red Cross volunteer’s jacket and heads out into the community.
A group of women and children has already assembled in the centre of the village and Ji Guk Hua starts explaining to her audience how to prevent communicable diseases such as diarrhea. With the aid of information cards she educates the group about good hygiene and sanitation practises that will maintain the health of their families.
Ji Guk Hua has been a Red Cross volunteer for five years. Along with other friends in her school who are also volunteers she has the opportunity to learn an instrument and together they use music and performance to promote health education messages.
“By doing health promotion I help the community people to have better health and by doing this I also gain better knowledge about health issues. I want to become a doctor”, says Ji Guk Hua.
The hillsides surrounding Dongyang ri are teeming with people. The entire community has come out in an effort to re-forest the bare earth hills. Saplings are being carried up the slope from the local tree nursery and the volunteers work together. Some are digging shallow holes on the hill side, others are carefully bedding in the saplings ensuring that they are well watered.
Ten species of tree seedlings are grown at the nursery which is funded by the Red Cross. Some are grown for firewood while others produce fruits or are used for their medicinal properties. In the spring 200,000 larch tree seedlings are planted along with 100,000 tree cuttings and 20 kilograms of chestnut and pear tree seeds.
Ri Hwa Gon is head of the nursery. “Some of the trees grow very fast and their roots help to avoid mudslides when it is raining heavily. If we plant a lot of trees we can use the wood for fuel and the fruits can be distributed to the schools and kindergartens.”
A major component of the Integrated Community Development Programme is about reducing disaster risk and building the resilience of communities. At Bulgunbyol ri in Hamju County, hundreds of volunteers are at work in the Yo Ui Chon riverbed. Almost every year the river rises at least four metres and bursts its banks, flooding the surrounding farmland and damaging hundreds of homes.
The local community here has identified five risk areas along the long embankment. For two months an average of 40 people will work here every day, carrying boulders from the river bed to reinforce the bank. Others will be gathering rocks for a series of five huge cement covered groynes which are designed to divert the flow of the river away from the riverbank.
With funding from the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) the Red Cross is providing cement, iron and other raw materials to construct the groynes. The community provides the workforce needed to shift the huge volume of stones and carry out the construction work.
Ri Song Chol, head of the Community Programme Management Committee, explains how vital the project is to protect villages in the area.
“If we have flooding here three other communities will be damaged, in total 5,500 hectares of farmland will be flooded. 600 households will be destroyed and another 1,000 households will be flooded.”
The Integrated Community Development programme not only provides direct benefits to vulnerable communities, it also provides an important vehicle for developing the capacity of the DPRK Red Cross Society.
“We want to be the leading humanitarian organization, particularly in the field of disaster management”, says Ri Ho Rim, Secretary General of the DPRK Red Cross Society.
“To build a strong National Society, we want to increase the number of volunteers and the quality of their services so that one day we can achieve independence and be self-supporting”.
Text: Hilkka Hyrkkö
