Today we tell you the story of U Angelo, a farmer who has been able to improve the living conditions of his family and community thanks to the collaboration with the rural development project of New Humanity International in eastern Shan State.
Here’s what he shared with us about his experience:
“My name is U Angelo and I live in the village of Naung Leng in Keng Tung district. I am 50 years old, of Kha ethnicity and Christian. I live with my family, my wife, three children, two boys and a girl, my mother and aunt. In my village there are 30 families for a total of 200 inhabitants.
We possess two acres of rice paddy that produce 100 baskets of rice (2,100 kg), but this is not enough to eat the whole year. We also have 5 buffaloes, 5 pigs and 20 chickens that we partly sell to meet our needs. We grow corn and tea plants. I also own another 8 acres of land mostly with bamboo and shrubs.
We learned that New Humanity was working on rural development in the village of Loi Mwe which is about seven miles from ours, but it was difficult to reach.
New Humanity Myanmar then invited me to collaborate on the planting and agriculture program in my village. So in 2014 we started the construction of a nursery with a small reservoir for water supply. Thanks to this, as of 2015 we had the first local varieties of green tea, wild apple trees, coffee, macadamia and vegetables. Local tea varieties have been gradually expanded over the years; as of 2018, as many as 6 acres of tea were grown! Within this plantation, during the rotation year we grow cabbage. Here, in addition to my family, other farmers work, too. Today thanks to these changes we produce a greater amount of tea and vegetables and our income has increased!
Although I am not a rich man I am happy with the money I earn because they allow me to invest in the farm, buy the necessary equipment and expand the crops. Almost 300,000 tea plantations from my farm have been grown in partnership with New Humanity Myanmar and I’m happy to see the excitement in farmers growing their own tea! Like me, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages are very happy to make money from their productions.
We are really grateful for this possibility of collaboration for the cultivation of tea, coffee, avocados and other crops, and for being able to learn modern and advanced agricultural techniques: we have also received support to build a plastic roof for drying tea leaves, to make fences, toilets and a water tank in the factors to… And it was a great opportunity to develop new friendships and exchange techniques among us in the field of agriculture! ”
Thank you to U Angelo for his telling: his story and many other like his, show together New Humanity’s real face!
And… we are curious to hear the next one.
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