'I was given a cow and taught how to make a shed'

A dairy programme in Sri Lanka is lifting rural communities out of poverty. Selina Prem Kumar and charity Tearfund set the programme up in 2009 and with support from Kiwi farmers, it's grown from helping eight farmers to five-thousand."It's so cold here," says Selina Prem Kumar with a chuckle."In Sri Lanka the minimum temperature is like 24 or 23 degrees."Selina is standing in a paddock near Ashburton. It's windy and showery.She's wrapped up in a woolen shawl. A sensible replacement for her usual sari.A small herd of Limousin cattle owned by Fred and Sandy Hoekstra graze around her.Country Life is there to find out about a dairy farming programme Selina's set up in northern Sri Lanka with help from charity Tearfund.Her goal is to lift rural people out of poverty after a 26-year civil war left thousands widowed, homeless and without livelihoods.The programme gives people a chance to diversify their income away from rice farming, by creating small dairy herds."Most of the families couldn't go back to rice farming due to landmines, but dairying had always been the secondary income, so we thought, at that point in 2011, dairy can bring in quick money for them to start their lives again." The programme is called Yugashakthi, which means guarantee and has grown from helping eight farmers to five-thousand. The Hoekstra's are supporting the programme via Tearfund who assist the Yugashakthi programme financially through Kiwi donations.Selina is meeting up with other donor farmers around the country too. "I'm focusing on sharing the success story with all our supporters and the dairy farmers here, and I'm also learning by visiting farms," she says. Every dollar people donate has been doubled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.Selina says the help from New Zealand farmers is invaluable and not just financially."We have one New Zealand dairy farmer who videoed their day to day life and we use it widely in the training sessions, so everyone who has cows will see."One of the first things needed to make the programme work was to recover cows that had disappeared into forests in the war zone, Selina says."As people ran for their lives, cows also ran for their lives."So we had to round up the cattle and bring them back and then we divided them up according to the tags they kept."But through this programme we've also given them cow loans and we have given cows to farmer groups and female farmers."…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details