FAO Project Document book - Solutions for Water platform - World ...

Project Document
APFAMGS is an intervention towards empowering the community to be able to delve in to
a domain which is seemingly ‘technical and scientific’ in the realm of Groundwater
management. This is a non-traditional sector in which the scientists have to work with an
ever-learning spirit while utilizing and assimilating the native wisdom from the community.
The project document rightly terms the scientists, social workers with strong community
and social face. Keeping this spirit, for implementation of the project a team of multidisciplinary
professionals from agriculture, hydrogeology, social work, non-formal education
and gender are put together. These teams will be supported by a very active village level
organisers who have long experience in dealing with the community. The team providing
the technical support will also be drawn from experts who have proven track record in the
NGO sector.
Again the idea is that the learning from the project has to be strongly institutionalized into
the milieu of facilitate and create conditions for sustainability of the project in its effort to
develop appropriate water management strategy in an ever developing scenario which
makes the current situation in the seven project districts of Andhra Pradesh. The
institutionalization has to be seen in terms of facilitating / evolving and creating / recreating
a stable pattern of norms and values among farmers who have a shared goal and value
system to put their efforts towards achieving the above shared goals developing and
following appropriate strategy for the monitoring/management of groundwater.
Capacity building activities will be the main focus having an array of training activities
across the farming seasons. A constant effort will be maintained to refine the training
materials and methodology using the non-formal education methods.
As the pilot activities being implemented by APFAMGS project are unique and try to find
answers for some of the most burning issues in groundwater management, the project has
adopted an approach of sharing its learning from the pilots on several platforms. This
strategy was adopted not only to get outsiders view on the initiatives that are useful for
making mid-course corrections, but also to influence policy decisions.
Hydrological data collected by the farmer volunteers under the PHM pilot has generated
interest in Government Departments such as the State Ground Water Department and the
Forest Department. In Prakasam district, farmers continue to share the rainfall and water
level data with the APSGWD while sharing of rainfall data with the Forest Department is
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