SOMNEED

Last updated: September 2007

	Name (English)		SOMNEED
	Name (Japanese)	SOMNEED（Society for Mutual aid, Networking, Environment, Education & Development）
	Established in	Year 1993
	Registered status in Japan	Registered under the Law to promote specified non-profit activities
	Name of the Representative in India	Ms. Yasuko Hara
	Address	Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India
	Tel/Fax
	E-mail address	somneed*sify.com / info*somneed.org (Japanese & English) (When sending a mail, please change * into @)
	URL	http://www.somneed.org http://somneed.seesaa.net/　(Blog site in Japanese only where one can see latest activities of SOMNEED. One can also see back numbers of “Mizu Mori Tsuchi Hito Yomoyama Tsushin” as well as “PCUR-LINK Newsletter”which are lively narratives of SOMNEED’s ongoing and previous JICA Partnership Project activities. *(both PDF, Japanese only)
	Activity in India Since	Year 1993
	Duration of JICA Partnership Programme	From August 2007 to July 2010
	Objectives of work in India	SOMNEED was established in 1993 upon the request from anIndian local NGO. SOMNEED has been implementing severalprograms for scheduled tribes and scheduled castes in rural areas. Since the establishment of SOMNEED India (Trust) in2001, SOMNEED has expanded its supports to urban slumwomen. Basically all the programs are implemented by direct intervention without local NGOs except SOMNEED India. SOMNEED works with so called “the poor”. Yet SOMNEED considers that “poverty” is just phenomena. What SOMNEED tries to do is to find out issues that produce such phenomena and work out ways to solve such issues and put them into practice. We also consider that such issues are common not only in developing countries but also common to Japan and other developed countries.
	Outline of ongoing JICA Partnership Programme projects	Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) is one of the forerunners of micro watershed development. Amongst districts of A.P., Srikakulam District has one of the largest tribal populations. This project aims to achieve common property resource management through micro watershed management and forest regeneration with local (tribal community) initiatives, an important outcome of which is poverty reduction of the local people by enabling them to plan and implement natural resource management, to mobilize necessary resources for village development activities.
	Field of Activity	Micro watershed management, Capacity building of community based organizations (CBO)
	Working area	Srikakulam District, Andhra Pradesh
	Name of the partner	SOMNEED INDIA
	Message from the Representative in India: SOMNEED has three basic components in its activities such as “Human Development”,“Natural Resource management”; and “Community Development”;. SOMNEED formulates and implements following three activities together with local counterparts. Training on new technologies in order to enable community to build up their own future to cope with new situations (Community based issue analysis, Action Planning, Micro Credit etc.) Forest related technology transfers in order to preserve, regenerate and utilize the forest (Micro watershed, Solar, wind, micro-hydro or any other recyclable decentralized energy options, Forest regeneration and Protection of biodiversity etc.) Promotion of community development (Collaboration with Government, Community organization building and management etc.) Micro watershed management with local initiatives under this JPP also consists of the above 3 components. It is not SOMNEED way to demand local community to implement any ready-made project that was planned in Japan. SOMNEED facilitates to establish common understanding with local community along with staff members who are in charge of the program “how best we can tackle with common issues” and share the risk and responsibility together. Especially at the beginning of the program, SOMNEED always puts emphasis on “Partnership Building”. These process such as Partnership Building, Community based issue analysis, Action plan, Implementation & Monitoring and Evaluation & Feedback are all shared with local community. This is what our partners call as “SOMNEED method”.