“Life has improved a lot because there is no war in our area now. So we are now starting to do small business activities,” said R B Kumari Jayasinghe from the conflict affected Maha-Oya area.
Ms Jayasinghe and a few more residents from the Eastern district of Ampara were in Colombo two weeks back to participate in an International Labour Organisation (ILO) workshop on livelihood development.

“In my village seven families have got together and started a small business of packeting and selling various types of grains and pulses. The ILO gave us training and money and equipment. We buy agricultural produce from farmers and packet them and put them in shops to be sold.
There is a good demand now because life is returning to normal,” explained Ms Jayasinghe.

CB-TREE project
These micro-business activities are a result of a pilot programme funded by the government of Belgium and implemented by the ILO and the Sri Lankan government.

The project is called the Community Based Training for Economic Empowerment (CB-TREE) programme. The CB-TREE is currently being tested in a few selected villages in Ampara. A majority are areas that were destroyed by the tsunami in December 2004.

The ILO says the CB-TREE programme follows a different model from the traditional aid model. Where traditionally assistance is limited to funds and material, the CB-TREE programme provides a lot more. The programme starts from skills development and extends support all the way up to developing and accessing final markets. This extended, longer term support system, says the ILO, has been more effective in helping people rebuild their lives.

“I believe that one of the strengths of the project has been its ability to empower individuals and communities through systematic technical facilitation. Skills training for example, has been ‘on-the-job-training and not separated from the establishment of enterprises, meaning that skills have been induced through actual experience,” said the country director of the ILO in Sri Lanka, Tine Staermose speaking at the workshop.

The project is also noted for its social inclusiveness. A special training component has directly involved 17 disabled persons and a majority of the beneficiaries are women.

“Almost 75% of the people benefiting are women that were previously not doing any income related activity or working. This is a very good thing because this directly increases family incomes and family welfare,” explained the Secretary to the Ministry of Labour Relations and Manpower, Mahinda Madihahewa.

The ILO says that by now 807 people are directly employed in income generating activities and about 3,000 others are indirectly benefiting.

Returning to business
M.A.M.L. Kamayun from Kalmunai for instance, lost his fruit-drink bottling business to the tsunami. But he has now re-started his business successfully. “I lost my equipment and everything because of the tsunami. The ILO gave money, equipment and training for me to re-start my business. The total assistance was about Rs 500,000. Now I have capacity to bottle about 1,000 fruit juice bottles per day. I am already putting them into shops in Kalmunai,” said Mr Kamayun.

The businessman from Kalmunai says the ILO project is timely because the business environment in the Ampara district is also now slowly improving. “There are still conflicts related to politics. But there are less harthals, where they force shops to close and stop business activities. So my income has almost returned to levels before the tsunami,” said Mr Kamayun.

Community credit
The CB-TREE project also provides community based credit facilities. T. Nagalingam from Kalmunai lost his house, his livelihood and many of his family in the tsunami. He has now started a business using community credit.

“I started a welding workshop from money from the Community Fund Scheme. So now we are getting a regular income and I hope to rebuild our house as well. Our house is still only half built. The government and the UN-Habitat Programme gave us money but that was not enough, because costs have gone up very fast in our area,” said Mr Nagalingam.

Mr Nagalingam is also the President of the CB-TREE Community Fund Scheme in his area and says many people are making use of the facility. “In my area, 32 people have already borrowed money and they have all started doing different small businesses like tinkering, making bags, doing up saris and so on,” he said.

The CB-TREE project has organised seven communities and trained them on community-owned and managed micro-financing. The scheme has created and restored 228 livelihood projects on short-term loans averaging Rs.17,350 each. The ILO says the scheme shows a high recovery rate of 33% within a short period of 9 months.

Future plans
The Ministry of Labour and the ILO are now considering extending the programme beyond the Ampara district. “This has been a pilot programme to test the methodology. So we will work with the government to see how we can integrate and expand the project,” said Ms Staermose.

“The project covers 10 tsunami affected divisional secretariats and 1 interior divisional secretariat,” said Labour Secretary Mr Madihahewa. “Our next step is, first to ensure sustainability of the project activities. We also need to develop contacts to enable us to extend the use of the CB-TREE methodology in other areas of the country as well,” he said.

The Ministry of Labour is inviting other Non Government Organisations (NGOs) involved in livelihood development, to link up with the project.