Young Social Entrepreneurs in Sustainable Development

Young Social Entrepreneurs in Sustainable Development
(YSES)

This is a special project which has taken the environment education and environmental intervention aspects of the Basic School System to a much more effectives level. In partnership with Caritas Switzerland CMES has been conducting this project in a special unit at Lalmonirhat district in the environmentally and economically challenged northern region of the country. After the three year first phase this has been extended to another unit in Nilphamari district of the same region. The goal is to motivate and enable the CMES students and graduates to be more proactive in attaining sustainable development in the area, in harmony with their own aspirations for a better life and livelihood. Actually they will be educated with an aim to make them into Young Social Entrepreneurs in Sustainable Development (YSES), who can take up environmental interventions and services as a vocation integrated with their life and livelihood. With this aim, the grass root environmental issues have been incorporated within the curriculum. New and environmentally more positive technologies are being explored and adapted for the project wherever feasible. All the characteristics of the Basic School System has been strengthened to make this challenging effort a success. Through this, environmental issues are not being treated only as some concepts and responsibilities good for everybody, but also as something to be looked at holistically with the professional and commercial endeavors both the YSES and the community. To do this the project has been active in a wide range of initiatives from research and exploration to real life adaptation, piloting, training, community motivation, commercialization, campaign etc. The following are some of the technologies and interventions which have received more attention, and attained more success.

Vermicompost:
This is a biofertilizer for which special type of earth-worms are used to assist in the composting of cow dung, dried leaves, kitchen wastes etc. YSES has found it very effective in promoting organic agriculture in the area. It has been welcomed by the farmers, and the young entrepreneurs have been able to make it into a mission as well as into a significant livelihood activity.

Bee keeping:
This activity of the graduates is helping the farmers through pollination of their crops as well as by producing honey for the YSES business efforts. Paying the bee keepers for pollination has been a completely a new culture in rural Bangladesh, which the YSES has been able to start.

	Mushroom:
	YSES has been able to bring a new momentum in the oyster mushroom program of CMES. The YSES lab for mushroom spawn production and its extended culture houses has introduced an environmentally helpful sustainable new agriculture in the area.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
IPM is being looked at from a much more practical and modern point of view in YSES. While it began as a campaign to educate the farmers in bio control of the pests, along with the training of the students in it mainly by physically eliminating the pests and encouraging natural predators to be around, more concrete steps have later been taken. Replacing the indiscriminating light traps for insects with insect-specific pheromone traps has been a big step forward. Also the introduction of appropriate predator larvae to control the pests are new being tied. These are requiring a lot of experimentation, observation and piloting. But these are promising to bring new dimension in the practice of organic agriculture in the area.

Renewable Energy:
More uses of solar energy are being tried in YSES, apart from the on-going installations of solar home systems for basic electricity needs. The things for which search and adaptive research are going on include – solar pumping for drip irrigation, water purification through low power electricity driven chlorination, low cost but commercially available improved cooking stove etc.