Ms. Anusha Kumari Rathnayaka from Aeanwala is one of the shortlisted TOTs and she is a social activist and a first place winner for rural home gardens and truly an ideal addition to our community team.

It took us literally months and incessant rounds of discussions, chit-chats, observations to long list 34 potential individuals for training as TOTs and another 60 youth as watchdogs. We tried to make sure that they would be in for the longer haul and give a significant portion of their lives over the next few months to the COLIBRI project – largely for the reward of satisfaction of having done by their communities than anything else. We certainly do not have the wherewithal to pay them for the massive effort we anticipate from them but then again, we don’t pay ourselves anything much either. Civil action does not work that way in our view and much of our work is done voluntarily and our field task was to find people with sufficient experience, knowledge and insight who will happily gift those to their friends and families. Men and women who can truly be be trained to train in this new order of the world that has all of us playing catch-up and recaliberating and rethinking hitherto fondly held values where everything reduced to “how much for how much” in a monitory sense.

We finally shortlisted 23 TOTs and 36 watchdogs to be our friends, supporters, helpers in this effort and we hope they come through with flying colors. Not an easy task with everything telescoped and all resources from time to funds in serious short supply. We hope that eight months spent in the field will count for something and that our decisions in this respect are um… not all that off target 🙂