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Project Description:

This sub project is part of the larger “HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program”.  See description of full project below.

The HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program is contributing to sustainable peace and prosperity in northern Pakistan by building hope, entrepreneurial spirit, knowledge and skills among development leaders and institutions, thus improving the lives of about 100,00 people. It’s initial pilot site, the Chipursan Valley consists of eleven villages set along 72 kilometers of high mountain jeep road at the northern most tip of Pakistan, just a short distance from both the Afghanistan and Chinese borders. These villages are remote from anything but the most basic health and education services and people rely largely on subsistence agriculture, as well as an emerging cash crop of seed potatoes for meeting their needs. Each community has a village and a women’s development council. 

Representatives of each of these village-level institutions have formed the Chipursan Valley Local Support Organization LSO), whose mandate is to coordinate development initiatives through the introduction of micro-infrastructure projects (such as a irrigation, telephone and internet access, and micro-electricity generation) and social institutions such as a micro-health insurance and micro-credit schemes, as well as to incubate a host of entrepreneurial ventures. In this way, the 4,000 residents of the Chipursan Valley will be able to reach the first rung of the ladder out of poverty to self-reliance. A very modest investment of $4,950 annually for the next three years will provide transitional support, as the LSOgains its capacity to manage and lead development processes and to become financially sustainable through the creation of a number of businesses and social enterprises. This component of the HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program is one facet of an integrated and multi-sectoral program (see below for more information).

 Description of Larger Project:

The road to sustainable peace in Pakistan can only be built through constructive development processes.  The most troubled areas of the country are also those with the worst human development outcomes—the most extreme poverty, the poorest health and the lowest education levels.

The HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program is focused on building the capacity of remote rural communities, local institutions and leaders in the Gilgit-Baltistan province of Pakistan for sustainable peace, human dignity, prosperity and wellbeing through the creation of a regional training, coaching and support centre.  This Centre’s programs are designed to enhance a spirit of hope and entrepreneurship and to build the knowledge and skills that will enable local institutions and leaders to manage their own development processes. The Centre will also act as a “window to the world” by creating connections between these indigenous development processes and best practice ideas and organizations, as well as business mentors from around the world. In the first 5-year phase, a prototype training and support centre will be established, and its programs will be developed and piloted with 10 clusters of villages (80 – 100 villages), reaching approximately 100,000 people

The HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program is a joint initiative of three partner organizations.  

1) KADO (the Karakaroum Area Development Organization) is a well-respected, northern-Pakistan basedNGO with a history of stimulating economic development activities with the region’s most vulnerable populations.

2) The HiMaT Grassroots Development Foundation is based in Europe and has worked in the Kashmir region of Pakistan since 2007.

3) The Four Worlds Centre for Development is based in Canada and has worked with culturally based participatory development processes in over twenty countries for the past thirty years. 

The HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program has begun its work with a pilot project in the Chipursan Valley in the most northern part of Pakistan, which borders on both China and Afghanistan. The Chipursan Valley consists of 11 villages that face challenges such as food insecurity, housing that lacks basic sanitation facilities and is poorly insulated for the harsh winter conditions, and a lack of access to markets. Thanks to the work of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, these villages have a local institutional structure consisting of village and women’s organizations (VOs and WOs), as well as a regional development body called the Local Support Organization (LSO). Early “quick win” projects in the Chipursan Valley have introduced vegetable gardens to 80% of the households and fruit trees to 70%.  As well the VO/WOs have received technical support to revive their micro-lending programmes, which had been dormant for some time.

The next phase of the HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program will focus on systematizing capacity building support for a broad range of people including the membership of the VOs/WOs/LSO, community social entrepreneurs, and youth leaders.  As well, leaders from selected neighbouring LSOs will also be invited to participate in order to begin a gradual scaling up process.  Four critical lines of action have been chosen to guide the work over the next five years.

1) Developing a vision of possibility and the spirit of hope, enterprise and service: Money and technical know-how are not enough to create lasting change.  It is only when people have a “sparkle” in their eyes that they are ready to invest their creative energy into social and entrepreneurial action. Unless we can find a way to engage the heart of people, their communities and their institutions, we will not be able to make a shift from mere projects that come and go to a movement that spreads from heart to heart across north Pakistan—a movement that ignites the spark of hope and the spirit of enterprise and service.  This will require extremely careful attention to the cultural and spiritual foundations of the communities being served by the HiMaT training, coaching and support Centre.

2) Strengthening indigenous institutions: While hundreds of village and women’s organizations have been established in Gilgit-Baltistan (and elsewhere in Pakistan), many of them have never been fully trained and supported to play the role for which they were created. The HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Program will support the emergence of local institutions that are participatory and democratic in nature, and that promote sustainable development leading to measurable improvements in the social and economic life of the people and communities they serve.  A fundamental goal of HiMaT Program is for these institutions to become self-sufficient within a five-year period through the creation of social enterprises and other revenue-generation streams.

3) Building capacity to achieve desired development outcomes: To achieve greater peace, prosperity and wellbeing in their communities, people will need to learn how to think, act and inter-relate in new ways. This type of learning does not happen just in classrooms, but also through mentoring as people make hands-on efforts to solve real development challenges. The HiMaT Program’s regional training, coaching and support Centre will offer a rich selection of courses focusing on such topics as mountain agriculture, small/medium business development, community health, youth development, natural resource development, leadership skills, ecology, micro-finance, human relations, and household management. It will provide access to best practice and experienced mentors from around the world.

4) Creating an economic engine: As individuals, communities and local institutions gain awareness, capacity and experience, they will want to undertake a wide variety of enterprises, development schemes and special projects.  Examples of such initiatives might include an irrigation project to open up new agricultural land, a micro electrical generation scheme to support household improvement and business development, small to medium value-added businesses such as the production of jam from apricots or seabuck thorn or the creation of crafts from local wool, and the launching of a ethno-tourism project to capitalize on local cultural sites such as the Baba Ghundi shrine. Economic development activities such as these will enable to the LSOto become self-supporting and also contribute to substantial improvements in household livelihood. The HiMaT Program will support these initiatives through providing access to know-how and practical coaching and access to information about funding and financing sources.

Update from the field: November 2010

HiMaT Winter Newsletter

Update from the field: October 2010

Letter From Four Worlds

HiMaT Fall Newsletter

Update on Flooding in Pakistan

In August of 2010, Pakistan experienced the worst flood disaster in the country’s history, a disaster that the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called “the worst disaster in the history of the United Nations”.

The heavy rains that caused the floods first impacted the northern high mountain region. For at least three weeks, Hunza was cut-off from the world—an island in the midst of a vast inland sea that eventually flowed downhill and left millions of households and thousands of communities in southern Pakistan devastated and vagrant.

Again our project area was entirely cut-off. This time there was no road access at all from the north to the capital, Islamabad. Electricity, phone and Internet were out for three weeks. We had to postpone a scheduled field visit set for the end of September. And, to make matters even worse for the people of Gojal, the promised disaster recovery money was withdrawn.

What Now?

The flooding, along with the Hunza Landslide that occurred on January 4, have both turned our project areas from one where 70% of households were ranked as “poor” or “ultra poor” to one in which the entire population has been devastated, the local economy has been destroyed, and almost all households are ultra poor and struggling to help others that are even worse off than they are.

This November we will again try to launch our HiMaT area training and support centre, (which is partially operational now). Our goal will be to begin training programs during our fall visit and continue them in the spring.

The opportunity has never been greater to build the strength of local leaders and local institutions and for using the shared problem of disaster recovery as a focal point for continuous improvement in community capacity for sustainable development.



Update from the field:  February 2010

Massive Landslide cuts off the Chipursan Valley from Access to Basic Services (Adapted from a January 23, 2010 article in Dawn, a major Pakistan daily, by Zulfiqar Ali Khan) Since January 4, 2010, a natural disaster in northern Pakistan is having a significant impact on the welfare of the people of the Chipursan Valley and on the capacity of the HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Centre to work with them.

On that fateful day, a massive landslide hit the village of Atabad, taking the lives of 19 people, mostly women and children, and injuring several others. At least 43 houses, a community centre, a school, and a dispensary were destroyed. About 173 families, including 1,673 men, women and children were evacuated to school buildings and relief camps in Altit. According to the experts, cracks are developing in the remaining part of the village, making the whole area dangerous for human settlement.

The landslide also blocked the Karakorum Highway (KKH), the only land link between China and Pakistan, bringing to a halt civic and commercial life in Gojal District. With the passage of time, shops, stores and health units are running out of stocks of medicine, food and other daily use items. The Hunza River is also blocked and, as a result, an artificial lake has formed, inundating a number of villages. The lake has already submerged 800 kanals of cultivable and non-cultivable land, along with thousands of fruit and forest trees in Ayeenabad, and is endangering thousands of lives upstream and downstream in other parts of Hunza-Nagar and Gilgit districts.

Because of the destruction of the Karakorum Highway and the blockage of the Hunza River, access to the Chipursan Valley has been cut off. Our field staff is unable to travel to Chipursan and the villagers are unable to reach Karimabad/Altit, where the office of Karakorum Area Development Organization is located, and the closest access point for medical care, food and high school education. In the meantime, the staff of KADO, including the HiMaT Centre field staff, has been active in the emergency relief efforts and we hope to soon have more specific information and some photos of this work that we can share with you.