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KISSAN FOUNDATION’S HISTORY

NATIONAL IPM PROGRAMME, NARC, PARC, PAKISTAN trained 36 Farmer Facilitators and 325 IPM trained farmers under season long Training of Facilitators (ToF) on Cotton crop in collaboration with Pest Warning & Quality Control of Pesticides (PWQCP) Punjab at district Rahim Yar Khan. On 3rd June 2006 the farmer facilitators group constituted the organization representing the IPM farmers community in the region named as “Kissan Foundation” registered under society act XXI of 1860 No. PRD.JSC.19.1431. RYK.

Kissan Foundation were founded in response to what they saw as a growing trend in Pakistan: the real farmers are not decision makers, community is facing threats of poisoning by agriculture chemicals pesticides, farmers are not approaching the modern agriculture, improper use of farm inputs due to poor trainings and knowledge, less yield and with internally as well as externally more cost, poor marketing of agriculture produce with monopolistic influence of middle-man, the escape of sustainability from the farms as well as farming community livelihood.

Today Kissan Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of these farmers and their communities through education. Kissan Foundation sponsors and executes Farmer Field School (FFS), Farmer Training of Facilitators (FToF) and Training of Facilitators (ToF), as well as health, rural infrastructure improvement and sanitation activities with participation of local communities. It brings agro-technical educational resources to places where, too often, education is considered an impossible but essential, especially for farming community. We target communities in which farmer's welfare is severely compromised by poverty, violence, and political and social oppression areas such as rural agro-based areas of Pakistan.

Kissan Foundation has introduced FFS in these and dozens of other communities of the Punjab Province of Pakistan and has served more than 4400. The majority of these beneficiaries are poor, uneducated but hardworking farmers. At the initial stage the target group was mostly male farmers but now there are hundreds of female and children from farming community under training process. While the FFS closely adhere to a National IPM Programme a government-approved curriculum, Kissan Foundation concentrates on Science by Farmers, Management, Non-Formal Education and Organizational setup. Facilitators & Trainers also emphasize respect and tolerance values that are essential in today's “global village.”