Philosophy & Mid-term Guidelines

In the Policies of SOMNEED, our mission is stated in the following words: We aim at lifting up the life standards of those who are BPL in so-called developing countries so that they equally enjoy the rights defined in 1966 ‘s “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” with the people in other parts of the globe, and look back at the same time our lives in Japan through the activities for the afore-said. In this sense we define the term “development” as the support we bring to those who strive for their self-reliance in rural as well as urban areas in developing countries. We locate the development as a part of the activities that aim at establishing a better environment and human society.
We try to achieve the above-said by locally organized activities with people’s initiatives including international cooperation activities.
Yet “poverty” is just a phenomenon, and what SOMNEED tries to do is to find out issues that produce such phenomena and work out ways to solve such issues and put them into practice. We also consider that such issues are common not only in developing countries but also common to Japan and other developed countries, and that is why the activities in Japan with local initiatives are one of the pillars of SOMNEED activities.

SOMNEED roughly looks at the global situations as follows:

The era we entered and named as “Globalization” is an era of immense possibilities, yet it has ever widened the disparities among nations and people. This tendency has increased tremendously in last ten years.
Among the three major components of the human society, namely economy, environment and community, economy made a far-reaching development and started to affect the other two components and broke the balance among them, thus in turn threatens to damage the foundation itself of economy.
What is mentioned in previous two paragraphs are two sides of the same coin and protrusion of the market economy brings serious crisis to the communities, and in particular to the rural communities in both developed countries and developing countries.

In any part of the globe and in remote rural communities in developing countries particularly, we see the right of access to natural resources of local people diminish due to the outside pressure and sudden integration to the market economy without adequate preparation and transit time. Those communities that cannot cope with such situations collapse and the people seek refuge in cities. All these create a great deal of unrest to the society and degradation of natural resources that are left behind, which leads to a vicious circle of poverty and degradation of the nature. Seeing from different angle, this means that those who were “income poor” but not “resource poor” become both “income poor” and “resource poor”. Such situation makes disparities more serious. Therefore, we need to grasp rural and urban put together when we talk about the development.
What happens also in developed countries is; aging rural communities and depopulation that lead to the degradation of natural resources, that in turn increases the risk of aggravated calamities of natural disasters.

At present, therefore, what SOMNEED takes as guidelines of its activities are: Regeneration and empowerment of communities.
Regeneration of already collapsing communities as well as empowerment of those communities that are not yet dwindled in order to cope with the tide of the globalization by balancing their conventional advantages and new knowledge and technologies. The core of all these is to create such a state in which a community can sustain, manage and make full use of their CPR (Common Property Resources), at the center of which are natural resources, in the new social context. In other words it means to enhance community’s governance in terms of CPR in today’s world.
Through this, we try to find out what it would be like a state in which economy, environment and community are balanced, and work out a model of a society for our possible future. In order to do so, it is indispensable that the members of communities understand the new context and acquire new knowledge, and at the same time to create new leadership among them. All these are possible only when we, the outsiders are able to build a long-term partnership with the inhabitants of such communities in order to solve together the problems we all face.
However, what we described above has become already a race with time. Because even in those communities in which traditional set-ups are apparently still preserved well, already traditional culture is dwindling due to the introduction of official education, which hardly gives consideration to traditional values, and penetration of market economy, and it is obvious that soon or later the relationship among the people that had been built around environment and community collapses. Fortunately we still have such communities in many places of the globe that preserve their traditions. But it does not mean that these communities do not face such crisis. We have a plenty of examples in which such transformation were not being noticed and when it was realized already communities were collapsed. Such occurrences were quite common particularly in Japan after World War II. And it is also a well-known fact when we look at the history of Japan after Meiji Restoration or history of modernization in any other part of the world that such process of collapse overlaps with the loss of CPR management by the communities. When a community loses their ownership on CPR that they used to manage, degradation of resources starts, and our history proves in the same process that the state was unable to bear such management alone. Therefore the question of the governance of the resources is at the same time a question of how we demarcate or share the governance of the resources between communities and larger administrative units (regional as well as national, or even international).

　There are two essential aspects when we talk about the governance of CPR as follows:

How we sustain resources at the same time we meet the needs of the community with limited resources.
When a community performs such governance, what will be the appropriate geographical extent?

When it comes to the first aspect, in rural areas use of resources largely materializes in use of land as cultivated land beyond carrying capacity of the environment that leads to the degradation of forests, to depletion of water and finally to massive land erosion, thus creating a vicious circle. Therefore unless we augment the productivity of land on one hand and find out ways of utilizing other resources than land on the other, we will not come out from this vicious circle. What is characteristic in rural areas also is shortage of cash flow. Unlike in cities, cash is not an absolute basis of income in rural areas, so just to ensure cash flow should be a priority than seeking an immediate profit with hastily introduced income generation activities.

Regarding the second aspect in linkage with the first one, in order to deal holistically with forest, water and land, it would be appropriate to frame the extent with micro watershed, as it is necessary to manage natural environment (including human habitat, cultivated lands) that surrounds water preservation area.
Recently in Japan also, a people participatory management of roads and rivers is being promoted. At the basis of this too is an issue that asks us to determine who takes initiatives to manage CPR, or how we demarcate the responsibility of managing CPR between local people and government. Such fundamentals are the same whether it is in Japan or in developing countries.
　

Based on the above-mentioned philosophy and knowledge of the present situations, SOMNEED introduces the following categories of activities from the year 2007 till 2010 in order to lead our activities.

Community Development and support for self-reliance
Capacity Development and Training
Research, study and Consultancy
Promotion of International Cooperation and Development Education
Support activities for domestic regional development
Other activities necessary to fulfill the mission of SOMNEED

1. Community Development and support for self-reliance

We mainly deal with micro watershed in rural areas, and human resources as well as software development in cities, by organically linking these two. Our main task is to transfer the knowledge, skills of appraisal of the present situations, planning and management.
In rural areas, we will try to balance between food security and preservation of environment through regeneration of forests, plantations and land conservation measures.
For the said, we try to secure the access of the local people to the resources. If it is already legally ensured as in the case of JFM, our task will be to make it an effective one.
We promote solar, wind, micro-hydro or any other recyclable decentralized energy options by placing emphasis on:
Not damaging surrounding environment, or in other words to build awareness that preservation of environment is a part of the maintenance of such energy options.
Not bringing in what the community cannot maintain and sustain.
We introduce appropriate technologies in order that the community members can realize the above-said. In such an undertaking we care to respect traditional knowledge and technologies and newly introduced technologies be integrated to conventional knowledge system without the latter is flawed.
In cities we try to support local people to share human resources and other soft resources so that they take in the management of locally available resources including mutual aid for the care of senior citizens.
In order to achieve afore-mentioned tasks, what SOMNEED has to do as an outside organization is to create appropriate methodology and indicators at each of the following stages with local people:
Partnership Building
Community Based Issue Analysis
Action Plan
Implementation/Monitoring
Evaluation/Feedback

2. Capacity Development & Training

In order to enhance the above-mentioned process, it is indispensable to promote capacity development basing on mutual learning and sharing of experiences. SOMNEED provides trainings for the capacity development of the following parties:

CBO (Community Based Organization)
NGO
PO (People’s Organization)
Governmental organizations
Individuals/organizations that aspire to expertise in international cooperation/regional development
Other individuals/organizations on need basis

Trainings aim at:
Developing managerial capacity of CBO in rural areas in the new era of market economy, and in particular:
Understanding of new institutional, legal framework
Planning as well as managerial capacity
Enhancing participation of local people to the decision making process, and in particular:
Identifying new leaders and train them, or building new leadership among conventional leaders to cope with new situations
In the process of decision making, when particular participation of women is required, build awareness and induce actions accordingly among local people
Developing capacity among NGO to carry out trainings above mentioned, and in particular developing facilitation skill
Developing appropriate technologies/skills such as micro-credit for PO, and make them able to link with other community development activities
Developing practical understanding and capacity among government officials so that they can collaborate effectively with NGO

3. Research, study and Consultancy

We undertake researches, studies according to and within the framework of our “Philosophy and Mid-term Guidelines”, and particularly for ODA related and commissioned works, which we will accept only when these works do not contradict our “Philosophy and Mid-term Guidelines” and they benefit both parties, i.e., SOMNEED and ODA. Besides, organizations like “i-inetwork” that shares the same aspiration with us and whose activities and ours are complementary, we seek actively their collaboration for research and study works.




　

4. Promotion of International Cooperation and Development Education

We undertake advocacy and promotion of understanding of international cooperation activities based on the afore-mentioned activities through the following means:

Documentation and publication
Hosting forum, seminars, workshops, trainings
Participation to conferences, both national and international
　
The afore-mentioned activities are basically the same whether they are executed abroad or in Japan, but what is important is that we disseminate the idea that they should be the fruit of concerted, coordinated efforts of the people of Japan and their partners abroad. Besides, we also have to enhance our activities to establish our finance so that we can ensure our activities both in Japan and abroad.

Therefore, in order to achieve the above-said, we enhance development education. Yet we should not remain just conceptual preaching of the subject, but make it tangible by introducing activities that people can undertake in their daily life. For instance developing craft materials in developing countries and provide them to Japanese users. In such a case the activity per se contribute to the self-help of our partners in developing countries, and in particular that of women, and at the same time it also contribute to the recycle and the reuse of resources.
From the same point of view, cohabitation and collaboration with foreigners who reside quasi permanently in Japan should also taken as an indispensable part of community development works.
Expanding the network of our supporters, fund-raising are not only the domain in which we disseminate our philosophy and activities, but also opportunity to disclose information and constructive discussion with the public.

5. Support activities for domestic regional development

A part from SOMNEED own works, collaboration with and/or support to NPO, NGO, PO in and around Takayama is necessary in order to promote and develop non-profit activities. In particular extending technological support and establishing legal, institutional basis are also important tasks in this sense.

6. Other activities necessary to fulfill the mission of SOMNEED

Intellectual contribution (dispatch members to governmental advisory bodies, committees) is in this category.
Administration of SOMNEED or related works is also in this category.