Draft:North East Society for Agroecology Support

About NESFAS
NESFAS is dedicated to fostering a connection between individuals and the joy of savoring delicious, nutritious, locally sourced food, all while recognizing our collective responsibility to the environment and the preservation of agrobiodiversity. The organization firmly believes that responsibly produced food not only safeguards the environment but also contributes to our overall health, well-being, and a sense of cultural pride. NESFAS emphasizes the crucial role of women as both nurturers and custodians of agrobiodiversity and traditional food practices.

Functioning as a platform, NESFAS seeks to engage people in the pleasurable and meaningful experience of local foods, creating awareness about the journey these foods take from the farm to the table. This journey underscores our shared responsibility towards environmental sustainability and the safeguarding of indigenous cultures and traditions. Serving as a regional extension of TIP, NESFAS strives to establish a unified platform where traditional knowledge systems and modern science collaborate as equal partners in shaping the "Future we want" for the well-being of indigenous communities. In alignment with the discussions and resolutions of ITM, NESFAS has adopted the agroecology framework—viewing it as a science, a practice, and a social movement—to guide its expanded mission.

History
NESFAS originated as a result of collaborative efforts between the Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP) and Slow Food International. While Slow Food emphasizes the importance of enjoying good, clean, and fair food while being environmentally responsible, TIP underscores the significance of local food systems and the traditional role of Indigenous Peoples as stewards of agrobiodiversity. This role is intricately tied to their cultural identity and their right to food sovereignty, nutritional security, and food.

In pursuit of these objectives, NESFAS strives to collaborate with like-minded individuals, institutions, governments, NGOs, and others for the holistic benefit, conservation, and development of indigenous communities in Northeast India.

Bah Phrang Roy, a prominent figure committed to the well-being of Indigenous Peoples, hails from the Khasi Matriarchal community in Northeast India. Notably, he made history by becoming the first indigenous person appointed to the level of Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, achieving this milestone as IFAD's Assistant President in 2002. He also serves as the Coordinator of TIP and the Founding Chairperson of NESFAS. Roy's international advisory roles include contributions to organizations such as the Agroecology Fund (USA), IPES-Food (Belgium), TABLE (Oxford, UK), and the Global Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems (Rome, Italy).

Bah Phrang Roy's journey began at the grassroots level in Western India in 1971, where he navigated bureaucratic challenges and recognized the crucial role of women as holders of Indigenous Knowledge. Throughout his career, he has advocated for marginalized peoples and communities, emphasizing the value of their diverse knowledge systems and culture. Joining IFAD in 1981, Roy explored innovative approaches to reach rural populations, leading agricultural and rural development projects in Africa and Asia. His time with IFAD contributed to shaping him into the empathetic and diplomatic activist he is today.

Roy's profound interests lie in geography, ecology, and biocultural diversity, causes he passionately supports. These interests came to the forefront during his tenure with the Christensen Fund in 2007. Recognizing the potential enhancement of future generations' well-being through the preservation of traditional, biological, and cultural knowledge systems, Bah Phrang Roy played a pivotal role in establishing TIP in Rome in May 2010.

Following TIP's inception, Roy conceptualized the idea of establishing a grassroots organization in his native region of Meghalaya, Northeast India. In 2012, this idea materialized with the founding of NESFAS. A decade later, NESFAS remains a pioneering organization in the region, dedicated to working with Indigenous Peoples Communities to safeguard and promote Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems, along with their diverse traditions and cultures.

Activities

 * Advocacy and empowerment of women
 * Human Resource development
 * Sustainable and resilient food systems
 * Research, documentation and communication
 * Sustainable livelihoods
 * Clean energy and innovation
 * Health and Nutrition

TATA – GHE – NESFAS 2021 – 2027
This initiative is funded by Tata Communications and is being implemented in collaboration with the Global Himalayan Expedition (GHE). The main aim of the programme is to improve the community’s access to energy, health and carbon offset from the villages in Meghalaya through solar electrification of a total of 350 households, upgradation of 7 health centres & solar electrification, and distribution of clean cookstoves to 5000 households. This intervention hopes to impact lives of 30,000 people.

FAO- NESFAS 2021 – 2022
Five Indigenous Peoples’ communities in East Khasi Hills, namely, Umsawwar, Nongwah, Dewlieh, Nongtraw and Laitsohpliah, began to work on restoring some of their degraded land with due assistance from NESFAS and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) in early November 2021 in a project titled “Implementation of the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocentric Restoration in Meghalaya”. Following the global efforts framed on the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, these communities have been hard at work, collating exhaustive lists of the flora and fauna in the area, creating community nurseries and fostering saplings and gradually working up to actual execution of the plan.

The Indigenous Peoples’ biocentric restoration initiatives are active in four countries, Ecuador, India, Peru and Thailand. It is led by Indigenous Peoples and FAO. Its main objective is to restore degraded land in Indigenous Peoples’ territories through the recovery of Indigenous Peoples’ ancestral knowledge, territorial management and Indigenous Peoples’ values and relations with the territory. The activities look to restore the territory, considering all the species and living things that have inhabited it, not only those that have a function for human beings, to guarantee the protection and respect of Mother Earth.

MBMA – NESFAS 2021 – 2023
Towards the end of the previous project, NESFAS entered into an agreement with MBMA for an 18-month long project on “Empowering Indigenous Communities through Agroecology Learning Circles (ALC) for resilient, integrated and innovative natural resource management.” Agroecology Learning Circle is a multi-faceted model for community engagement and innovation that helps to reveal knowledge holders; co-create and test new solutions; document and disseminate them. Unlike many other innovations, ALC is a bottom-up approach and innovation that documents traditional knowledge, undertakes natural resource management, conserves agrobiodiversity, initiates technical innovation, and builds self-governance. The project was drawn up after acknowledging the impact ALCs had on the 29 different villages it was implemented in during the last project while also recognising the further impact it can have when implemented to a larger number of communities.

TNC – NESFAS 2022
The overall goal of the project is to protect, revitalise and sustain Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems (IFS) for their well being.

Adoption of PBRs is seen to enable the community to make use of their own biodiversity in a sustainable manner and in turn protect them and the lands they use. It also enables protection of their intellectual property and customary rights to these tangible bio-resources.

The project duration is 5 months (01 June 2022 – 31 October 2022) and is being implemented in partnership with NESFAS and supported by The Nature Conservancy. NESFAS has been a pioneer in strengthening biodiversity conservation at grassroots level.

Over these five months, NESFAS will be responsible to strengthen Biodiversity Management Boards (BMCs) and support them to create model PBRs (meeting all standards set by the National Biodiversity Authority and the Meghalaya State Biodiversity Board) in at least three villages. These will be driven by local communities and will significantly contribute to increased knowledge on local biological resources, their medicinal or any other commercial use. Additionally, NESFAS will support BMCs to complete biodiversity assessments in 10 villages and undertake free listing of biodiversity in another 10. This will strengthen BMCs, and collect the data related to local biological resources per the above-mentioned standards (which will subsequently feed into development of the PBRs for these villages).

Lastly, NESFAS will undertake stakeholder engagement, sensitization and capacity building of local communities so that they take ownership of the PBRs and use it to enhance management.

REC – NESFAS 2018 – 2021
REC entered into an agreement with NESFAS in April 2018 to fund the “No One Shall be Left Behind” campaign for three years. The project was a follow-up to the International Mei-Ramew held in Shillong in November 2015. It was developed through interaction with communities in Nagaland and Meghalaya and the technical support provided by Bah Phrang Roy, Chairman NESFAS, and his international associates.

The overall goal of this project was to enhance Indigenous Food Systems to significantly contribute to improved nutrition, food security, and sustainable livelihoods of about 3000 households in 130 remote indigenous communities of Meghalaya and Nagaland with a focus on adolescent girls, school children, youths, women’s groups, and community elders. The project also had the unique aspect of promoting community seed banks for locals, the mapping of nutrient-rich and climate-resilient local species, advocacy of the “eat your rainbow” approach to food consumption, and promotion of innovation and capacity building at the community level.

Elderly Safety Homes – 2020
The importance of elderly members of the community as custodians of indigenous food systems and traditional knowledge holders cannot be stressed more at NESFAS. As such, understanding the need for precautionary measures to protect the more vulnerable elderly members during the wake of the first wave of the pandemic, NESFAS undertook a pilot project of building retrofit rooms for these elderly members. The initiative was first started in Nongtraw Community before rolling out to some other partner communities.

Contributions from NESFAS staff and friends amounted to half (50%) of the expenses that were incurred in building these retrofit rooms while the concerned communities bore the remaining half (50% of cost). The project was a demonstration of a need-based solution activated during the pandemic at an efficient cost and time to safeguard the community’s assets, in this case, the custodians of the traditional knowledge. A total of 70 elderly households were built for 79 elders across 8 villages/communities under this project.

GIZ – NESFAS 2019
“Enhancing nutritional diversity as a means of supplementing the mid-day meals of primary school children using local resources” was a GIZ-NESFAS project aimed at strengthening the government programme of Mid Day Meal (MDM) through nutritional diversity using local resources.

The project strived for the revitalization of the importance of nutritional diversity through community involvement and the development of capacities of youth and women for enhancing their livelihood in the context of agrobiodiversity. Mechanisms like the school garden, ABD walks, and awareness to facilitate support for nutrition-rich Mid Day Meals in the primary schools using local resources through the involvement of local primary stakeholders were developed by NESFAS for the project. Six publications that corroborated with the project were produced. Four cooking demonstrations were also organised under the project along with a cooking competition for the local chefs.

Other important milestones of the project included Agrobiodiversity mapping and the organisation of MDM food fest. The most important milestone, however, was the renovation of MDM kitchens.

The Indigenous Youth Fellowship 2019
On the back of what was a hugely successful Fellowship in 2017, TIP continued with the Indigenous Youth Fellowship Programme in 2019. As it was during the first fellowship, the program had four fellows out of which three belonged to matriarchal communities – Merrysha Nongrum (Khasi), Chenxiang Rimchi N Marak (Garo), both from India, and Nofri Yani (Minangkabau, Indonesia) – and the other fellow was Edgar Osvaldo Monte Borges from the Mayan Community (Mexico). This time, NESFAS joined as one of the partners of the Fellowship hosting the fellows for their first field exchange from 20th May till 17th June. During their time in Meghalaya, the fellows interacted directly with communities and mentors helping them gauge a better understanding of their own indigenous food systems. The fellows then proceeded to present their case studies to the FAO and UN experts during their month-long stay in Rome from June 18-17 July 2019.

The Indigenous Youth Fellowship 2017
The Indigenous Youth Fellowship Programme was an initiative of TIP supported by the Christensen Fund (TCF). The fellowship was a platform for exchange among young minds from indigenous communities. Through training, the program prepared the fellows in professional development, networking, management practices, and policy options to use and safeguard agrobiodiversity issues, and also helped gain exposure through different Rome-based UN agencies. They also travelled to Germany for a Training of Trainers specialising in Visualization in Participatory Programmes (VIPP). All in all, 4 fellows in total from three indigenous communities, Karen (Thailand), Khasi (2) (India), and Karrayuu (Ethiopia) were part of the Fellowship.

Two NESFAS associates, viz. Pius Ranee, Senior Associate (now Executive Director), and Alethea Kordor Lyngdoh, Lead Associate, Communications, were part of the 2017 Fellowship that was hosted by TIP partner, Bioversity International, in Rome, Italy for four months.

ITM 2015
NESFAS, along with TIP, and Slow Food International, Italy, co-organised the second International Terra Madre, an international gathering of indigenous food communities at Shillong in 2015.

The event, known as the International Mei-Ramew 2015 was co-hosted by 41 indigenous communities from Meghalaya. ITM 2015 gathered over 600 delegates representing indigenous food communities, academia, youth, UN agencies, and other global supporters from 62 countries. Over the three days of conferences, the indigenous food communities showcased their traditional knowledge, evolving skills, and sustainable practices that safeguard natural resources and contribute to a resilient food system that promotes a more humane future for a diverse world. Dialogues on the theme “The Future We Want: Indigenous Perspectives and Actions” were summarised into a declaration called “The Shillong-Declaration” that was signed by the participating 170 indigenous food communities.

Awards
== Executive Board Members ==

== Partner Organisations ==

The Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP)
The Indigenous Partnership’s mission is to improve ways of linking indigenous people and local communities interested in pursuing self-determined development. We facilitate such communities in taking a leadership role in agrobiodiversity dialogues.

We work to promote a dialogue between indigenous people, agricultural research and advocacy groups. We act as an instrument for communication between diverse indigenous groups, and eventually develops a mechanism to promote this local knowledge so it can have a place on the agenda of international research and advocacy bodies.

Social Service Centre (SSC)
SSC is a non-government organisation which works on key issues of Disaster Management, Education & Literacy, Environment & Forest, Health & Family Welfare, Human Rights, Micro Small & Medium Enterprises, Rural Development & Poverty Alleviation, Tribal Affairs operational in Meghalaya.

Society for Urban and Rural Empowerment (SURE)
SURE is a non-governmental organization with major objectives to empower the poor and the vulnerable section of the society with special emphasis on youths in both the urban and rural areas of Jaintia hills, District of Meghalaya.

North East Network (NEN)
NEN is based in Chizami, Nagaland and is one of the first organizations in the North East with a vision to build a society that upholds gender justice, equality and respect for women’s human rights.