Caritas Switzerland and Zam Zam Women's Co-operative (VSO placement)

This past spring, I had the opportunity to go to southern Tajikistan for 6 weeks to work on a development project.  I went through CUSO-VSO and worked with Caritas Switzerland and Zam Zam Women's Co-operative.  My job involved the writing an implementation plan for the development of a medicinal plants based micro-industry.  The people were wonderful, as was the landscape.  I would love to go back!

While working with the women of Zam Zam, I did the following:

1. conducted a gap analysis on land, infrastructure, HR, distribution possibilities, and packaging availability
2. developed and conducted a series of semi-structured interviews to determine the role of medicinal plants in the rural household economy and the level of traditional use in rural Tajikistan
3. conducted market studies on medicinal plant products
4. provided training on value-added processing (see photo below)
5. developed suggestions for export
6. made recommendations for pilot products

My work was reported on CBC radio (although I'm not sure when it aired), and the podcast can be found at:

http://marianwhite-cuso-vso.mypodcastworld.com/

Scroll down about half-way to find my podcast!