The inhabitants from Bhumlichowk Bhausar and Tolak of Gandaki Gaupalika-06 didn’t use to believe that vegetable cultivation can be done in their own land. There are almost 100 households within two villages. Majority of population were from tribal groups some ‘Dalits’ and few disadvantaged groups of ‘chepang’. They never tried to plant and grow vegetables in their land because they believed to their ancestors saying that vegetables couldn’t be grow in their land because of the cold climate. Though oranges and lemon grew in abundance. When they saw vegetables garden in nearby villages, they felt empty inside and some of them even presumed themselves as unfortunate one because they thought their land wasn’t suitable for vegetable cultivation. Even though, they lived nearby the highway, they were very anxious of their livelihood.

Meanwhile, In support of Denmark Insambling and in coordination with DCA and Gaupalika UN Nepal Gorkha initiated project SAHAS in ward no 2 and 7 of respective Gaupalika. Then SAHAS started to provide varieties of agriculture related training to villagers and called people from Bhumlichowk and Tolak to participate. At first villagers were perplexed about the fact that there is vegetable farming training going on in place where there is no suitable weather and land for vegetable production but after hearing that training was free of cost and the organizers would provide lunch cost to the participants as well, some did participate to utilize free time with the selfish feeling inside.10 women and 11 men had participated. Improved seed and plants were provided to the participants at free cost at the end of training. They planted those provided improved seeds and plants with no hopes at all but after some months the hopeless works made the participants amazed. This made villagers changed their freezed thought and started vegetable cultivation. And the production was so high that they expected from subsistence vegetable farming to commercial vegetable farming.

As a result, they were able to earned 55 thousand annually from a single plastic tunnel of tomato and 35 thousand from single tunnel of cucumber- according to Farmer Gita Thapa Magar. She shared that her husband is planning to return back from Saudi where he spent 14 years of his productive life after seeing lucrative income that his wife is making from vegetable cultivation in his own motherland. Similarly, farmer Binu Gurung is another example, she resigned from the post of government school as a principal and diverted herself into vegetable cultivation. She is cultivating tomatoes, cucumber and ‘karelaa’ in her own land and makes healthy profits. She said “vegetable cultivation is far better than teaching for living”. Another example of happy face from project SAHAS is 57 aged Jhamak Bahadur Gurung. He had started tunnel farming from last year. And he had already been profited by 15310.00 and he is expecting of making profit of Rs. 150,000.00 in this year.

Hom Bahadur Gurung, Chairperson of same Gaupalika expressed the feeling of happiness and gratefulness towards project SAHAS as this project become a turning point for the upliftment of the economic status and improvement of livelihood of villagers especially of Dalit, disadvantaged and marginalized group of community.