Country: United States

Organization: Conservation through Poverty Alleviation, Inc.

3) Strategy Summary:
CPALI is developing wild silk farming as a conservation and poverty alleviation tool. We innovate in four ways: our products, the sites we target, the scale of our focus and our enterprise approach to conservation. 1) CPALI is developing markets for silk products. We are partnering with Evolved Nanomaterial Sciences (ENS) (silk-based products for a variety of high-margin applications) and Aid to Artisans (ATA) (artisan product from new types of wild silk). 2) CPALI uniquely targets its projects to biodiversity hotspots and World Heritage sites. 3) CPALI's long-term vision is to work throughout the tropics in the developing world. 4) CPALI gives poor, rural farmers a vested interest in maintaining native forest resources.

4) How the Strategy Works:
CPALI develops cooperating liaisons between government, the private sector conservation organizations and local villages.

Task 1. Complete a cost based analysis to determine if the resources needed to make project succeed are available, affordable and marketable.

Task 2. Identify product markets; develop marketing system. Prior to initiating the project, a market, a business strategy and marketing system must be identified and put in place to ensure that the products to be produced can be sold at a reasonable profit.

Task 3. Partners alignment meeting
Hold a meeting for potential collaborating groups and individuals working on the project. Allow members to become familiar with the different project participants and to refine and agree on the broad- based conceptual goals of the work. Cooperating organizations will discuss their contributions to the program and how the work proposed here will contribute to its other activities. For example, the Wildlife Conservation Society would give an overview of the projects in which they are currently engaged and the types of vegetation, mapping and GIS analyses they will deliver in the first 3 months of the silk project. Aid to Artisans would give an overview of its projects and how it trains families and communities to organize and implement small businesses as well as their methods of product development. Ny Tanintsika would describe its plan for training rural producers and weavers. Evolved Nanomaterial Systems would discuss the technological projects they have completed and present a general overview of their plans for developing small-scale processing in situ. At the end of the meeting, the group will draft and execute letters of agreement detailing what each partner will contribute to the project and when it will be delivered. Partners meetings should be held every 6 months.

Task 4: Ecological and sociological analyses to select appropriate sites and communities
GIS mapping of land cover, population centers, soil and water sources will serve as the baseline map for conservation analysis. Coordinated with this work should be a detailed biological survey of silk moths. A sociological and economic study should be initiated to determine the value the farmers place on the forest. These data will serve as baseline information for monitoring the educational effects of our work and its long-term value.

Task 5. Nursery construction
Once sites have been selected, regional moth breeding facilities and regional plant facilities need to be constructed. A greenhouse technician, and a moth technician will be hired for each site. A program manager will be hired to oversee the operations at both sites. Task 6. Moth breeding program and seedling regeneration programs
Moths and larvae will be collected and mated and reared to build up an egg stock. The eggs from this breeding program will be hatched and fourth stadia larvae will be sold to the farmers. As soon as the plant nurseries are constructed, seedlings will be purchased or collected as available.

Task 7. Finance program to enable farmers purchase plant and moth stocks.
Farmers will need to borrow money to finance their participation in the silk moth project. Once a region is selected for the project, a lending program with an appropriate institution in that area must be initiated.

Task 8. Introduce farming.
Larvae should be made available to farmers by the beginning of Year 2 when farming techniques are introduced to participating households. Each household will be visited by the project manager one a week throughout the rearing season.

Task 9. Introduce fiber processing and dying
Within country non-profit will purchase and store cocoons produced by the farmers. The cocoons will be donated them donated back to the communities when spinning and dying programs initiated during the dry season of Year 2. Spun yarns will be sold in year 2.

Task 10. Develop website to market yarns internationally
Marketing is an on-going activity. Local markets and international markets must be built in the early phases of the program. International marketing will also be initiated over the Internet.

Task 11. Introduce Weaving
Weaving will be introduced into the villages at the beginning of year 3 by local trainers. Textiles will be sold locally by the beginning of year 4.

Task 12. Monitoring
Environmental and conservation success will be measured on two scales. Long-term success will be measured using a GIS monitoring program. The current state of the site to be protected will be examined by combining remotely sensed data with on the ground truthing and vegetation analyses. The diversity and abundance of night-flying Lepidoptera should be monitored to indicate environmental health in the sites to be protected and surrounding landscapes.

5) Key Strategy Elements:

iii. Establishing Relationships with Strategic Partnerships:
CPALI has developed a unique set of strategic partners to market products to the biotech and biomedical industry (i.e. Evolved Nanomaterial Systems) as well as textile and crafts (Aid to Artisans) industries. CPALI is also working with Ny Tanintsika, a small, Malagasy development organization, to implement its programs, and the Wildlife Conservation Society to explore new moth species. CPALI has partnered with the Madagascar Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments to establish a demonstration project in Ranomafana National Park. CPALI is also working directly with the Malagasy Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries to develop a business network for silk products in the US and EU.

v. Developing Information and Spreading the Message:
CPALI is educating the public that habitat and human poverty are linked. Our mission is advertised through publications appropriate for a wide range of audiences, lectures and invited presentations throughout the developing world, the US and Europe. We have recently developed a website where the public can view our projects and our goals through a series of visual images. We will soon sell Malagasy, silk products on the site as well. In the future we will use our site to directly link rural producers in developing countries to retailers worldwide. The result will be independent, sustainable family businesses.

6) Increasing Self-sufficiency and Social Impact:
1) CPALI is developing its organization and financial base to implement and extend the projects it envisions. Currently CPALI has no employees and all of its operations on done on a volunteer basis. By extending its financial base we will be able to hire a CEO to implement CPALI's vision.

2) The uses for silk in biotech and biomedical industries are growing. Our efforts to develop new, non-textile, industrial markets for silk will promote greater stability and higher profit margins for farmers. In addition, identified and new, but unfilled markets will convince conservation and development organizations that our efforts are worth funding.

3) We want our impact to be worldwide and we therefore need to establish multiple demonstration projects in countries such as Mexico, Madagascar, Tanzania and Thailand. The Malagasy, demonstration project allows us to advertise our work and train new farmers.

8) Organization Mission and Vision:
CPALI envisions a world where new businesses and industries can only succeed if they maintain native habitats and restore damaged ones. CPALI's mission is to initiate, coordinate and implement new ways of generating income for the rural poor that depend on the sustainable use of natural resources.

Contact Information:
Catherine L.  Craig
President
Conservation through Poverty Alleviation, Inc.
221 Lincoln Road, Lincoln, MA 01773
United States
Tel: 781-259-9184
Fax: 617-749-8726
Email: ccraig@cpali.org
Website: www.cpali.org