In the remote Tisulski and Tjazinski Raions of Kemerovo Oblast, the 64,000 local residents have poor living standards despite the regions' abundant natural resources. For the past year, the USAID-funded Community Development Support Program (CDSP) has been working in the area to introduce best practices and innovative approaches in the sustainable use of natural resources as a means to improve the economic, ecological and social well-being of local communities. One of the projects conducted in the region under CDSP, which is implemented by the Fund for Sustainable Development, organized local unemployed and under-employed residents to collect vitamin-rich forest berries (viburnum and rowan berries) and developed local facilities to process them. In addition to selling them, bottles of the juice and syrup, which serve as important food additives during the long Siberian winter, were delivered free of charge to local disabled people, orphans, schoolchildren and other risk groups. The local community will be able to use the production and distribution systems created under the project to support further sustainable development efforts to improve life for its residents.
|