The daily life of Kaluram Tharu

Project Compassion is one of the most important times for Caritas Australia. It’s our opportunity be a voice for the poor for each week of Lent when we share stories of hope, transformation and development with Australian communities. It’s also an important time to raise much needed funds so we can continue to commit to helping millions of people around the world.

Kaluram Tharu was nominated by Caritas Nepal to feature in Project Compassion for 2011. I was really excited to meet Kaluram because I heard that he was a great example of how Caritas empowers people to help themselves.  Kaluram is also considered a role model for the people in his community.

We travelled to the south west plains of Nepal in the district of Bardiya, close to the India border, where we met 33 year old Kaluram, his wife Sita and his three children, Susma, Anita and Biplab.


It was humbling to be invited inside Kaluram’s home and share their space. Their house is small and very simple, with 2 bedrooms and a small kitchen with a wood fire stove. They had potatoes stored under their bed and large pots for storing rice. They have only one tap outside which they use for washing, cleaning, drinking and laundry.

As we sat in a circle on Kaluram’s bedroom floor, Sita offered us traditional Tharu wine and Kalruam spoke about his life before he heard about the training programs supported by Caritas.

I learnt that like most people in his village, Kaluram had a small piece of land on which he lives and grows his food. He struggled to support his family as his rice and vegetable production was very low and badly damaged by pests. Kaluram was often forced to travel to work in the next village, working in the hottest part of the day (and temperatures got up in the 40°C range) suffering from headaches and vomiting. As a result, Kaluram had no regular income to provide for his family. He struggled to pay for school fees and his house was made out of sticks and straw which was a severe fire hazard.

Kaluram heard about the Caritas Nepal program, Farmer Field Schools, and joined in 2006 with about 25 poor farmers. He was able to learn about non-traditional forms of farming which proved to be more sustainable. New practices such as staking, the use of botanical fertilisers, understanding difference in seed selection and learning how to manage good and bad pests were learned through experiments on a community piece of land. This type of learning would be too risky for individuals in the community to learn by themselves.

The great part about this program is that Kaluram has adopted these new farming practices to his land at home, where he is growing rice, cucumbers, wheat and tomatoes. His has been able to improve his family’s livelihood and was motivated to rent land with his local Cooperative group and together they now work on the land to grow vegetables and share the profits at the local markets. 

Kaluram has now been able to improve his house by putting up mud walls. His family’s food security has also improved and Kaluram has also built a small fish pond on their land. He was also able to build a toilet shed for his family.

It was great to see that Kaluram is now a leader in his community; he teaches others to be more sustainable and self-sufficient.  With the support of the Australian communities, Caritas Nepal has been able to provide training on sustainable farming practices in other communities to increase their rice and vegetable production. In one village we visited, I was very impressed to see that individuals had increased their production of rice by up to 300%.

Watch Kaluram’s story and the explore the work of Caritas Nepal on our Project Compassion website.

Elizabeth Pappalardo, Caritas Australia's Fundraising and Events Officer, travelled to Nepal last year to research our Project Compassion feature story. This was Elizabeth's first trip outside of Australia. This week, Elizabeth takes us on her personal journey witnessing extreme poverty first-hand and seeing what a difference sustainable development can make.

Read Elizabeth's first blog entry, Stepping into the World of the Unknown »»

Read Elizabeth's last blog entry, Hanging with the Kids and My Last Goodbyes »»