1. Sustainable agriculture promotion
To combat food scarcity and government's rice transport from the south to make rice available in cheap price to people in the district, HDI promotes sustainable agriculture. The local people and farmers are provided with basic training with some support on necessary materials for agricultural production. The concept of organic farming and permaculture will be imparted to the farmers' groups emphasizing the production of local crops. Besides, emphasis is given in the consumption of local food crops, such as, panicum and finger millet, buckwheat, foxtail millet which grow even in less rainfall. Some new recipes will be introduced for the consumption of these local food crops. NIDS collaborate with LIBIRD to implement program activities on agriculture and biodiversity planned for Syanda VDC. Similar activities in other VDCs will be implemented by NIDS.
2. NTFP and biodiversity conservation
Humla is rich in natural resources as well as non-timber forest products mainly the medicinal herbs. One person or more from almost all the households are involved in collection of the herbs and sell them to the local businessmen for their income. Although there has been vast knowledge of the use of such herbs, the haphazard collection of those already caused the need of putting some species in endangered list. Again, the lack of transfer of knowledge to the younger generation, caused knowledge gap on the uses of those herbs. Though people collect the herbs to sell them, they do not know how useful for them also are not involved in processing. So in this regard, NIDS has been involving in the awareness raising about the importance, conservation and processing of the NTFP and biodiversity in Humla as well as some technical backstoppings.
3. Institutional strengthening of civil societies
The objective of HDI is to work in the district for a longer period to make positive impact in the development process. In the course of program implementation, HDI bring civil society together to involve in the mainstream development. It will also support in the institutional development of the civil society so that the group may take up the program implementation after HDI moves out from Humla. In this aspect, HDI plans to form VDC Group from each VDC involved and the representatives from each VDC will form a district unit of HDI.
4. Renewable energy and appropriate technology promotion
The district is potential in the use of renewable energy technologies like micro-hydro for electricity and solar for food processing. There are quite a number of water mills for grinding grains and they can also be improved for saving labor for agro-processing. Solar energy has been exploited for electrifying households only. NIDS has been planning to introduce the use of simple technology for drying food products and cooking food which can enhance the Humli peoples' livelihood and especially reduce the workload of women. Besides, the use of appropriate technology is realized important for saving labour in various agro-processing, like oil extraction from mustard, walnut and apricot seeds, thrashing and hulling or dehusking millets and buckwheat etc.
5. Dalit community development program
As the dalit communities in Humla are the most poorest and vulnerable section in Humla, NIDS has been facilitating for their livelihood upliftment through some development interventions. NIDS has also been further exploring the ways and strategies in this regard learning from other organizations' past experiences; as many of the development organizations supposed to uplift the dalits had not been succeed. Currently NIDS has been facilitating the dalits in Simkot VDC and surrounding for their livelihood upliftment through IGP programs: donkey keeping, cattle raising, small business, solar light repair and maintenance, saving groups and the like including education support for dalit children.
6. Environmental education
The continued exploitation of natural resources has resulted in the degradation of environment realized the need of conservation measures through local as well as district level. The importance of spreading the messages to the public is carried out by using wall magazine. The wall magazines are already produced by the group of students writing informative articles and poems. The wall magazines are produced every month and the writers of the selected articles will be awarded a token of appreciation. One group per village cluster has been formed in the HDI VDCs at the moment and planned to extend the knowledge to other extended VDCs.
7. VDC Planning
NIDS initiate VDC planning for the following year bringing information on the natural resources as well as financial/ human/ organizational resources. The planning will be an overall planning; the information could be used by any organization working in the VDC. The process will be continued annually so as to have positive result in the development process. The involvement of people from VDC and other organization in planning process will generate ownership on all the stakeholders. The learning from this process will later be used in district planning.
8. Research and policy advocacy
Research and documentation of important issues on Humla will be carried out as the district is having unique characteristics. Some of the issues are similar to other remote districts and should be considered during policy making for the development of such remote districts. As a part of policy advocacy, HDI started open discussion forum ‘Humla Kachahari' inviting people from different organizations, government, NGOs and interested individuals to discuss on some important issues.