The project ?Sustainable ?rganic Farming - Alternative to Unemployment? is initiated by ?Karnobat Organic Cultivators Association ? KOCA? and will be implemented in co-operation with two partner organizations ? IRA EKO Company and the Regional Development Agency ? Velingrad. The partners join their efforts for achieving the project overall objectives and namely: to support the development of organic farming in the region of Kaolinovo as the most advanced approach for enhancing the sustainably managed areas with significant biodiversity and to create sustainable incomes for people in a region with high unemployment and low economic diversification. In order to attain its goal the project:

? Provides a sustainable environment through encouraging organic agriculture practices in cultivating medicine plants in the region of Kaolinovo Municipality;
? Contributes to building local capacity for enhancing the sustainably managed areas and preserving biodiversity through trainings and consultancy support to start-up farmers in terms of cultivating organic medicine plants;
? Ensures the decreasing of unemployment and contributes to local sustainable incomes through development of new organic farms for cultivating medicine plants in Kaolinovo Municipality.

The project targets unemployed women and youths from the region who have the necessary potential and willingness to start their own agricultural activity in terms of cultivating hollyhock, valeriana, mallow, mursala tea. Project direct beneficiaries are:

? 10 unemployed women and 20 unemployed youths aged up to 29 years, who will pass a training in ??Organic agriculture principles and techniques for organic cultivation of medicine plants?;
? 20 of the trained beneficiaries will get 2 decares of land and will receive seedlings for starting their own cultivation of hollyhock, valeriana, mallow and mursala tea.

The Municipality of Kaolinovo is one of the poorest regions in Bulgaria with predominant minority population and extremely high unemployment rate - 45,31 % towards 31 August 2006. That is due to the low educational level of local people, the lack of adequate qualification and labor habits on one side and on the other the limited economic development of the region and the lack of job places.

Traditionally agriculture is a predominant economic activity and the greatest incomes generator in the region. Local agriculture follows the conventional methods for land cultivation and growing of different plants ? mainly corn, wheat, sunflower and tobacco. Unfortunately these activities provide only seasonal and episodic employment opportunities and can hardly guarantee sustainable incomes due to unstable market and price fluctuations during the last few years. In addition, the proposed action takes into consideration the fact that conventional agriculture is connected with mass using of chemicals, artificial fertilizers and stimulators in local farms. That leads to a series of negative effects on both human health and environment ? soil degradation, pollution of underground water, injury upon landscape and biodiversity.

The proposed action is orientated to overcoming these constraints through developing and introducing a model for building local capacity for using sustainable agricultural practices and namely training and support to local people in establishing medicinal plants farms according to the organic farming standards and principles.

The project activities are focused on introducing local unemployed women and youths in the opportunities to start their own business in terms of organic cultivating of medicinal plants: hollyhock, valeriana, mallow and mursala tea. The project further provides seedling for these plants and agricultural land for creating the plantations. Project participants will pass training for acquiring skills and knowledge in terms of organic cultivation of medicinal plants. Ready production will be processed and stored in the established base for storage of the ready production, located in the village of Todor Ikonomovo, in Kaolinovo Municipality. The market realization of the production is ensured by the project partner ? IRA EKO company.

Planning project with no co-financing, according to the decision of the Bulgarian NSC.