The value stays where the work happens.
Monaragala, where our operations are currently based, is one of Sri Lanka's most rural districts. Our model is built to keep income, introduce skills, and build infrastructure inside the communities that share these reservoirs.
Theory of Change
Rural livelihoods in Sri Lanka's dry-zone reservoir belt have historically been constrained by two factors: low-value freshwater fish landings that yield thin household margins, and limited access to premium markets that could reward higher-value species.
Culture-based fisheries of the giant freshwater prawn address both constraints simultaneously — introducing a high-value species into an existing ecosystem, using existing labour and gear, without displacing existing livelihoods.The intervention is deliberately additive rather than substitutive. Fishers keep fishing. Cooperative societies keep governing. Reservoirs keep irrigating. What changes is the price per kilogram at the landing site, and the market pathway that price is anchored in. The theory of change rests on a specific claim: that a formal, transparent, cooperative-mediated buyback contract, at a price the domestic and export markets support, is a durable rural livelihood upgrade in exactly the kind of district where alternatives are scarce.
Four Commitments
i. Fair, direct purchase
We buy the catch through registered Fisheries Societies at transparent, agreed prices — the people who land the prawn are paid for it, on the record, not through middlemen.
ii. A second income, not a replacement
Prawns are landed alongside the fish people already catch. No one gives up their livelihood; the same trip to the same reservoir simply pays more.
iii. Investment that stays local
Fishing gear, training, and cold-chain that strengthen the fishery for the long term — capacity that belongs to the community, not just to a season.
iv. Traceable and accountable
Every prawn can be traced back to the reservoir it came from and the community that landed it. Provenance you can stand behind.
A model built with, not just for, the community.
SDG Alignment
SDG 1 · No Poverty → Direct, transparent, formal income to fisher households in one of Sri Lanka's poorest districts.
SDG 8 · Decent Work& Economic Growth → local employment, skills and rural enterprise - Guaranteed buyback prices through registered cooperative societies. Formal contracts, on the record, not middlemen.
SDG 12 — Responsible Production → local, traceable value chains