4H Ghana calls for collaboration with GES

The Executive Director of 4H Ghana, a non-governmental organization, which focuses on youth leadership development, Mr Kweku Boateng Appiah has called for a close collaboration between his organization and the Ghana Education Service(GES).

He said such a collaboration would help identify and train the future leaders of the country, adding that, currently, 4H Ghana has about 62,000 members across six regions in the country, established in schools and the communities.

Mr Appiah said most of the 4H Clubs have established school and community gardens for training of the youth in modern commercial agricultural practices and the use of high quality seeds .

He was speaking at the close of the meeting of AgriCorps volunteers of the USA, who are helping 4H Ghana to implement the school and community gardening project at Koforidua.

AgriCorps is a non-governmental organization that specializes in mobilizing young American professionals in agriculture and agricultural business to volunteer to help Impact modern agriculture and agri-business on young people in the developing world.

The close out meeting was to enable the AgriCorps volunteers, who had stayed in the country for 11 months, to share their experience and work in Ghana with the officials of the 4H Ghana team.

Sharing his experience in Ghana, Mr Ryan Tomlin, an agronomist and an AgriCorp Volunteer, who stayed in Mensah Dawa, a farming community in the Upper Manya Krobo District, said the people in the community mainly grow maize and cassava.

He said the main concern of the farmers were the low returns for their investment in farming and so he had to guide them to think of adopting the cultivation of cash crops.

Mr Tomlin said the farmers settled on mango and cashew farming, but considering the cost of production and management of the yields, the farmers finally settled on the cultivation of cashew.

He therefore supported the farmers to acquire cashew seedlings from the Brong Ahafo Region to cultivate their first cashew farms.

Mr Tomlin said he also helped the farmers to learn how to establish a cashew nursery to expand their farms and expressed the desire to return to Ghana in three years’ time, when the farmers would be harvesting their first fruits to help train them in effective handling and marketing of their products.

Mr Merle Lee Mullet, an agric-economist with the AgriCorp volunteers said he helped the pupils of Akatakyiwa St. Michael Catholic Basic School in the Central Region to establish a commercial school garden to raise funds for the pupils and the school.

Mr Mullet said he was able to get the Department of Agriculture of the University of Cape Coast and the Central Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture(MOFA) to collaborate with the school over the school garden.

He said with his support, an excursion was organized for members of 4H Club of the school to the University of Cape Coast, which happened to be the only time many of the pupils had travelled outside Akatakyiwa.