Farmers in U/W trained on alternative livelihoods

The Coalition for Change (C4C) a nongovernmental organisation operating in Upper West Region has trained 117 farmers on sustainable environmentally-friendly livelihood adaptation (SELA).

The farmers comprising 111 females and six males who came from the Nimbare, Kompoare and Kunchani communities in the Jirapa District were also trained on bee keeping and soap making as alternative livelihoods to their peasant farming last year.

Madam Rubelyn Yap, Executive Director of C4C told the Ghana News Agency that the farmers were not only provided with training but were also supported with seed capital and materials as well as other logistics to start their business ventures.

She said a United Kingdom Charity Organisation Ghana Outlook (GO) was funding the project, noting that there were still so many farmer groups in the communities needing training.

The training was in line with the C4C’s attempt at mitigating practices injurious to the environment especially in the dry season when farmers hustle for survival and to create alternative livelihoods for people to adapt in the medium and long term.

Madam Yap explained that the project initially was aimed to support underprivileged women in beekeeping and soap making for increased household incomes and food security as alternative to environmental degradation practices but was later extended to men to complement their incomes.

The C4C Executive Director expressed disappointment that the practices of bush burning for hunting, tapping of wild honey, charcoal burning and unsustainable agricultural practices were widely practiced in most communities in the Region.

She said the C4C would roll-out environmentally friendly strategies and best farming practices as well as provide economic livelihoods training to the people in deprived rural communities to increase incomes.

“It is important that while we implement campaigns against these, we also find alternative means to empower the people to move away from such practices,” Madam Yap said.

Madam Yap reiterated C4C commitment to the partnership with GO to improve lives of the marginalized in the communities that it operates.

She applauded the farmers for their exuberance, which contributed to the success of the project in the Nimbare and Kampoare communities, which included the drilling of one new borehole, rehabilitation of an old borehole and the construction of a KVIP for the Nimbare School and community.

The C4C is a non-governmental organization which aims to raise secured families using ecologically sustainable local farm base strategies, adaptable income generating activities and available forms of educations as means of closing poverty gap in Ghana.

Thus the C4C team up with poor households within deprived communities to eliminate identified forms of obstruction to the full attainment of basic human stateliness through participatory approach to reduce poverty using gender mainstreaming, self-help communal spirit and promoting quality education.