Six hundred (600) beneficiaries are expected to benefit from the second phase of Agrihouse Foundation’s ‘1Household 1Garden,’ Project, which commenced yesterday, in the North East region.
Primarily targeting women, widows, single mothers, young girls and persons living with disabilities, the beneficiaries have been drawn from the Eastern Mamprusi district and the Mampruga Moagduri district.
1Household, 1Garden is estimating to train and support two thousand (2000) households; and 10 public schools in the northern with knowledge and skills in starting and maintaining home backyard gardens.
Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation, Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa, has noted that while the project is triggering and reviving national interest in backyard gardens, it is significantly contributing to household food security and nutrition in the districts, by providing direct access to fresh healthy foods that can be harvested, prepared and consumed by families.
Beneficiaries of the project are not only receiving training on how to start and sustain gardens; they are being exposed to different mediums and approaches suitable for backyard gardening; ways to identify diseased crops and pest management methods, including using homemade pesticides from Neem trees, she outlined in a press statement ahead of the second phase.
“We are providing beneficiaries with incentives including vegetable seedlings, variety of vegetable seeds, gardening tools, organic fertilizers, and pesticides; and we hope that the project will further increase the incomes of smallholder farmer households by enhancing their capacity to better prepare for and adapt to shocks and stresses,” she added.
Agrihouse, she noted will continue working with key stakeholders to empower rural smallholder farmers and households, particularly in the northern regions; to complement the growing interest in strengthening and intensifying local food production to mitigate the adverse impact effect of global food shocks and food price volatilities.
Already, phase one of the project has recorded high successes among the 600 beneficiaries who were drawn from six districts in the Northern region, namely: Tempane District, Daffiama Bussie Issa, Nadowli, Sissala East, and Sissala West. The rest are Wa East, East Mamprusi, Mamprugu Moagduri, Mion, Sagnarigu, Nanton, Gushegu, Karaga, Yendi Municipal, Bawku Municipal, Bawku West and Garu in the Upper East.
Backed by technical assistance, various extension officers in the districts have expressed support for the interventional project; by serving as trainers and mobilizing women farmer groups and persons with disabilities across their district, “I was happy when I heard about 1household, 1garden. I knew it would create more opportunities for women in our district. Farming is our livelihood and if we concentrate more on vegetable production it will help us generated a lot of money,” Alhassan Abdullah, a Community Extension Officer of Kpa-kp-re-Mion District in the Northern region, said in an interview.
Beneficiaries have praised AGRA, USAID-GIAT, and Agrihouse Foundation for the project, describing it as “life-saving.” Physically challenged beneficiary, Rabbi Mohammed said, the training has improved her in knowledge in farming and will help her to provide for her family, as she looks forward to increasing her vegetable production and income.
1Household 1Garden Project is being supported by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), with funding from USAID- Feed the Future Program.
