The “Farm – Promoting Urban Organic Waste for Food and Livelihood Security (FaPUoWAFLiS)” Project, has been running from October 2019, with its main focus on supporting deprived rural communities with basic farming techniques for the cultivation of vegetables using organic compost.
The two – year project, funded by our partner Bread for the World in Germany, which has 129 active vegetable farmers, both men and women as direct beneficiaries, uses waste water and the drip technology to aid rural communities improve their economic conditions and well – being.
As part of the review activities of the project after one year of implementation, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of WUZDA Ghana has the responsibility to tour the communities to ascertain the state of the various equipment installed for the drip system.
He would also interview the farmers to gauge their commitment levels and appreciation of what the intervention is doing right and which areas need reviewing.
The “FaPUoWaFLiS” project communities include Duunyin, Manguli, Datoyili, Wovogu, Wovoguma and Nyoglo. Each community has a group representing the vegetable farmers using a common field with separate beds for the cultivation of the organic vegetables.
The M & E Officer for WUZDA Ghana, Ibrahim Abdul Ganiyu, led by project field officers; the Program Officer, Abdul – Karim Mufty and drip technician, Alhassan Dawuda went round each of the communities and met with the leadership of the groups to the be taken through the farm fields and be provided with information on the true reflection of activities by their members.
The week’s monitoring visits were expected to help the team assess the drip equipment to ascertain their states after the previous farming season with the current weather condition, since some parts of the installed equipment are made of plastic.
Some 56 group heads were engaged across the six communities during the week – long monitoring visits to the farming communities.
The Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for WUZDA Ghana emphasized the need for the visits, saying it is to provide him the opportunity to do proper and qualitative reporting on the project so far, as it enters its second year in implementation.
Mr. Ganiyu added that it will be unfortunate to repeat mistakes and encounter more challenges, as in the first year of a project in the second, which is why he has the responsibility to gather adequate information on the ground after some time of implementation and proffer recommendations on what need to be done for those challenges to be mitigated and for errors to be corrected.
Program Officer of WUZDA Ghana, Abdul – Karim Mufty asserted that the monitoring visits have built up on the day – to – day monitoring the field team has been carrying out.
According to him, because the monitoring visits are dedicated activities on their own, they have brought out more information from the farmers than they already have, which will help his team better engage the farmers subsequently on their activities on the farm to produce more results.
The farmers in the various communities were delighted about the visit by the team and thanked WUZDA Ghana for the intervention, which they say has positively impacted the lives of some of them, whose education have been better than before, since they were able to make some good sales from the vegetables they cultivated in the last farming season.
Before the “FaPUOWaFLiS”, intervention, which has over 50 percent of its beneficiary vegetable farmers being women, most of the farmers were producing inorganic crops and vegetables for their household consumption without any plans or ideas for commercialization.
The project is currently making preparations to return to the fields in the rainy season to intensify work to ensure better impact on the lives of the farmers in the communities.
WUZDA Ghana 