FAO to address rural poverty in West Gonja
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an affiliate of the United Nations (UN) is to set up three Community Service Centres (CSCs) in the West Gonja District in the Northern Region to support the district’s development programme.
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The centres are also to consolidate and sustain the gains made under the FAO's Community Listeners' Clubs (CLCs) initiative introduced in the West Gonja District in 2013 to help address rural poverty and women's empowerment issues.
The CLCs - dubbed the ‘Dimitra Listeners' Club’ - is an international initiative by FAO to promote the exchange of information and participatory communication, guided by a strong gender approach which aims at supporting the empowerment of rural populations, especially women.
It is also to improve women's living conditions and food security through a better access to information, communication and the exchange of knowledge, practices, experiences on agriculture and other issues.
So far about 36 CLCs, made up of both men and women's groups, have been established in 18 communities in the district since the inception of the project.
Importance of CLCs
Addressing a workshop attended by 80 members of the various CLCs in the district to revitalise the programme at Damongo, a Gender and Communication Specialist of the FAO-Dimitra Project, Mr Yammick De Moi, said the workshop was aimed among others, at reinforcing the gender-sensitive participatory process put in place under the project to empower people and improve gender equality for poverty reduction and food security in the district.
"We realised that giving a voice to men and women smallholder farmers and encouraging gender equality was the key to reducing rural poverty and achieving food security," he stressed.
Mr De Moi noted that the Dimitra Listeners's Club was operational in several African countries including Niger, Senegal, Mauritania and Burundi, and had proven to be an innovative and crucial tool for communities to express their needs and make their voices heard, and expressed the hope that the participants would emulate the successes chalked up in those countries.
The District Chief Executive (DCE) for West Gonja, Mr Ali B. Kassim, commended FAO and its partners for implementing the initiative to help reduce poverty and also empowering women to become self-reliant and assertive in the district.
Sharing experiences
A participant and a member of the Mempeasem CLC, Madam Iddrisu Fati, sharing her experiences with the media, noted that through the operations of the club, the members had been able to come together and mobilise resources to go into soap-making.
She added that through the soap-making they had been able to open a bank account with a local rural bank, and that had made them self-reliant and created steady employment for them.
A member of the Busuunu CLC and a participant, Madam Saasi Fati, for her part, said through the operations of the club, they were able to meet the chief and elders in their community to raise funds to rehabilitate some boreholes which had been abandoned to provide potable water for the community.
Mr Mark Dery, an assembly member for the Sori Electoral Area and the Secretary of the Sori CLC, said through the club the members were able to raise funds to support the women and set up a micro-credit revolving fund to support members to go into other income-generating activities.
Siaka Khadja from the Damango Canteen CLC said the programme had helped to promote social cohesion in their community and they had been able to mobilise their community members to undertake clean-up exercises every Friday to address the sanitation challenges they faced and also educate them on the need to keep their environment clean.