Hope Givers Empowers Over 300 Anambra Farmers with Seedlings, Fertilizers

It was all joy in Awka North local government area of Anambra state as a nongovernmental organization, Hope Givers Initiative (HOG-I) distributed fertilizers and rice seedlings to the rural farmers in the area.

The beneficiaries numbering over 300 were drawn from different farmer’s cooperative societies across Awka north local government area. Hope Givers Initiative empowered the rural farmers through the support of Christian Aid.

The fertilizers and seedlings were distributed to the rural farmers in readiness for a new planting season.

www.odogwublog.com reports that the Non-Governmental organization also trained rural women of Awka North on liquid soap making.

HOG-I said the gesture was part of the Evidence for Inclusive Development (ECID) project geared towards providing the needed information and farming seedlings as well as fertilizers to rural farmers in hard-to-reach communities.

Addressing participants, the Executive Director, Hope Givers Initiative ( HOG-I) Mrs. Onyeka Okey-Udegbunam
said the training of women to be entrepreneurs is part of their COVID-19 response project called C-RISE, a project where children and women are trained on several skills ranging from sewing, liquid soap making, and other areas after which they are equipped to take off with support from community leaders.

Mrs. Okey-Udegbunam said that the initiative to donate rice seedlings to the farmers in Awka North was borne out of reaction to difficulties faced by the farmers in gaining access to some basic facilities that aid living.

While Mrs. Okey-Udegbunam maintained that the project was funded by the Christian Aid, she said the agenda of the Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development (ECID) project is to work with their target communities to find out those things lacking in the hard-to-reach communities and proffer solution to them.

She also said the organization distributed the items to the farmers having consulted on their major areas of needs. She added that the gesture will not only add to their productivity but help boost the farmer’s economy.

Speaking to newsmen, the representative of Christian Aid, Uzoma Uzor noted that the ECID project is aimed at working around data to promote the objectives of their target groups who she said are rural women, adolescent boys, and girls, people living with disabilities as well as the marginalized. She said the aim is to promote the government’s use of data in planning such that they can capture the needs of the marginalized people in society.

While she reeled out that Awka North is one of the target areas of the ECID project, she said people of the area have been annual victims of flood menace. She said that the body gave the seedlings and fertilizers and trained the women to have a new start after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their lives.

“Some of these women had a lot of challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic. So by providing the fertilizers and rice seedlings, it will enable them to cope with the pandemic so that they can go back to their farming activities.

She said the training was necessary to equip the rural women with productive skills that they could use to support their families and children especially during this second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking to www.odogwublog.com, one of the beneficiaries and a widow from Amanuke, Nwarienne Blessing Nonye, said that the gesture will help improve her farming activities.

“Everybody in Amanuke, Ugbene, and Oba-Ofemili knows me as a hardworking rice farmer even though I am a widow. I buy nothing less than 10 bags of fertilizers every year at a very high cost for my rice farm but all of these contribute to the high cost of farming.

She said the free fertilizer will help bring down the cost of farming and will encourage her to cultivate more when the farming season starts.

Another beneficiary, Arthur Morgan Prince from Umunagu village in Achalla told newsmen that the fertilizer as an input will help him in his farm work. He said the gesture from HOG-I has encouraged him to go into the new farming season.

Another rice farmer, Comrade Tagbo Valentine said that farmers in the region have never experienced such support or gesture from the state government.
“We have not experienced this kind of intervention from the government. If the nongovernmental organization could do this, then the government can do more. If they empower we farmers in Awka north, we have what it takes to deliver beyond expectations.

“Now we are lacking rice and cassava but if the government should borrow a leaf from the non-governmental organization and empower us, we will be encouraged in our farming.

Meanwhile, a dialogue session was held where some of the participants and representatives from various communities in Awka North seized the opportunity to reel out the challenges facing their towns and villages to their council chairman,
Hon. Ferdinand Onwuje
who was present at the training. Top on the list was a dearth of teachers in most secondary schools, poor drainage system, and lack of water facilities.

Handing over the items to the farmers, the chairman Awka North Local Government Area, Hon. Ferdinand Onwuje charged the beneficiaries to leverage the support from the organization urging the trained women to spread the knowledge of the liquid soap-making skills to their different communities.

He commended the Hope Givers Initiative for choosing Awka north as one of their project sites and assured to conduct a holistic investigation into the challenges reeled out by the communities stressing that the problem of inadequate teachers in schools will be looked into.