- trains over 30 urban farmers on peri-urban agriculture
Kwaipai Africa, a grassroots community agriculture organization, has increased its technical support and training programs to 30 urban farmers on the GSA Road Community in Paynesville, Montserrado County.
According to a press release, Kwaipai Africa was established on 10 September 2019 to build the capacity of the local community-based farmers within the peri-urban areas.
The organization focuses on youth engagement in peri-urban gardening, valuable women and girls, people living with disabilities, high school students, and the less fortunate to engage in agriculture production as a means of tackling their food insecurity.
The training and technical support are meant to build the capacities of urban farmers by providing knowledge, skills, and vegetable seeds to enable the farmers to grow food for their households and the local market.
The training brought together urban farmers, mostly women from within the GSA Road Community and its environs who are being recruited and supported by the organization for livelihood incomes.
Urban agriculture is the cultivation of crops and the raising of animals in urban communities. This form of agriculture was introduced in Liberia immediately after the civil crisis to create jobs for the poor residents and to help sustain their food security.
Speaking in an interview with this paper, Ebenezer Kukai, founder of the Kwaipai Africa believed that bringing these urban farmers together will give them some fundamental understanding of how to produce or grow what they eat.
"We want them to get some technical support and training because we can't give you materials without technical knowledge and skills about the materials."
He said that training the farmers and providing technical assistance such as seedings and other garden materials will help them do better in their production when they go back into their various communities.
At the end of the one-day training program, participants were provided vegetables and seeds to enable them to establish a backyard garden to grow more food for their communities.
Kukai said the residents will grow the crops and sell some to earn income to support their children in schools as well as pay house rent.
The organization further provides a monitoring team that will see how the beneficiaries' gardens will grow vigorously so that they will have food on their table and sell some for economic and social benefit as well.
This initiative, according to the founder of Kwaipa Africa, is under its garden program called "FEED HOME, GROW NATURAL and EAT HEALTHIER."
The organization is being supported by community dwellers including other humanitarians.
Kukai said "It is about time now to step up our game, to help our community dwellers. It is not just about the people that live in the GSA road community but the entire Liberia."
Commenting on the challenges when he was at the University, he said he used to help farmers with seeds at the same time running the organization, something he said was a difficult thing to do as a student.
However, Kukai who is passionate about agriculture is now a proud graduate from the University of Liberia (UL). He wants to increase the organization's visibility to ensure that it gets the necessary support but, says it has been difficult.
"It is a treat because the majority of our foods are grown in the rural areas which point to 90% and 10% are produced in the urban area and so urban farming will help buttress the government's efforts and help community dwellers to self-sufficient in their garden life."
"You know that the beginning of everything is difficult, most of our staff are volunteers at this institution."
Currently, he said, the organization has eight volunteers, and these volunteers know the importance of urban farming.
Kukai said at times these volunteers pump in their monies to sustain the organization.
However, he said the majority of the staff are all youth, most of whom are agriculturalists from various universities like Stella Marris, AMEU, and UL who came together to see how best to form the organization.
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Explaining the Institutions success story, Mr. Kukai stated that the success story has been immense.
According to him, his organization was able to establish an urban garden, a community garden where community dwellers could go and work.
"We have also established a garden here and we take our training program to various high schools," he explained.
"As we speak now, we have the program at the Covenant School of Grace, Kenoweh Stone Preparatory School, on the GSA road. This is about enhancing the skills of students on school garden practices," he added.
Meanwhile, beneficiaries of the program, Amos Diggs and Richel Thomas said that they were excited about the program and would like to call on the Ministry of Agriculture to empower the organization so that they can access more support for their respective garden projects.
"We are very happy today to be a part of this training. We see urban farming as the key to sustaining our families."
"Today we learned a lot from this training, and we are going to go back to our various communities to replicate this for improved production," the beneficiaries said.
