SOS VILLAGE ASSISTS YOUTH IN AGRICULTURE (PAGE 20)

THE SOS Children’s Village at Asiakwa in the East Akyem Municipality is to assist youth in four selected communities of the area to go into organic farming.
The initiative, aimed at educating and promoting the interest of the youth in organic farming, will be undertaken at Asiakwa, Bunso, Sagyimase and Osino.
The project is also expected to provide employment to the youth to halt their migration to urban areas and ensure food security in the beneficiary farming communities.
Dubbed “Junior Farmer Field Life School”, the project is a collaboration between the SOS Village, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Ghana Organic Agriculture Network and Avalon International of the Netherlands and will be implemented in two phases over a three-year period.
Under the first phase, the initiative will boost the interest of youth between 14 and 18 years, mostly from poor homes, in organic farming.
The second phase will be targeted at young people between 18 and 25 years, who, after acquiring basic education in organic farming, will be provided with some money to acquire land to farm under the supervision of agricultural extension officers.
As part of preparation towards the implementation of the project, the Asiakwa SOS Village, in collaboration with its partners, has organised a 10-day workshop, which equipped selected teachers, agricultural extension officers and staff of the SOS with the rudiments of organic farming.
This is to enable them to facilitate and promote the interest of the youth in organic farming.
In an address at the close of the workshop, the Director of the Asiakwa SOS Village, Mr Josiah B. Nartey, said since the village was located within a poverty-stricken community, his outfit had decided to implement the project to give the youth, mostly from poor homes, basic knowledge and skills in organic farming.
This, he said, would not only provide employment to them to raise their living standard, but would also help halt the migration of the youth to the urban areas in search of non-existent jobs.
“If we are to be able to prevent the youth who are the vital human resource base of most of these poverty-stricken communities, we then can hope to encourage them to stay and contribute to the development of their communities to reduce poverty,” Mr Nartey stated.
To provide practical skills to the youth in organic farming, Mr Nartey said his outfit had set aside one demonstration farm at the SOS Village, while similar skills would also be replicated to other basic schoolchildren.
Mr Nartey urged the participants to go to the various communities to generate the interest of the youth in organic farming to ensure a successful implementation of the project.
Mr Jaap Van Derpol, a consultant for the SOS Children's Village, who was also one of the resource persons during the workshop, called on the participants to be role models for the youth in the communities, saying “we can achieve this by being punctual and disciplined in the discharge of our duties”.