World Vision Promotes Food Security

World Vision International-Ghana (WVI), an International Non-Governmental Organisation operating in the Garu and Tempane Districts in the Upper East Region has empowered residents of the area with critical food security interventions.

Food insecurity, prior to the interventions had become a major threat in the area over the years and prevented the people from accessing quality livelihoods as they were constantly exposed to unfriendly weather conditions that were inimical to their general wellbeing and making them susceptible.

Mr Maxwell Amedi, Officer in charge of Food Security at WVI disclosed this on Wednesday at Sumanduri, a farming community in the Garu District during a tour to some of the WVI livelihood intervention initiatives in the then Garu-Tempane Districts to assess the impact of the projects on the lives of the people in the area.

He mentioned some of the interventions as the training of women into shea butter extraction, soap making, promoting self-led open defecation free environment, and the provision of potable drinking water among others.

According to him, his outfit supported farmers into keeping livestock, which had contributed to improve on their livelihoods over the years through improved income, education, and self-help initiatives and invariably translated into improved livelihoods.

Mr Amedi indicated that WVI had initiated the construction of dams for irrigation for farmers to cultivate varieties of crops, especially during the dry season to augment the short rainfall by nature in the area and at the same time arrest the annual migration of the people to southern Ghana in search of jobs with their attendant consequences.

He said the organisation had implemented some initiatives to promote forestation, hand washing and other simple and relevant programmes to educate children in schools on environmental protection, and noting that the environment was the only place that could produce food for human consumption.

The Food Security Officer advocated the forest and other environmental bodies to be protected as they were major sources that could ensure and enhance quality livelihoods for society and its dependants.

Mr Amedi underscored the need for stakeholders to help initiate community led interventions to push the people to embark on ventures that would alleviate them from poverty and aid them to become independent and contribute to the development of society.

Madam Salamatu Dasmani, leader of the Kpikpira Women shea Butter Association, commended WVI for their timely interventions and said it had improved their living conditions as they no longer depended solely on their husbands for petty demands to manage their homes.

Madam Dasmani said the shea butter factory had empowered them to be financially independent and has given them financial power to support their husbands to finance their children's education and provide other family needs.

She indicated that gone were the days when women had to travel to southern Ghana to seek greener pastures in order to be able to support their families and said women in the community could comfortably acquire their personal effects with the income generated from the shea butter business.