Assembly supports households to go into livestock production
The Tolon District Assembly, in collaboration with the Resilience in Northern Ghana (RING), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has initiated a project to support smallholder farmers, especially women, with small ruminants to go into livestock production.
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The initiative dubbed: " the livelihoods and agriculture" is aimed at helping women to generate additional income to support their families and the education of their children, and also eradicate poverty and malnutrition among children under five in the district.
USAID
The project, being funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), would support a total of 2,500 vulnerable households in the district with 750 ewes and 18 rams to go into productive animal rearing to improve on their incomes and livelihoods.
To ensure the success of the initiative, RING, in collaboration with the Tolon District Assembly, has trained 12 Community Livestock Volunteers (CLVs) to provide basic animal healthcare services to beneficiaries under the project.
The project, which was launched at Dimabi, a farming community in the Tolon District in the Northern Region last Wednesday, began with the distribution of 162 ewes and three rams to 54 selected households in the community.
The CLVs, who had received training in basic animal healthcare, were also presented with their working tools which included bicycles and Wellington boots to enable them to provide the needed support services to the beneficiaries in their communities.
Collaboration
Speaking at ceremony to hand over the ruminants to the beneficiary households and the presentation of the working tools to the CLVs at Dimabi, the District Chief Executive ( DCE) for Tolon, Alhaji Seidu Abukari, expressed his appreciation to the US Government and RING for the project.
He said the assembly would continue to collaborate with its development partners to come out with social interventions to help improve on the living standards of the people in the district.
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Alhaji Abukari called on the beneficiaries to own the project and make good use of it to enhance their income and the nutritional status of their families.
He pledged the commitment of his office to ensure effective and efficient monitoring for the success of the project.
The Deputy Chief of Party of RING, Mr Ben Anamoh, for his part, commended the DCE and his team for their positive commitment towards the project.
He said the project was basically aimed at reducing poverty and malnutrition in the district among vulnerable households, especially women and children under five.
The Tolon District Director of Agriculture, Hajia Hawa Musah, noted that the ruminants were carefully selected and hadbeen dewormed, deticked and given antibiotic injections to ensure that they remained in good health, to enhance the success of the programme.
Views of beneficiaries
Some of the beneficiaries at the ceremony in an interview said the initiative would go a long way to provide them with additional incomes to support their families during the lean season.