Global Communities president visits USAID RING project
The President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Communities, Mr David A. Weiss has paid a working visit to the USAID Resiliency in Northern Ghana (RING) Project/
The visit formed part of his official visit to Ghana to interact with management and staff of the organization.
The field visit gave Mr. Weiss the opportunity to have firsthand information of the RING project’s field operations and some of the key interventions the project was providing to vulnerable households in the Northern region.
Mr. Weiss was accompanied by his Vice President in charge of Communications and Public Affairs, Mr David Humphries, the Country Director of Global Communities in Ghana, Mr Alberto Wilde, the RING Chief of Party, Mr Philippe LeMay and his Deputy Chief of Party, Yunus Abdulai, as well as a team of Technical Staff of Nutrition and Livelihoods.
The team visited three RING beneficiary communities – Yapei-Yipala, Bilsikura and Kabilpe — all in the Central Gonja District to acquaint themselves with the progress of work of the RING project.
At Yapei-Yipala community, Mr Weiss interacted with soybeans beneficiaries who had been supported by RING Project with inputs such as seeds and ploughing services enable them produce high quality soybeans
The soyabean beneficiaries told the President and his team that: “now our babies are less prone to sicknesses as a result of incorporating the soybeans into their diets” says the group leader Madam Azara.
At Yapei-Yipala Health Center, the In-Charge, Mr. John Lalibe, cited data since March 2015 that showed a decrease in the prevalence of severe acute malnutrition cases in the soybean community.
Mr. Lalibe also provided an overview of the services delivered at the facility, and how RING support has strengthened the quality and frequency of community outreach visits and nutrition counseling.
The delegation met with RING small ruminant beneficiaries in Bilsikura in the Central Gonja District, where 50 women from 50 vulnerable households received 150 ewes from RING as starter stock in October 2014.
Although some households mentioned they lost one or two ewes due to small ruminant illnesses, each of the households now have an average of five ewes with the total number of more than 400 ewes now in the community.
The President and his team also visited the community of Kabilpe where RING supported women with an irrigation Pump dubbed “MoneyMaker Pump” to facilitate cultivation of nutrient rich leafy green vegetables (LGVs) in the lean season using small scale drip irrigation technology.
The visit to the LGV women group site was to see at first-hand how the women were making use of the drip irrigation kits provided by RING.
RING is a five-year project designed to contribute to the Government of Ghana's efforts to sustainably reduce poverty and improve the livelihoods and nutritional status of vulnerable households in 17 districts of the Northern Region.
RING focuses on the poorest households that have women of reproductive age and children under five. It is designed to contribute to the decrease in prevalence of stunting among children under five, prevalence of anemia among children under five, prevalence of underweight among children under five and decrease in prevalence of wasting among children under five.
