RPCV and former Wofabeng advisor Douglas Joseph La Rose (Graduate Student, San Diego State University) will be returning to Guaman in late 2009 to work with Wofabeng on a locally-based deforestation assessment project. The project will prepare the group with the data necessary for a community-based reforrestation project. Stay tuned!
Update: 19 August 2007
In late 2006, Wofabeng joined hands with the Ghanaian government to begin the Greening Ghana Initiative. The program seeks to reinforce the tropical belt of Ghana by encouraging communities to plant and replant appropriate trees. The program involves farmer-based organizations, schools, churches, and other associations who come together and spend a day planting trees. In reward for their efforts, all participants get a free "Greening Ghana" t-shirt. See the photos in our Photo Album!
Update: 12 May 2007
Greetings! The Wofabeng Agroforestry and Environmental Development Group is pleased to announce the launch of the "Nursing Future Forests Initiative," funded by a $4,000 grant from Peace Corps Ghana. The initiative will involve the establishment of a fully functioning nursery in Guaman, along with model farms to demonstrate alley cropping, windbreaks, woodlots, agrosilvopastoralism (incorporating animals such as sheep, goats, and chickens), and agroapiforestry (incorporating bees) methods of agroforestry. The project will be located on a large 10-acre piece of land that was previously the home to our much smaller nursery project. The project will include the construction of a petrol-powered water pump which can be utilized to supply water for seedlings in the dry season (October-April). We expect to have a ceremony and open the nursery for sales of seedlings by this time next year. The tree crops that will be grown at the nursery will include: cocoa, oranges, moringa, apple (soursop), avocado, acacia, tik, mahogany, and others. A link to an outline of the costs and a timetable, as well as a fuller explanation of the project will be uploaded to the site soon.
To view the approved project proposal proposal click HERE.
Thank you, Wofabeng Agroforestry
28 July 2006
We at Wofabeng send our warmest greetings from the cool and breezy Volta Region of Ghana during the height of our rainy season. Of course, the rainy season means one thing to rural Ghanaians - work. That is why our accomplishments during this particularly wet rainy season are so remarkable. In addition to working on our private farming projects we have found time to nonetheless come together as a group and further the realization of our community's vision. In the following we will keep our update to a few particular areas of our work: the opening of our corn, cassava, maize, and rice mills and palm nut cracker; the beginning of a Moringa tree nursing project; and the submission of proposals for capacity-building workshops and grasscutter rearing facilities.
On 10 July 2006 Wofabeng commissioned its grinding mills complex in the market square of Guaman. During the ceremony, the following speech was given by the group's coordinator, Mr. Kofi Asare Baffour:
Nana Chairman,
Nananon and Elders,
District Director, Ministry of Food and Agriculture,
Honored Member of Parliament for Buem,
Invited Guests,
Our Special Guests of Honor,
Students,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me the greatest pleasure to welcome you to Guaman today on the commissioning of this mills complex in Guaman.
I will also like on behalf on Nana Appew and his elders and on behalf of all of us here to warmly welcome our special guests of honor Mr. and Mrs. La Rose who have traveled all the way from San Diego, California in the U.S.A to pay a visit to their son Mr. Douglas Joseph Kwadwo Aseda La Rose who is serving for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer with Wofabeng, which is an agricultural cooperative society based in Guaman.
Mr. & Mrs. La Rose, you are heartily welcomed.
Nana Chairman, Wofabeng is a co-operative organization and can be described as an agricultural or farmer-based organization. The co-operative works together to address the rapid rate of environmental degradation, embark on agricultural activities, re-forestation programmes and ensures food security - thereby reducing poverty.
Its aims and objectives therefore meet the requirements of Agricultural Services Sub-sector Investment Program (AgSSIP), our sponsors, in order to benefit from this project, the mills complex. AgSSIP is a program for agricultural development put in place by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in response to Ghana Government's Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Development Strategy and the Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy (FASDEP).
It aims at increasing agricultural productivity and therefore incomes as the driving force for reducing rural poverty and improving food security.
Wofabeng was formed in 1999 and became legally recognized in 2001. It has since its inception become a channel for development in this community in the Jasikan District of the Volta Region of Ghana.
Some of its activities are recounted as follows:
Nana Chairman, as a result of excessive logging, bush fires and inappropriate farming practices, farming lands in the local communities are turning into semi-savanna zones.
Wofabeng has therefore established a nursery and produced various tree seedlings, which are supplied to farmers in the district for planting, working in collaboration with the District Forestry Department.
In collaboration with Heifer International members of the co-operative have benefited and engaged in projects such as rabbit rearing, poultry keeping, and honey production through bee keeping. Even tough the benefits of this program seem to have a direct bearing on only members of the co-operative, its effects have indirectly reflected on the positive livelihood situation in the communities at large.
Nana Chairman, with the advent of the AIDS pandemic, Wofabeng has alsojoinedforces in the crusade against the AIDS disease by organizing educational programmes in schools and communities in the district with the sponsorship from Ghana AIDS Commission.
Furthermore, since the placement of Kwadwo Aseda Douglas La Rose as a Peace Corps Volunteer seven months ago, his activities have made a tremendous impact on the community.
He has animated and intensified programs of Wofabeng by organizing workshops for community members on benefits of tree planting and appropriate farming practices.
He is also working with a sister organization, the Women's Association for Children's Welfare (WACWEL). On the programs of this organization, he has volunteered himself by taking up classes for Junior Secondary School Students.
He has initiated an educational sponsorship program for brilliant yet needy students, especially girls, by establishing a fund for this purpose. To enable this fund to come into existence, he has made requests to friends and organizations in the U.S.A and I am happy to say that there has been a positive response.
He has also seen the need for both students and the public to develop the habit of reading and updating their knowledge. In this direction therefore, he has initiated a library project. Nana Chairman, I am happy to announce that 1,000 books have been shipped and they will soon arrive from the U.S.A.
Mr. Robert La Rose, Aseda's father, has already helped Wofabeng and Guaman by designing a website for us. This means that on the internet and on the world map, the whole world can easily find all information about Wofabeng and Guaman. This is what the La Rose family has already done for us. In Ghana it would cost us a lot of money to do this. We are grateful to them.
Nana Chairman, it is gratifying to note that with Kwadwo Aseda's skills in proposal writing he fine-tuned our proposal to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the result is the approval of the mills complex project we see here today.
It is hoped that farmers and the general public will take full advantage of this project in their food processing and value addition in the marketing of their produce. This will ensure poverty reduction and improve our livelihood situation.
Nana, Chairman, distinguished invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, once again I say welcome.
Thank you and God bless.
NEW PROJECTS - JULY 2006
The group has also been busy planting Moringa Oleifera seeds at our nursery. Moringa Oleifera is a multi-purpose tree that has been used to reduce poverty throughout the tropics. Its many uses include oil production, food production, water purification, and its leaves also have extraordinary medicinal properties. Wofabeng has been learning about the plant and hosting workshops in Guaman.
Finally, we have submitted two new proposals for capacity-building workshops hosted by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and grasscutter rearing facilities. The workshops will focus on teaching group members how to utilize and maintain the mills which were generously donated to us by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The grasscutter proposal was submitted to the Conservation, Food and Health Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts and aims to promote grasscutter rearing as an alternative-livelihood opportunity in the Volta Region of Ghana.
Until next time,
Wofabeng Agroforestry and Environmental Development Group
In 2006, Wofabeng has embarked on a series of ambitious initiatives to expand the scope of our influence both environmentally and geographically. As of April 2006 we have narrowed our focus to a few projects which we expect to be economically and environmentally sustainable.
These projects include the acquisition and management of corn, rice, and cassava processing equipment; the establishment of a tree nursery to implement agroforestry practices and afforestation; and the establishment of grasscutter-rearing practices as an alternative livelihood project for the community. We are also experimenting with indoor snail farming and sustainable livelihood advocacy programs. The purpose of this update is to explain our current projects to interested groups residing outside of Guaman, Jasikan, and Ghana.
Last December, a proposal for a corn mill, cassava grater, and rice huller was accepted by the Ministry of Agriculture and just a week ago we received the funds to purchase the equipment. We expect to have the machines up and running by the end of May. This development has been especially encouraging to the group because the processing of these food crops will add significant market value to produce before it is sent to bigger markets in the Jasikan District. The group has begun construction of a structure to house the machines and we are developing a management strategy.
The group has also cleared a 1/2 acre of a previous nursery to establish a new nursery with an agroforestry focus. We have been hard at work recycling water sachets (small 300 ml bags of water sold all over West Africa) into polybags that will house meringa, tik, acacia, mango, ofram, mahogany, and native tree seeds. By June the group will have approximately 10,000 seedlings ready for sale and transplant. By this time next year Wofabeng will be able to confidently implement agroforestry cropping systems and begin afforestation projects.
The group is also planning the construction of a structure to house domesticated grasscutters as an alternative livelihood project. Grasscutter meat is a delicious local delicacy which is highly valuable and is commonly sold at very high prices. A large grasscutter can be sold for 200,000 cedis ($20). In Ghana this much money can pay rent for two apartments or can cover the cost of 1/5 of a Senior Secondary School's fees. Furthermore, grasscutters are usually hunted in the rainforests with a method involving the use of fire to scare the animals into submission. This hunting practice causes heavy deforestation and bush fires; thus the project can also be viewed as a significant conservation measure. The group is currently working on proposals to acquire the necessary funds to initiate these projects.
