Community support needed to make school feeding programme better – Official
The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) will yield greater impact on beneficiary schools and society if communities play their supportive roles more effectively.
Wisdom Kafui Newman, Volta Regional Monitoring Officer of the Programme, who told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the weekend, said the programme was supposed to be government/community collaboration, but regretted many communities were shirking responsibilities.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of the GSFP’s targeted food supply chain support project at Kpeve in the South-Dayi District.
Mr Newsman said it was expected that communities would help put up infrastructure, participate in management and provide other resources to shore-up the programme meant to improve literacy levels, push up school enrolment, retain pupils and satiate hunger among school going children.
Mr Ernest Abakah Biney, MIND Project Manager, said by the close of the project period in 2016 incomes of about 10,000 small-holder farmers in the beneficiary districts would have increased by 50 per cent.
MIND (Market Innovation for Development), is a three-year project that rallies small-holder farmers for support and linkage to structured and secured markets created by the School’s Feeding Programme.
It is going on in the seven districts in the Volta Region and two in the Brong-Ahafo region.
Mr Biney listed rice, maize, yam, legumes, cowpea and vegetables as targeted crops under the MIND project.
He said the project was prompted by findings of the Ecumenical Association for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (ECASARD) in two pilot projects that identified and addressed the factors that prevented linkages of farmers to the GSFP markets.
He said the project created good ties among caterers and farmers and established good rapport among banks, the GSFP, district assemblies for a fluid management of credit and payment regimes for service providers on the programme.
Dr King David Amoah, ECARSAD National Coordinator, said his Association’s drive to find markets for farmers was based on the harrowing experience of a farmer, who failing to secure markets for vast fields of cassava, ploughed back the crops into the soil in frustration.
Source: GNA