Youths empowered with ecological agriculture skills

 Dar es Salaam. More than 600 youths have been armed with     essential skills on ecological agriculture that aims to help them identify potentials available in farming as well as develop entrepreneurship skills that will enable them establish their own economic projects to be able to raise income and fight poverty.

Ecological agriculture means growing food in diverse systems that are 100 percent organic (chemical free)

Msichana Initiative executive director, Rebecca Gyumi said that upon completion of the project it will benefit at least 2000 selected individuals in the three regions with 90 percent of them expected to be women.

They say that organic farming will enable the youth to use low cost farming but get more yields and thus become economically independent, this is done by experts in the agriculture sector.

Msichana initiative in collaboration with the Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT) and Practical Permaculture Institute of Zanzibar (PPIZ) are executing a two year project dubbed ‘girls empowerment through agro-ecology and permaculture’ (GAPE).

“ I aimed at promoting young women’s empowerment through organic agriculture,” says Ms Gyumi

Funded by the French Embassy, the project worth over Sh1.6 billion ($720,000) is being implemented in Dodoma, Tabora and Zanzibar.

She said that as part of the implementation of the project, the organization recently brought together about 600 young girls and boys from Tabora and Dodoma regions to impart them with knowledge on gender norms to enhance their knowledge on gender equality.

“For Tabora, the training was conducted between October 7 and November 8, this year, and brought on board 300 youths 262 females and 38 male,” she said.

In Dodoma, the training was conducted between October 7 and November 5, this year and benefited 280 youths where 256 were female and 24 male.

According to her, the one month training was aimed to enable young women and men to empower themselves with ecological farming as well as be able to speak about gender equality in their localities.

“ To increase awareness on permaculture and agroecology as well as strengthen participant’s capacity in the areas of environment conservation and eco-preneurship.”

She said that participants will be able to bring change in their localities as well as influence shifts in attitude and behaviors that perpetuate social exclusion and injustices in their communities.

“On the other hand the project aims at building the confidence of girls and their ability to stand up for their rights and on the other hand provide them with vocational training and support them in the creation of micro/ macro businesses around ecology.”

She further added: During the training we noticed that most of the participants were not aware of the issue of gender based violence and they confessed that most of them have experienced gender based violence in their environments due to insufficient knowledge, these observed due to the pre-test given before they proceeded with training sessions.

She said most of the participants cited poverty as among the major contributing factors to gender based violence.

Early marriage and child pregnancy was also mentioned by participants that these cases happen several times in their areas as it affects a girl's progress.

Majority said that the fear of reporting gender based violence incidents was another challenge for them that caused them to lose confidence to report GBV incidents fearing it might cause disputes with the neighbors or the community hence they remain silent without reporting to the respective authorities,

Gyumi noted that many studies in recent years agree that the fight against gender violence, to be effective, must be accompanied by the economic empowerment of women, without which women face processes of victimization.