NORTH-CODE Ghana, on Tuesday 11 June 2024, has handed over forty (40) gardens to some selected individuals and groups in the Bole District.
Speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Dokrugu Andrew Yahaya the technical lead for NORTH-CODE Ghana mentioned that NORTH-CODE is a national NGO which has offices in Tamale and Damongo and they operate in the Savannah region, the Northern region, North-East region and the Upper-Wast Region.
Mr. Dokrugu stated that for this particular project even though they are doing a lot of other things but in this instance they are working with STAR-GHANA to Address issues of peace and security especially linked to unregulated mining.
He added that there are lot of mining communities in the Bole District and mining attract all kinds of people and generates it’s own forms of security risks and threats, because we have people from all walks of life’s converge in to the District because of mining.
Mr. Dokroku mentioned that this are the kind of things that they are looking at plus the risk of maybe Violence Extremist organization using the congregation of youth in the mining centers to recruit some of them in to terrorist activities so this are some of the things this particular project is looking at and how they can address them and how they can also work with communities to build their own resilience and mechanism to contain this threats.
The technical lead for NORTH-CODE noted that along the way the question always arose if you want to discourage our youth from going to mining what else should we be doing, especially where we all know that unemployment is very high.
“So within the limits of our resources we decided that let’s also have an alternative livelihood option that can support selected youth and women on some sustainable sources of generating income so dry season vegetables garden came up as one of the options something that we can easily do quickly and which can generate results within the shortest possible time he said”.
Again the NGO’s was able to identify 40 local persons from selected community’s who can pilot this gardening project and so the communities selected on the grounds, that there could be youth there who will migrate to mining and they also looked at land suitability and water availability because water is the number one requirements for a successful dry season garden.
Speaking to Yagbon news after the ceremony the Project Manager for STAR-GHANA in the Northern Ghana for peace and security portfolio Mr. Fredrick noted that they are here today to hand over 40 constructed gardens for some beneficiaries that have been selected from communities within Bole.
Mr. Fredrick added that the essence of the project is to promote livelihood among the vulnerable groups that exists within the communities and also try to tie it with issues of illegal mining or galamsy how most of our young people are engaging in this activities and it also affecting their lives, in terms of health and some die as a result.
The Project Manager also emphasis that they are trying to see how they can use this project to foster a cohesion amongst the communities where they can come together and this are considered as communities farms.
“So this selected beneficiaries will be working closely with each other and we also have a technical support from the ministry of agric through the Director of agric at the District levels to support them with technical know how he said”.
The project is being sponsored by STAR-GHANA.
Source: yagbonradioonline/Fataw Diwura
