By: Problyn J. Alpha
With support from UNDP Send Sierra Leone has concluded a day of capacity training for five Village Saving Loans Association (VSLA) groups in the Kono district.
The five communities including Soa, Gbense and Kamara chiefdoms in Kono district have benefited from a day capacity building training on value addition and non-timber forest products held at the Kamanda Amputee Camp in Koidu city Kono district.
The training is to capacitate the participants on how they should have knowledge of the available resources in their respective chiefdoms and how they should also preserve their environment with the primary objective of embarking on value addition of their farming products.
Tity Simbo Kamara the Project Manager of SEND Sierra Leone in an interview with this medium maintained that with support from the UNDP under the project human security SEND Sierra Leone organized the training to capacitate the women groups and youth led cooperatives to improve their knowledge on value addition and timber forest products.
She pointed out that the human security project is targeting at least three chiefdoms in the Kono district; Gbense, Soa and Kamara noting in each of the chiefdoms they are working in ten (10) communities making a total of at least thirty village saving loans Association groups in all their operational areas in Kono District.
Madam Kamara said the establishment of the Village Saving Loans Association resource mobilization scheme has made their beneficiaries access to resources or financial support whenever the need arises.
According to her the following were the topics treated during the one-day capacity-building training on value addition and timber forest products.
Various agricultural diversity and non-timber forest products, mapping of available resources in SEND’s operational communities, land use practices, value chain development and how to promote local value chain in the participant’s communities etc.
Tity Simbo Kamara noted that the three years human security project during its first phase through a survey conducted captured the beneficiary chiefdoms as the most vulnerable in terms of environmental depletion or those under environmental threat and therefore they should benefit from the said project.
Speaking about the expected outcome of the said capacity building training the project manager SEND Sierra Leone clarifies that the participants of the training are expected to understand what natural resources are, their value and how to preserve the environment for the benefit of all and sundry.
She disclosed plans by her organization with support from the UNDP to provide rice mill machines for VSLA member groups in Soa and Kamara chiefdoms in the Kono district coupled with the building of the participants marketing skills to move from subsistence farming to that business farming. She intimated that the next training will target facility management committee members.
Meanwhile, participants of the training thanked UNDP for supporting the training and to SEND Sierra Leone for organizing the said session. They promised to replicate the training knowledge for the benefit of the respective VSLA groups and themselves as members.
