By George Abang-Tawoh | Project Leader
Although we have not yet received the funds raised through the Global Giving campaign we have not been letting the grass grow under our feet. We have been spending the time harvesting the existing crop from our experimental plantation and planning for the next stage:
Harvesting:
Thanks to the hard work of our dedicated volunteers who have cut the crop and physically carried the bunches of plantains the 7km to market, we have recently been able to harvest 1200 bunches. The income from this has enabled us to pay the rent and utilities on our office for the first half of the year as well as covering some of the expenses of our volunteers.
In addition, our crop has provided much needed nutrition from the local families who have been able to buy it. Plantain is an important source of nutrition but it is scarce in the region. Our technical committee met at the APWCR office on the 30th of July to evaluate the harvest and estimated that about 600 families have benefited.
A particularly satisfied customer is the women’s group “Buy’em Selem”. This group is a partner of APWCR and consists of about 200 women who are committed to addressing poverty and hunger by buying common food commodities from farmers, such as plantains, cocoyams and ibo cocoyams from farmers and selling them at a fair price in the local markets.
Alice Tipah, vice chair of the Buy’em Selem group in new town Limbe has said “We are impressed with the bunches of plantains supplied by the APWCR plantains project and we hope to get more, now that plantains are in such high demand in Limbe because of scarcity”
Planning: The money that you have so generously donated is extremely important to this project but it is not enough to enable us to buy the 4x4 vehicle we were aiming for. Rather than lose momentum while we wait and save, we have decided to use the money to expand the crop now and increase our income. Once we receive the donations from Global Giving, we will plant another 2000 suckers of plantains. In the meantime, our volunteers, inspired by your support for their efforts, have been clearing the ground in readiness.
Of course, a 4x4 vehicle remains essential to increasing the size and productivity of the plantation and so we are currently researching ways to fundraise and possibly attract corporate donations to achieve this. If you have any suggestions, please let us know!
Thank you again for your support for our project “Grow plantains & support human rights in Cameroon”. Your generosity will not only help to sustain APWCR and its activities, but feed more than 900 families with plantains, and empower some women groups like the “Buy’em Selem”, thus helping us to fight poverty and tackle hunger in Cameroon.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
