Creating sustainability key to farmers success

It’s been five days at the Peer Farmer Training here in Lira and every single day has been exciting in it’s own special way. We’ve gone from learning about proper farming systems to resource mapping, soil management, pest and disease management and today was something new. Roselyn had mentioned yesterday that today would be a lot more relaxed and that class would start at 9:00 am, so we all slept in a little. It has been really great to see the women improve so much in time keeping!! They have been really punctual the past five days and though today was sleeping in day, they were ready for class even before 9:00 am!! Thumbs up to our CRESS peer farmers for sure!

Our facilitator today, who also is a project coordinator with Send A Cow in Lira, Dr. Julius Adubango came in at 9:20 am, so we all became extra pleased with our excellent time management skills! Julius is a very experienced and detailed person so his class of Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) was highly interactive and interesting. He carefully introduced Savings and spoke in detail about the principles of saving at a VSLA, the advantages and disadvantages, steps of creating a VSLA and additionally shared a few tips on how to maintain a successful VSLA.

This class was particularly interesting to me because while our major goal at CRESS is to promote sustainability among the women under our program, we very well know that they can’t fully achieve sustainability if they are not in fact saving some of the monies they are getting from either their small businesses or agricultural projects of vegetable and food crop growing. It is our desire to be able to see these women become fully sustainable a few years from now. The women are very keen to get their savings and loan groups started once we get back home and we are very excited to see them start this journey of saving for a secure and comfortable future. We all then had lunch and took the rest of the day off.

Lydia and Dorcus, two of the Send A Cow staff members are happy to take us to church and around Lira town tomorrow, which everyone is very excited about. Church here starts at exactly 7:00 am apparently so we all have to be ready by 6:30 am and drive into town, which is close to 4km away from our hotel. We’ll update you on our Lira town adventures in our blog tomorrow!

Written by Golda Poni, CRESS Enterprise Officer