Our Activites

ACTIVITIES IMPLEMENTED/OUTCOMES

• Formation of 450 Village Savings and loans (VS&L) groups of 11,250 members and 27 functional.
• Increased capacity of women VS&L group leaders to advocate for Agricultural credit from duty bearers.
• Women leaders empowered and engaging government on agricultural credit issues
• Increased number of women VS&L group accessing agricultural loans from MFIs, government agencies and other organizations involved in supporting women Small Scale Farmers
• Capacity Needs Assessment of Women Farmer Leaders across Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau States in North Central Nigeria.
• Sensitization on Women Leadership in Agriculture Governance in North Central Nigeria For Media Executives
• Roundtable Meeting to Identify Advocacy Issues for Women in Agriculture.
• Capacity Building for Women Farmer Leaders on Leadership, Communication and Media Engagement on Market Access.
• Advocacy Memos to Government Officials.
• Advocacy visit to parliament and Ministry of agriculture.
• Round table meeting with Government officials.
• Consultative Forum with Agro-input suppliers.
• Support to Journalist to Research and Publish Stories on the challenges of small scale women Farmers.
• Organization of stakeholders meeting on linkages of agricultural communities and agro-industries to boost food production in Benue state.
• Stakeholders’ engagement forum on gender mainstreaming in policy-making on Agriculture in Benue State

Impact to beneficiaries

• • Successfully built resilience capacity of communities Guma LGAs through sensitization, training, cash vouchering for petty business/farming, and establishment of livelihood support centres (2 Rice Mills) to support 1,400 IDPs and 1,400 individuals from the host community.
  • More than 200 women groups have been empowered to assert, demand and achieve increase participation and representation in Agricultural Governance.
  • More than 200 women able to lead and mentor others.
  • More than 300 women educated on their rights and improvement in their leadership skills.
  • At least 30 women leaders had their first experience at a national Agricultural show.

• Mrs Dorcas Awa and other women beneficiaries have gained international training, hectares of land and recognition in her communities.

• Vegetable farmers in Agboughul Community in Makurdi have better negotiating power in their local markets as a result of their cooperative union.
• Improved saving culture.
• Application of innovations to improve production.
• Improved farm records keeping and account.
• Improved investment and business opportunities recognized by the farmers.
• Livelihood status of the beneficiaries improved. Number of beneficiaries 1477
• Improved access to loan from financial institutions
• Increase capacity to generate funds through Business Development Associations (BDAs)
• More women are involved in community leadership and politics
• More women are involved in decision making
• More women are willing to publicly insist on their rights
• Most communities in Benue have relaxed their gender insensitive laws on land ownership. Number of beneficiaries over 1868
• More people are now aware of the main challenges of Agricultural development/business of the state
• More people have started investing small and medium scale agro-processing industries
• Agricultural policy and restructure have been a dominant discussion in every state stakeholders forum
• Participants unanimously agreed that Agribusiness will work only if there is a state Agricultural policy and implementation that will permit and promote agricultural market investment in the state. Participants drafted an agricultural policy document to reflect the emergence issues.
• The state ministry of Agriculture has been proactive in ensuring that the state agricultural policy document becomes a reality; number of beneficiaries 98
• 19 of the past awardees of female food heroes award have been interview,
• They have shown true leadership and role model with their communities 25
• available finance to farmers through cooperatives
• Improved saving culture and business awareness of small scale farmer; beneficiaries 5000