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|  | | Ethiopia - Recent News | | Farmers working with Self Help in Ethiopia face a range of challenges relating to water - both resulting from its scarcity, and because of the considerable amount of labour that is involved with using water for irrigation purposes. .
Two recent initiatives - being undertaken in Bora and in Sodo II projects respectively, demonstrate how simple and cost effective technologies are being deployed to address some of the challenges that farmers are facing.
In Bora, farmers have been introduced by Self Help to an innovative system, whereby terracotta jars can used to provide necessary water to fruit trees. Read HERE how small water filled jars are being buried in the ground beside each of the trees - with the water seeping slowly through the porous jars and watering the roots of each plant. And in Sodo, read HERE how rope and washer pumps have been introduced to farmers as an effective way to irrigate vegetable plots. |
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| | Savings & Credit | | Self Help's savings and credit programme(SACCO) has transformed the lives of thousands of African women in the years since it's inception.
And nowhere has that transformation been more pronounced than in the region around Butajera in Ethiopia, where several thousand local women have now set up small businesses and income generating activities for themselves with credit that they have received under the scheme.
There are currently a total of 2,034 women affiliated to 27 primary SACCO groups in the locality - but project co-ordinator Shimakit Maru predicts that that figure will climb to nearly 30,000 in the next five years. Read more here |
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| | Watershed Management | | A local farmers co-operative is set to be created in Fendisha district in Ethiopia's Eastern Highlands, as a highly successful watershed management project begins to take effect.
Community representatives who have been engaged in a programme to rehabiliate their local environment are to receive support to set up their own association - a move made possible by environmental improvements which have resulted from the watershed management scheme. Read more here |
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| | Field Day | | Self Help's SHDI-Oromia Capacity Building project hosted a well attended farmers field day at Bale Zone in Sinana and Agarfa districts of Ethiopia in early December.
An event that was organised in collaboration with the regional Research and Extension Advisory Council services, the purpose of the field day was to promote seed multiplication and crop management systems amongst local farmers.
The field day showed how farmers had grown 133 hectares of wheat from 200 qt of improved seed, and how beneficiaries were expecting 40-45 quintals per hectare at their next harvest. |
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| | New School | | Self Help's new Legeba High School in the Huruta Project area began enrolment of students at the start of the 2007-8 school year. The school opened less than a year after building work began.
Being built and furnished at a cost of €270,000, the school opened with an estimated student population of 900. The nearest secondary school currently available to children in the area is more than 50 km away. As a result, just 35 per cent of children in the area had attended school beyond elementary level, a baseline survey conducted by the project had found. |
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| | Huruta Project | | Self Help's newest area based programme in the Huruta area of Ethiopia, is well underway, with extensive farmer seed multiplication programmes, women's savings and credit co-ops, farmer demonstration plots, communal nurseries, and a broad range of other programme activities now up and running.
The programme, which started last Spring, has been very generously funded by IAWS, following a field visit by directors of the food and agri-business giants to Ethiopia in late 2005.
The Huruta programme focusses on increasing crop production and farm household incomes, as well as improving access to basic social services and the conservation and wise utilisation of natural resources. Read more here |
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| | Introducing Apples | | An ambitious plan to introduce apple trees to hundreds of farmers in the Sodo Project area underlines Self Help's committment to diversification, and to market orientated production amongst small holding farmers.
From an initial 100 apple tree seedlings aquired by the project, following a year long multiplication programme Self Help in Sodo will have 5,000 seedlings ready for distribution to hundreds of farmers by early next year.
Eating apples are a high value, largely imported crop in Ethiopia, and there is a ready market for sale of the fruit. Within the coming years is is expected that thousands of farmers will have received apple seedlings, which in the temperate climate of Ethiopia can start bearing fruit within two years. |
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| | Irrigated Farming Co-Ops | | The 12 farmers who are members of the Gefersa Shalla 2 Irrigation Co-Op have seen their income double in the year since they began small-scale irrigated vegetable production on their land beside Awash Lake in Bora Project, last year.
Using a portable pump which they bring from plot to plot, the farmers have each been able to produce onions and tomatoes on an irrigated quarter hectare plot, thanks to the support they have received from Self Help. The Gerfersa Shalla Group is one of ten small-scale co-ops established on the lakeshore in the past year. They have increased from one, to three, the number of harvests that they can get from their land as a result.
The group has paid off more than half of the cost of their portable pump, and will continue to set aside a portion of their income towards maintenance and future replacement once their loans are fully paid. |
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| | Ministerial Visit | | There was a huge turn-out of local people, when Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr. Dermot Ahern TD visited Self Help's project offices at Sodo in Ethiopia, during a recent visit to the country.
The Minister, who is pictured here with Self Help's African Director Dr. Awole Mela, was given a short presentation on the organisation's programme work during the visit last month. He was accompanied on the trip by the Secretary General of the Dept Foreign Affairs Dermot Gallagher, representatives of the Irish Embassy in Ethiopia, and other officials.
During the trip he met with several beneficiary groups from the Sodo Project, and was given a demonstration of a number of the activities taking place in the area. |
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| | Regional Savings and Credit | | Membership of Self Help's savings and credit co-operatives in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia has grown to more than 2,000 in the past two years. But that figure is expected to grow to nearly 30,000 women in the coming five years, as the administrative structures are put in place which will enable women in rural communities to both borrow and save, to develop new sources of family income.
A SACCO Union is now in place over-seeing the work of 27 womens primary savings and credit groups, but demand for the services being provided is unprecedented. 'By providing loans which give women an opportunity to earn an income we are meeting a very real demand', explains Self Help's head of co-operative development Shimakit Maru. Across it's projects Self Help has organised a total of 95 primary SACCOs with a membership of 9,000.
The regional SACCO initiative provides rural women not only with access to credit - it also promotes and encourages a culture of saving amongst it's membership. |
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| | | | | Self Help Africa is a limited liability company. Company number: 105601 Charity No. 6663 (Ireland)
The organisation has offices in Ireland at: Annefield House, Dublin Road, Portlaoise, Co. Laois Tel: 00 353 (0)57 8694034 - Fax: 00 353 (0)57 8694038, and in the United Kingdom at : Second Floor Suite, Westgate House, Dickens Court, Off Hills Lane, Shrewsbury, Shropshire SY1 1QU. Tel : 0044-(0)1743 277170
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