Dear Donors and supporters,
We are happy to announce that we recently launched our crop processing facility in Abak village Akwa Ibom State. Through your support, all the funds were raised via the June 2018 Accelerator – a collaboration between The Spring Development Initiative and Strategy and Innovation for Development (SI4DEV).
The day, March 23 was very great at the launching of the Cassave and Palm oil processing facility in Abak village. The community representatives, traditional rulers, women and youth leaders were part of the organizing committee and turned up for the event.
The Local government chairman ably represented by supervisor of Agriculture said the local government will grade the road to the facility and provide 3500 capacity water tank as well as an oil tank.
One of the board members from The Spring Development Initiative, sent in a congratulatory message, saying; “I am happy that the residents of the community will have an easier time processing their crops. My hope is that this will be a sustainable venture. Hopefully the sustainability team is up to the task.”
We are indeed working towards that.
Grace Jimbo, the project lead says she has not seen such high community participation like this before…and there has been massive capacity transfer so far.
Some challenges and delays:
The building and installation of the machines took a longer time; each machine took a minimum of 5days to dry in their cement casing.
Some unbudgeted items/ accessories were needed during the installation and test running. These items include cements, poline, fan belts, water drum, diesel tank, small diesel engine and connecting hosts.
Project team communicated these challenges to the sustainability committee but there was no positive feedback as the 2019 national and state elections drew closer and took priority during community meetings.
Solutions:
At the end, the timeline for delivery of the machine was extended to allow for the manufacturer to deliver good and reliable equipment.
To avoid the distraction of the elections on the community, we postponed the launching of the facility, extending the time for testing and learning for those who will be operating the machines.
Conclusion:
We are overwhelmed and overjoyed at the community engagement evident at the launching. Grace Jimbo turned out to be such a wonderful dancer! We appreciate her dedicated efforts on piloting this project to this point and are really thankful her leadership.
The women leaders have our gratitude too, they were the ones that cleared the grass and prepared the place for the occasion. Since that date, the machines have been busy and in use.
Thank you all once again for your support.
If you can, please support us again by donating to any of our projects linked below.
Links:
Support the practical training of more community builders
Donate to SI4DEV, our collaborators in Nigeria
