The mission of EVCO Farmers’ Training Program (EFTP) is to train and equip farmers with the knowledge to incorporate livestock into their regular crop farming as an additional layer to boost their annual income and thereby reduce poverty.
Two things keep parents up at night in rural communities around the globe; they want their children to get a better education even in their poor villages to ensure a better future, and for them as parents to find better ways of farming so that they could better support their families at the present time. One of the most misconstrued notions about poor villagers is that they all want handouts; the opposite is true. Most poor villagers want the dignity of being in control of their own destiny. They want help to teach them fishing, not to feed them with fish. They look for a hand up, not a handout.
Most village farmers cannot afford to practice irrigation. This leaves them dependent on normal rainfall. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not very reliable. With the failure of the rain, their crops subsequently end up in a drought, extending the poor farmers’ cycle of poverty. I grew up in this situation. My father was able to survive and put his seven children through school because he incorporated his crop with poultry farming. This gave the family a lifeline whenever the crops failed us. He didn’t only survive but he was also able to help the neighbors whenever he could.
EFTP is a 35-acre farm located in Afram Plains in Ghana along the Afram river in the Eastern Region. EFTP currently has setup eight programs with the notion to expand it as demand dictates. Current available training includes; chickens, guinea fowls, goats, pigs, grass cutters, rabbits, beekeeping and fishing.
The combination of our computer setup and donation and our Poverty Reduction Program all geared towards the rural communities cannot be more appropriate. Both are focused on improving the life of the rural farmer with one focusing in the immediate effect (farming), and the other focusing on the better educational future of their children. Our relationship with village Chiefs and community leaders put us squarely with the poor farmers that we are trying to help. We are able to go to a village with a mission to setup and donate a computer lab and realize due to the vegetation and other factors, how many farmers from that particular village could benefit from beekeeping or pig farming for that matter.
This is a win-win for our efforts to improve the living conditions of the poor village farmer and their families to give a hand up, not a hand out and reduce poverty, one village community at a time.