The Swiss Foundation of the International Social Service (SFISS) submitted in September 2014 the final report of its community fields project in Ghana. The project aimed to avoid child emigration by increasing the economic capacity of families in three rural villages. Initiated in July 2012, the project enabled 60 smallholder farmers to benefit directly from the harvests and income from communal fields. The quantity and bio-diversity of the produce increased significantly thanks to the introduction of agro-ecological methods. A total of 300 children, instead of the 120 originally planned, benefited from improved nutrition and their parents were able to pay for their schooling at the end of the project.
The project included:
• Development of community fields for food crop production;
• Creation of women’s committees to manage the fields and their revenues;
• Training in basic accounting, market analysis and micro-credits to help sell the produce and manage the income;
• Provision of farming equipment and tools to reinforce production capacities.
At the end of the project, parents had the resources for their children’s immediate needs, reducing the migration of the young children attending school from rural to urban areas.
