Support in capacity building of agri-food value chain in the Greater Sepik region continues to expand.
The EU-funded United Nations Joint Programme for Support to Rural Entrepreneurship, Investment and Trade and in Papua New Guinea (EU-STREIT PNG) is specifically targeting women and youth.
Here, the programme extended technical assistance to a cooperative society in Turubu LLG of Wewak, East Sepik Province, with the help of a strong young woman.
24-year-old Hallilah Nakumai from Dandan Village is one of the vibrant women that the EU-STREIT PNG Programme has come across in supporting them to build capacity and provide technical assistance to their established rural business activities.
Having graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sustainable Tropical Agriculture at the Papua New Guinea University of Natural Resources (UNRE), Hallilah found herself back in the village in Dandan with a very slim chance of securing a formal job in urban cities.
“My view on rural setting is that people are toiling the land to (make) ends meet with vanilla, cocoa and fish, but they lack the idea to take their commodities to another stage where they can generate more income from what they already have,” said Hallilah, who is Treasurer and Coordinator of the locally established cooperative society in the area.
In January 2021, Hallilah, with the help of her father, relatives, and friends, embarked on an agricultural journey that would transform their lives from small rural farmers to a cooperative business group named SISIDA after the three villages of Sir, Sikan and Dandan.
“My people are simple farmers. They earn money from informal sales of their products with customers from the highlands of PNG. It was not easy convincing them to create a cooperative society and establish our integrated farming project. But we managed to do so by building a model of an integrated farm for them to see and believe so we can work together to create another one on a bigger scale. That’s how we ended up building over 50 fish ponds. The cooperatives also introduced poultry as well as vanilla and cocoa cultivation to the dwellers of the three villages,” said Denny Kumena, Hallilah’s father and a senior member of SISIDA Cooperative.
As their integrated farm grew, Hallilah felt they needed outside support and that was when she made contact with the EU Funded UN Joint STREIT PNG Programme that is being implemented under leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). She had been visiting the EU-STREIT PNG Programme office in Wewak since 2021, consulting with the value chain officers and arranging for support delivery to her fellow farmers under the SISIDA Cooperative Society.
Consequently, after careful planning and organising with the EU-STREIT PNG Programme, Hallilah and the SISIDA Cooperative Society received the assistance they needed.
The EU Funded UN Joint STREIT PNG Programme in close collaboration with its national and local partners, DAL, Cocoa Board of PNG, MiBank and Hawain Technical High School provided them with two capacity building training:
- Cocoa Bud Graft training - conducted in late 2021 followed by distribution of shade cloth, poly bags and 180 Cocoa Pod Borer Pest-tolerant clone seedlings to SISIDA Cooperative Society for bud wood garden establishment, as a source to provide the farmers with better-yielding cocoa seedlings.
- Tilapia Fish training - held recently from 10th January to 21st January 2022, on how to look after and manage cooperative established fishponds (including feed and feed calculations, hatchery management and stock management) and how to construct more efficient fishponds, and do marketing for their fish products.
In addition, MiBank (a leading microfinance service provider in the country), through the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), as an implementing partner of the EU-STREIT PNG Programme in their quest to introduce and connect rural farmers to modern banking platforms and cashless system, created bank accounts, issued bankcards and registered mobile phone banking for over 100 farmers within the SISIDA Cooperative society.
In addition, a new banking agent was launched in the Cooperative, relieving the farmers from travelling long distances to the town to make deposits and withdrawals or top-ups for their mobile phone; all crucial support facilitating the farmers' engagement at the marketing stage.
Envisioning taking additional steps, including receiving further support from the EU-STREIT PNG Programme, Halillah emphasized, “We’ve built and created this integrated farm (at) our own expense with my knowledge of tropical agriculture, but I realised we needed more technical training for the rehabilitation of our CPB-infested cocoa blocks and inland fish farming. The cocoa and fish training had helped us tremendously, and we look forward to working closely with the EU-STREIT PNG Programme to see our farms grow into an industrial business.”