Agriculture & Local Right Programmes

Case profile Collection:

Due to the withdrawer of the Sweden Sponsorship in Delta LRP, there was a dire need for supporters in other to sustain Delta LRP project activities, thus 600 new Case Profile  were approved by AAN Nigeria and collected to increase Delta linked children to the UK supporters in 2022. The 600 new profiles were collected from 10 communities; Abuator, Obikwele, Osissa, Eboh, Emonu, Ugono, Otutuama, Otegbo, Ophorigbala, Okwemor and Esasa communities in Ndokwa East, Ughelli North and South LGA respectively.

Child Message Collection (CMC):

The Child Message Collection is the trusted and tested ENVIRUMEDIC and AAN funding mechanism, funding the LRP project in Delta State. The CMC is a Biannual activity that support communication and feedback on the project between Sponsored Children and the Sponsor. The activity gives details of the general wellbeing of a child to its sponsor, through this communication medium which strengthen the relationship among community members, partner organization and AAN and the suppoters.  For period 1 and 2 under review, the total numbers of 360 and 305 linked children were expected for collection out of which 354 and 298 were collected respectively. The figures above represented 98% collection performance for the both periods. During this activity, different Invigorative activities were carried out to motivate, inspire and make the exercise worthwhile for the children.

The activities includes, reading and spelling competition, general dance competition, timeout with banny (shrek), egg race, football competition between boys and girls, sack race, personal hygiene talk and sensitization on the Importance of Education among others and the distribution of gift items to linked children for both period 1 and 2. The gifts ranges from note books, exercise books, biro, pencils, snacks, and fruit drinks as refreshment to 1,645 children. The activity did not just enhance children performance across the schools but it also deepened children participation and creativity and gave them sense of belonging.

Learning Made Easy Through Gift Fund:

The gift fund activity is a component of the child sponsorship mechanism where sponsors of children make available voluntarily little fund as a gift for a funded child. However, the realized fund are not given to individual funded child rather on projects that benefits the entire community children. Thus, the year’s fund was used to purchase gift items that are distributed to the supported children and others that are not supported by funders. Due to the inadequacy of the fund, the Gift Fund activity is usually conducted in few communities with surpassing pressing needs. For the period under review, the activity was carried out in Ebokan Primary School in Egbo-Ideh Community alongside CMC. The choice of Egbo-Ideh was hinged on its vulnerability to cholera disease and other kind of ailments as all learners uses one cup to drink water contained in plastic bucket and also the fact that many learners go home to get good water to drink and ends up not coming back to school. This practice has reduces learners performance, retention and transitions. The activity was used to ameliorate health condition and academic performance of learners. The total number of 150 water bottles were provided for 150 primary school children in the school to mitigate drinking water from one unknown source and school retention.

Stakeholders Forum on Agroecology:

At the instance of the impact of climate change, this Activity was used to bring relevant stakeholders from the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture, CSOs and Media to a roundtable meeting to discuss and proffer solution to climate change issues in Delta State. It also provided the space for ENVIRUMEDIC to present their work on climate change mitigation and adaptation to wider stakeholders for learning and collaboration on the thematic focus. The activity reveal while government of the state should make favorable policies to citizens on climate change mitigation and adaptation measures while implementing it to guide and support citizens on evolving climate resilient practices. It charges state and non state actors to take turn in the integration of Climate Change activities in their work plans and implementation of same across the state. It also encouraged the CSOs to continually sensitize the general public on the need to shun anti-environment practices in the course of their work across the state while the media practitioners raise awareness to the general public.

Advocacy to Delta State Ministry of Environment on Tree Planting & plastic waste management

This activity was tailored to enable ENVIRUMEDIC create visibility of AAN and ENVIRUMEDIC work on climate change mitigation and adaptation of plastic waste and tree planting project to the state Ministry of Environment and Agriculture. The project was welcomed and got the buy-in of the ministries with whelming cooperation, partnership and collaboration while committed to scale up the project to all the LGAs in the state. The activity brought the state actors to speed on ENVIRUMEDIC intended climate change project and the already existing ones and also got their supports across the project/activities.

Community Sensitization on aforestation/Tree Planting:

During the quarter under review, 700 Trees were planted across 10 LRP Communities. The activity was designed to reach 7 LRP communities at 100 Trees each but during the implementation it was observed that some of the Primary School premises are too small to take 100 Trees thus, the activity was spread to other 3 Communities bringing it to 10 communities that benefited from the activity.  To maintain and care for the planted trees, each Tree planted was named and assigned to a learner that would care for the Trees in close coordination of the school management.

The Tree Planting exercise was to contribute to making our environment healthier and secure the Eco System and making the earth more human friendly. It created a space to catch Primary School Learners young and inculcate the habit of aforestation across LRP Communities. The activity was proposed to take place in the first quarter of 2022 to cushion the effects of climate change that are caused by deforestation which majority of it are humanly influenced. The activity mobilized different stakeholders to invest in the activity and compliment the global efforts to reduces the divastitating effects of climate change. Some of the stakeholders sensitized are; the government, community leaders and community members, Primary School Management, secondary school management and CSOs to get their buy-in for sustainability of the Project in the various communities that benefited the activity.

Quarterly meeting of Extension Agents and Community Women Farmers and Farmers:

The absence of agricultural extension services to the smallholders women farmers and farmers in their agricultural endeavour or its inadequacy within the state agriculture sector has left farmers most especially smallholder women farmers with very low innovative agricultural knowledge leading to low yields and also made agriculture very uncompetitive and unpopular amongst other sectors of the economy.

Thus, two interface meetings were held during the period. The activity bridge the gap between the agricultural extension agents and farmers. It improved the working relationship between them and allows for easy flow of information amongst party making agricultural activities more productive and less tedious. This gave space for in-dept understanding of challenges from both parties and enable sustainable ways of solving such challenges and presently working in harmony.  Finally, it improved effective agricultural extension services to farmers which has resulted to increasd productivity of farmers and created competent institutional model and overall performance of the agricultural system.

Conduct Awareness raising on Climate Change Issues across LRP Communities:

By nature, agriculture has been identified as contributing to climate issues around the world because for agriculture to take place there ought to be a level of deforestation and possibly burning.  Adding to Climate Change devastating effects which has been on the front burner in recent decades and Nigeria has had more than a fair share of climate concerns. By the above analysis, the awareness raising activity became important as it kept community members informed on Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation measures as well as speak to their consciousness to drive good climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions and prepare themselves before the emergence of any disaster. The activity amongst other of its benefits built the community women farmers and farmer’s capacities to actively manage their climate change, build resilience in both the body and mind to handle its complexity. The activity was imperative considering the unpredictable weather condition and huge climate change effects from flooding on the community members.

Training of Youths on Voters Education/Electoral Processes:

As the 2023 election gets closer vis-à-vis the mindsets of the average Nigerian electorates on Nigeria election, AAN and ENVIRUMEDIC prepared citizens to actively participate in the 2023 election since election is the only process by which the people of a province, state and or country choose their leader or representative and change citizens/electorates mindsets that  don’t see the need to participate in election processes with the excuses that their votes won’t count, and end up given power to the wrong candidates. The activity was conducted as Training of Trainers (TOT) for LRP Community members in the state. The activity equipped community members and youths to first, understand the electioneering processes and procedures, their obligations and responsibilities as voters during and after elections.  The training increased participants enthusiasm and raised the consciousness most especially the youths to organize, mobilize, participate and take ownership of their community electioneering processes.

Sensitization of Community members on Plastic Waste Disposal and linkage to vendors:

The massive consumption of a wide range of plastic products has generated a huge amount of plastic waste which has caused plastic pollution in our communities. Plastic pollution is caused by the accumulation of plastic waste in the environment. Bearing in mind the consequences of indiscriminate disposal of plastic waste, this activity improved the knowledge and skill of the community members on proper management measures of plastic waste as a key to reducing its impacts on life and property. The activity evaluated the negative effects of it to the stakeholders and sensitized them on the impacts if not properly managed while also exposed the benefits of plastic waste if properly managed. It gave community members another perspective to plastic waste on how it can be converted from waste to wealth with links to appropriate vendors.

Purchase and Distribution of Relief Materials of Food Items to Flood Affected and Displaced Community members:

This activity was carried out to ameliorate the living conditions of affected community members that loss their means of livilehoods, farm lands, foods, house and even life to the 2022 devastating fooding in LRP affected communities ActionAid and ENVIRUMEDIC provided 32 bags of 50kg of rice, 18 bags of 100kgs of beans, 24 bags of 60kg of garri and 55 cartons of Noodles to 484 vulnerable community members across 7 LRP communities. The communities are; Otegbo, Okwemor, Egbo-Ideh, Esaba, Otutuama and Ophorigbala in Ughelli South and Abutaor in Ndokwa East LGA.

Delta State was among the heavily affected states in Nigeria during the recent flood that ravaged the Nation. The State recorded a devastating record of 8 deaths with more than 5,230 households displaced in the affected communities both rural and urban. Out of the 13 communities were the LRP is been implemented 9 were affected by the flood and caused majority of the LRP community members especially women and children vacated their place of abode to IDP camps.

SUPIA Project Activities

World Food Day Celebration:

The world food day is an international day celebrated across the globe every year on October 16. It is targeted at creating awareness on the importance of food, celebrating same and remembering people who have no access to food and are suffering from hunger and starvation. It also promotes the idea of feeding the world and eliminating poverty in rural communities. The world food day is an opportunity for farmers’ particularly small-scale women farmers who are at the forefront of food production in the state and country at large to be recognized, appreciated and encouraged to continue the production of food for human consumption. The theme of the 2022 World Food Day is ‘’Leave No One Behind”. This emphasized the need for encompassing food production that needed all stakeholders to contribute their quotas towards food production in the quest to promoting bountiful harvest for food security and enable life for all. The World Food Day celebration was done in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Asaba and this was the first of its kind.

The activity facilitated conversation amongst farmers, collaboration and learning best practices for improved agricultural production; strengthen existing bond, relationship and partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture for better policy, budgetary allocation and implementation of programs and projects; presentation of SWOFON Chatter of demand to the Executive Governor and other critical stakeholders; raise the profile of the SUPIA project in the state and create awareness of SWOFON and build allies with key stakeholders.

The Delta state agricultural sector budget allocation analysis from 2018-2022 and presentation by Budget Committee Group:

This activity was targeted at x-raying the state agriculture budget with the view to review/analyze the agricultural allocations from 2018-2022 to be able to make necessary observations and recommendations for inclusive budgeting. This is one of the major focuses of the SUPIA project. Specifically, the review examined the extent to which the budget provides for the activation of the existing policies to ensure the realization of their noble goals; It further reviewed the agricultural budget to determine its coherence with agreed International standards such as the Malabo declaration on agriculture and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also sought out whether the budget is gender sensitive. Finally, the review determined whether Delta State is investing maximally of the available resources to improve agricultural production thereby leading to the progressive realization of the Right to Food by all Deltans. The analyzed Delta state budget was therefore presented to agricultural stakeholders for learning and input to address gaps and for inclusive budgeting for the year 2023.

The outcome of the review/analysis shows that: The average budget allocation to the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources for the period under review was less than 1% which is a far cry from the Malabo declaration of 10% of total budgetary allocations and 6% increase in growth.

Support BCG Meeting:

BCG, a coalition of civil-society organization working on budget and budgeting processes in the state. Among the responsibilities of the BCG is to analyze the state budget on a yearly basis, using the findings to engage duty bearers through advocacy and consultative meeting with wilder stakeholders for policy change that will increase quantity and improved quality of public investment. It is one of the groups being driven by the SUPIA Project. Given the direct impact decisions taken on the budget and budgetary processes, allocations and spending on the well-being of citizens. The meeting made it possible to review 2022 BCG activities, identify areas of opportunity, strength, weakness and threat; Plan and prepare for 2023 BCG activities and strengthen existing bond, relationship and partnership amongst members.