Fondazione Milano per Expo believes strongly in the strengths of the project. Having a method to guide action is vital in complex and difficult realities such as western Africa.
Sharing our approach, the ONG MLFM - Movimento per la Lotta Contro la Fame nel Mondo – executor of the project, was immediately involved in the bilateral contracts, in the focus groups with local authorities and civil society in Togo.
The training of the women benefiting from the project consisted in theoretical and practical sessions, under the guidance of an Italian expert in agro-food transformation, management experts to examine cooperative principles and values and also accounting and administrative organisation and a local expert on the "gender question".
Thanks to the work of everyone the tomato transformation chain has been started up.
"Jeunes Filles pour l'Agro" is the multi-year programme for professional development in the chain for young women in the Savannah region, north of Togo. We believe that women can play a key role in the cultural and social evolution of the country, by how they bring up their children, and for how they influence their families in the community in which they live.
Another aspect of the project that is always been paramount is the personal and professional growth of the women who created the cooperatives. Today they are women involved in a well-defined working role, they have income, an identity card and social recognition.
2021: how far we have come
There are issues to which the Foundation is particularly sensitive: the application of well-structured development models in line with the local context, transparent handling of resources and support for inserting women in the labour market.
Today in the face of increasingly pressing and aggressive drought there is the possibility of counting on new finance for our local counterpart and local ONG partner RAFIA.
Counterpart has worked in this direction and is considering an intervention in an area of 60 km south of Dapaong where there is a greater need for intervention in the struggle against intense deforestation and against the aridity of the soil by creating forages with a photovoltaic system to pump water instead of wells, which makes it possible to go 60 m and more below ground, against the 12/18 m of the wells, guaranteeing water even at the end of the dry season. This orientation follows the politics of the Togo Ministry of Agriculture, which is recommending such interventions.
In addition, the intervention would guarantee the creation of 100 new beneficiaries (women who cultivate) and an increase in the production of tomatoes in particular and other agricultural products, again destined to the transformation activities of the DINDAN cooperative in DAPAONG, formed at the beginning of the project, as a cooperative to transform agricultural products.
This continuity confirms the validity of the project, despite climate adversity, by enlarging the cultivated areas, increasing the number of beneficiaries and the amount of transformable raw material.
Targeted fundraising would confirm the commitment and help increase the work needed to commercially rein force the distribution and sales network.
Below we list some of the results achieved so far:
