THE residents of West Ruimveldt are currently benefitting from an Urban Agriculture Project being facilitated by Youth Challenge Guyana (YCG) and other communities will soon be engaged.

Executive-Director of YCG, Dmitri Nicholson, told the Guyana Chronicle that the urban agriculture programme has been happening since 2016. However, this year, the non-governmental organisation received funding from oil company ExxonMobil, which he said, enabled them to expand.

“We have been doing this for several years, but this is the first year that we are receiving financial assistance. The assistance aided in managing the space better, and we were able to acquire the resources needed to produce; the funding covers all the resources. In addition to that, we were able to expand to other communities and increase the number of things we are able to do,” Nicholson said.

He explained that YCG has three main areas of focus: Health, Education and Lifeskills and Livelihoods. The Urban Agriculture Project, he said, is one of the Lifeskills and Livelihood projects, which aims to provide persons from urban communities with the skillsets to produce food for themselves, and in the long run, the experience and knowledge gained, can be used to venture into agricultural practices as a means of generating incomes.

Nicholson said that he believes Guyana has a lot of potential to alleviate poverty, if we strengthen people’s understanding and skills to really improve their own livelihoods. This project, he said, is contributing to that.

“It will ensure that people have the skills to not go hungry. And so if we have an economic boom and there is a food shortage, families can teach their children to be self-sustained, rather than having to rely on alternative sources to provide for them,” Nicholson posited.
The Lifeskills and Livelihoods Coordinator, Dwayne Gangoo, said that the programme being facilitated in the West Ruimveldt community is an ongoing one, and currently has 10 persons benefitting from it.

He explained that due to the training being so hands on, the participants catch on quite quickly. Thus far, Gangoo said they have planted pak choi, cabbage, pepper and they are looking to put in some passion fruit, because they want to cover all the basics.
“It is not in-depth agriculture. Just the basic skills they need to farm to provide for themselves and their families, are what we are teaching them. It is subsistence farming, and subsistence farming is the way forward,” Gangoo said.

He said that the team from YCG went around in the community and conducted house-to- house visits, to engage persons in the programme. It is their belief, that each household should be practising subsistence farming.
Gangoo also said that in a month’s time, they will be venturing into aquaculture and vermicomposting. The project is demand driven, he said, so they will be adding things as they go on in the programme, to give all the knowledge and experience they can give as it relates to agriculture.

“The intention is to expand the access to agriculture knowledge, so that persons can reap for their own consumption,” he said.
Travis Ferreira, one of the persons who has been benefitting from the project in West Ruimveldt, told the Guyana Chronicle that the programme has personally helped him to develop time-management skills.

He explained that he is a law student, and he has a full time job, so the additional commitment taught him to manage his time properly.
However, in relation to the agricultural experience gained, Ferreira said that the knowledge is priceless; and with the techniques being taught, they all can branch off to their own personal farming facilities.

He said that he can see it having a viral effect in the community and they all can share their knowledge with each other, so everyone in their community can benefit. Ferreira also said that he hopes that a corporate sponsor would be willing to come on board after seeing how beneficial it is in a community, and assist in expanding it across the country.

Another beneficiary of the programme, Oneil Moses, said that he has learnt a lot, and now he is able to grow his own food.
The project is currently in West Ruimveldt, but will be heading to North-East La Penitence, Tiger Bay and Lodge Housing Scheme.