Last monday, on 2 November 2020 IMVF and partners handed over agriculture tools, seeds, and garden maintenance supplies to the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education to support the vegetable gardens of 25 upper basic and senior secondary schools in The Gambia.
The support provided by the Tekki Fii project aims to reinforce vegetable gardens’ role as spaces of learning and to raise student’s and family’s awareness of the existing employment and income generation opportunities in the agribusiness sector.
The Tekki Fii – Building a Future: Make it in The Gambia – project, funded by the European Union and implemented by IMVF, ADWAC, United Purpose and Alianza por la Solidariedad, is developingis a ‘Schools for Social Cohesion’ programme that targets 25 upper basic and senior secondary schools of LRR, NBR, CRR and URR. The programme focuses on the areas of sports and agribusiness.
Today, more than ever before, it is crucial to show that the agribusiness sector is not only key for the economic development of the country but it is also a sector with an enormous potential for youths’ employment and income generation – ultimately for their successful livelihoods in the country.
Joana Martins, IMVF ‘s Project Coordinator
The Tekki Fii project, working closely with all relevant stakeholders, hopes to show the youths of these 25 schools that farming is key but also that the opportunities in the sector go much beyond farming – it also includes value addiction and trading, for example.
The Project Coordinator went on to highlight other areas the project has been working on with the selected schools.
The support that we will now distribute is not an end in itself. It is part of a work that as started early this year – with the identification of needs – and will now lead to several activities. Already in October, 50 school garden masters of all the 25 schools went through a 5 days’ capacitation programme.
Joana Martins, IMVF’s Project Coordinator
More than 16,000 students are already benefiting from the ‘Schools for social cohesion’ pioneer programme.