By Mohamed T Massaquoi
The non-governmental organization, Welt Hunger Hilfe (WHH), in collaboration with the Pujehun District Council, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, and the District Health Management Team, has trained 24 facilitators on Food and Nutrition Security (FNS).
Peterson Samai, the Linking Agriculture Natural Resources Manager in Nutrition Projects at Welt Hunger Hilfe, told Politico that the essence of the training was to have community animators that would help to educate farmers on the use of their own local produce for their survival.
He said his organization, WHH, was operating in Bo, Kenema, Kailahun, Kono and Pujehun Districts with the aim of improving on local farming and how to add value to the use of the produce.
Samai said food security had been a very big challenge in the country over the years, citing limited or no knowledge in farming among farmers. He said this was the reason for their intervention in the sector.
WHH said it plans to assign the 24 newly trained animators in pairs to every chiefdom in the entire district for them to educate farmers on new ideas on agricultural productivity for sustainable Food and Nutrition Security. Samai said there were some natural food stuff in the natural forest which were not planted by man and that farmers had low knowledge on how to identify them for their daily use.
Samai told Politico that the involvement of the Council was a deliberate move to ensure sustainability of the programme when WHH shall have folded up as an organization. He said they were going to build the knowledge of farmers on how, what, where and when to cultivate crops in other to have a very good productivity.
According to Samai, Sierra Leone would have grown more than were it is if agricultural education had been a priority. He said that way rice should not have been the only staple food in the country.
The District Coordinator of the Health for All Coalition, Mohamed Kallon, who was a participant at the training, said it was timely, adding that they had had a lot of problems with nutrition promotion in the district and that the WHH intervention would help them to address the situation.
He said they had been working as a committee to ensure that the issue of nutrition was well handled, and he added that the poor knowledge on food and nutrition had contributed to a high level of malnutrition in the district over the years.
Kallon lamented the fact that Pujehun is one of the districts with the highest rates of malnourished children in the country. He said this was because very few children were opportune to eating meat.
Mariama George, the Nutritionist attached to the Pujehun Government Hospital, during her presentation, said the issue of nutrition had been a major challenge in the district. She said rice should not be the only staple food, noting that there were other classes of food that human beings needed for energy, growth and the general body development.
She said food like cassava, yam, potatoe, fish, and meat were needed by man for proper and normal growth.
She urged WHH to continue on the sensitization programme so that they help the local health authorities to succeed in their effort to tackling malnutrition.
(C) Politico 21/06/16
