NOT less than 6000 youths and other farmers in Ondo state have been trained on various agricultural skills by a private organisation, Lead Transformation Initiative (LTI) in order to promote agriculture in the state.
This was disclosed by the Director of the organisation, Mr. Titilayo Femi Kings, who said the initiative was to boost food production and enhance economic growth in the state.
Kings who said that the training of the youths and farmers which include women was put in place by the organisation as parts of efforts to promote agriculture among youth in the state, saying the measure was to make the beneficiaries self reliant and reduce unemployment in the state as well as the entire country.
According to him, the effort would also reduce youth restiveness and enable them contribute their quota to the development of the state and the country at large.
“We have reached out to over 6000 people (youth, rural farmers, women and kids) with its awareness campaign, workshops, in-class and hands-on trainings to drive its vision of raising transformed minds that are creating sustainable development in the rural and urban communities of Nigeria starting from Ondo State.
“Our projects span across Gender Inclusion, youth development and Rural Community Development and we use Transformational Education and Climate Smart Agriculture as unique tools to achieve our vision.
“Our project, Sustainable Development Bootcamp a six months agric-inclined transformative programme has trained over 95 youths on agribusiness development from which 25 startups have emerged along the agricultural value chains.
“Our School of Ideation formerly Idea Spark, a one-week transformative short course has trained about 250 youths on process of ideation, 95 of them moved to incubation while 25 have commenced sustainable projects and enterprise.”
He said the organisation has produced and sold over 35,000 tree seedlings from which “we have directly planted over 8000 trees with the joint efforts of youths and rural farmers to offset carbon in Akure South and Ifedore LGAs of Ondo State.
“The food forest gives regular produce such as honey, vegetables, tubers, fishes, poultry products and some other staple food items with which the farmers and youths are generating livelihood”
The Director of LTI said the Youth Grow Natural project has trained over 295 youths on practical agriculture who are now motivated to become actors in our food system and climate actions.
“The trained youths are now actively involved in our project Teensgrowforest where over 2,000 high school students are exposed to career opportunities in agriculture from which 193 of the students showed interests in practical agriculture”
He explained that the organization has restored a three hectares school farm in one of the high schools where practical agricultural training has gone into extinction, saying the aim was to restore and improve the quality of agricultural education in the school.
“Selected 45 rural kids with low career ambition, poor hygiene and low self-esteem are getting educational support services on ICT, career path development, personal hygiene, sexual reproductive health and rights under our Smart Farmers’ Kids project”
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