Track Records arrow Umnotfo Farmers Association

Umnotfo Farmers Association (UFA) - Swaziland, Southern Africa - (1994 - 2000) / Ministry of Development Cooperation The Netherlands
Responsibilities:

  • Long Term Training and Consultancy in Institutional and Capacity Building towards several Farmers Associations/Cooperatives in rural Swaziland and Mozambique
Accomplishments:
  • Curriculum development for a wholistic transformation course (designer and author). In an interactive way and a tailor made approach, the course was communicated to farmers groups and community leaders in different settings. This well-appreciated course with a variety of audio-visual footage was presented 5 times in 4 different educational institutions in Swaziland Some important topics in this course:
    • what is development?
    • motivation for development
    • leadership principles
    For the content of the course: see Food for the Hungry website http://www.fhi.net/cdp/Best_Practice_Website/Other_Resources.htm

    Example of such an educational training centre where the Wholistic Transformation course was lectured - Swaziland College of Theology
  • Capacity training in vocational skills: technical training for construction of Ferro-cement Watertanks was facilitated in order that through local participation more than 50 waterharvesting units could be built, improving particpants' living standards.
  • Facilitation in capacity training: several sewing and crafts courses were facilitated
  • Organisation and facilitation of Livingstone (previously Project Serve) Volunteer Teams; these short-term teams were integrated in the existing community development programmes and were a valuable contribution to local participants(1995-1998) Livingstone
  • Design and execution with the participation of local inhabitants of a large Community-based Water Project that contributed positively towards the quality of living standards (esp. health for children) of the target people
  • Project proposals and acquisition of funding; for different projects (watertanks, logistics, fisheries, village hammermilling, construction of residential house, gardening+borehole, village watersupply) proposals were composed and written in collaboration with community leaders in order that projects could be executed
  • Among others, funding was granted by Royal Dutch Embassy-fund and the Good Samaritan fund. http://www.samaritanspurse.org
  • Development of technical and agricultural brochures being used in the UFA Training and Extension Programme. Examples of leaflets are:
    • Deep Trench Gardens
    • How to construct a Ferro-cement Watertank
    • Fruit Trees
    • Spring Protection and Healthy water
    • Cassava and the like