Growth & Jobs | Benefits flowing to young farmers and fishers under EnGenDER Project

Young farmers and fishers locally are benefiting from support under the Enabling Gender-Responsive Disaster Recovery, Climate and Environmental Resilience in the Caribbean (EnGenDER) Project, which is intended to bolster their enterprises and combat climate change.

The project is designed to address gender-based inequality by ensuring that young men and women working as fisherfolk and farmers can withstand the adverse impacts of climate change and recover quickly after disasters.

Global Affairs Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office are funding the project.

Jamaica 4-H Clubs Business Development and Entrepreneurship Manager Villet Kelly Bennett said the project, which is scheduled to end in March, is being implemented by the local United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi Country Office and the Jamaica 4-H Foundation.

“A part of the [project’s objective] is to increase awareness on how our youth farmers can increase their level of resilience [and provide] them with enterprise support, which includes training and certification, aimed at exposing them to good agriculture practices, with climate-smart agriculture and sustainable fishery practices,” she said

Approximately 110 youth are now being supported under the project across four parishes – St Thomas, Clarendon, St Elizabeth, and Westmoreland.

Inputs are being channelled into areas such as enterprise development, crop, and livestock, as well as to marine fishers and persons involved in aquaculture and aquaponics.

Kelly Bennett said activities under the project are currently being closed off, adding that participants are now benefiting from coaching.

“We have persons working with them directly to look at their business practices and making recommendations to them as to how they can improve access to markets, improve their whole business processes, such as record-keeping, and facilitating networking arrangements with them,” she shared.

Kelly Bennett said that participants are also being provided with technical support, which is aimed at helping them to adapt new practices that can improve their operations.

She advised that the Jamaica 4-H Clubs continues to support enterprise development activities.

“Training and certification are a major activity that we have been pursuing, and we believe an educated group of young persons are entering and supporting the agricultural sector as we transition and improve productivity within the sector,” Kelly Bennett noted.

“We have repositioned our online training platform, and so not only do we offer training physically, but we intensify this through our online platform. We are increasing the number of certifications. That is something that is short in Jamaica,” she added.

The Business Development and Entrepreneurship Manager states that the overseas farm-work programme is an active source of employment for farmers in Jamaica, including young farmers.

“We lose them periodically throughout the year and sometimes [they are] even migrating to other overseas jobs. So one of the objectives of the Jamaica 4-H Clubs and its partners is to increase the number of farm labourers in the country by training them in different skills areas and trying to provide them with some basic tools [so] that they can go out and engage and provide these services,” she stated.

“So this is one way of not only increasing the productivity level, but ensuring that there is a continual source of labourers in the island to support our farmers,” she added.

The Jamaica 4-H Clubs is the leading youth training organisation with more than 105,000 members islandwide. It provides wide-ranging training opportunities to young persons, aged five to 35.

Clubs have been established in schools, churches, communities, and special youth facilities.

Its mission is to mobilise, educate, and train young people in agricultural, homemaking, leadership and social skills, which will prepare them for or influence them into careers in agriculture and agro-related occupations.

The movement seeks to provide a cadre of trained young leaders capable of contributing to national development.

­– JIS