U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) through its PNG Lukautim Graun Program (LGP) are rolling out a poultry program in the Morobe Province.
A total women groups and over 400 individual women farmers and their households are participating in this program.
This program is part of the USAID Women’s Global Development Prosperity (WGDP) Initiative and includes empowering women through equal opportunity within the workforce, in business development ventures and through entrepreneurship.
Program Participants Ludwina Posing, who is a member of the PNG Unified Womens Groups from Sagir village, Tanam within the Huon Gulf District, said she was thankful to the USAID PNG LGP for the training and project, as it taught her lot and will motivate her members to adopt best practices in poultry farming.
“I’m a poultry farmer myself, however this training has made me identify some of my basic faults in being a poultry farmer which is a positive step for myself and my family,” Ludwina said.
Another participant was Eva Kong, the Chairlady of Nasuampum Mama Group who also expressed appreciation of the USAID funded LGP and thanked USAID and DORES Agro Services and everyone who made Poultry Rollout program a success.
“It’s a life skills training that will benefit us, the participants and our group members and the community as a whole,” Eva said.
Under the Program, the partnership with DOERS Agro Services, conducted a three day training recently on poultry (broiler) farming for 19 participants.
The participants were taken through training on basic knowledge of, where they were take poultry farming including good waste management practices, beginning from the construction of a chicken house to identifying suitable market approaches.
LGP will provide one-off support by providing Start-Up-Capital to women groups within the targeted areas for SME development through formal business registration and bank account opening for women’s groups to assist farmers to venture into poultry farming.
This will be all be done with the aim to have at least 10 groups of 10 women farmers in each of the 5 provinces for a total of 500 women who will benefit directly from this poultry rollout program.
Through this project, a total of 20 boxes, each containing 52-day-old chicklets were distributed to the participants who are expected to use the knowledge acquired in the training to manage poultry projects as a micro enterprise in their respective villages.
There were a number of experts in the field of poultry farming participated in the training, including James Maima, Area Manager for National Agriculture Research Institute and his technical team and Table-birds Outgrower Manager, Willie Garren.