Activities completed under this Project

1. Upon receipt of the first disbursement of funds, the project team organized an in-house orientation of the project on its content, outputs and strategies to accomplish it successfully. This was followed by project briefing with management of the Afadzato South District Assembly in which both the Coordinating Director, Planning Department, Social Welfare among others attended.
The team then visited eight (8) Traditional Councils at their Council meetings to brief them on the project. Councils visited include Tafi, Logba, Ve, Leklebi, Liati, Gbefi, Gbi Godenu and Dzorkpe communities which fall within Avatime traditional Area but located within the targeted Geographical Area. All the Councils are most grateful to the team for the good initiative and are willing to support the project.

Similar meetings were held with opinion leaders, assembly persons, some family heads farmers and ther identifiable groups. Issues of sustainability and conflict management were the main concerns. There were several proposals including setting up of special conflict resolution committees, the reliance on the chiefs and elders within the communities, the special arbitration committee at the district level among others. There were consultations with land owners and other identifiable groups such as farmers association, women farmer groups, youth groups and the like.
Ten community forums were slated to be organized within the period. However, due to interest and demand, the team had to organize twelve. It is expected that, by the close of the year, several others would be organized.

2.There were several radio discussions on the Local Lukusi FM at Ve Golokwati. These discussions were followed with questions and contributions from listeners. There were requests from the listeners and the host for further discussions on the subject matter considering its sensitivity. A team of opinion leaders, Assembly persons, WILDAF as CSO with legal background and ARDO staff were constituted to draft a simple but acceptable guideline for rice and maize farmers within the project catchment area having in mind that this could be replicated in other communities. The draft report was completed and validated at the District level meeting.

The district level validation of the report was carried out at the Afadzato South district assembly hall. In attendance were representatives of all identifiable groups and other stakeholders. Inputs and re-framing of some of the clauses were made and the drafting committee was tasked to inspect these views. The committee has reviewed the final draft. This has been submitted to the District Assembly sub-committee on legal and constitutional matters for passing it into bye-law and adoption.

2. The project has constructed four solar drying platforms. This included Solar Drying Platform for indigenous brown rice. The dryer has a dimension of 80ft by 40ft separated into two compartments. The traditional drying methods is no longer effective due to the volumes of produce with the various interventions by this project and other related interventions towards enhancing the lives of women rice farmers and the rice industry along the landscape, it has become necessary to support them to have a more reliable dryer to enhance quality of grains and nutritional values.

3. A new purposive milling equipment (SB 30D and 20 hp-motor) designed for brown rice was procured to be installed specifically for that purpose. This is to reduce the laborious adjustments carried out to enable the existing mill to process the brown rice. A total of twelve women who were interested have been trained on its operation.