By Mohamed Janneh
On the 8th of February 2024, Jersey Overseas Aid(JOA) launched the Coco's Sweet Spot project in Jojoima Town Kailahun District and Paloma Hotel in Kenema.
The project seeks to increase food security and develop additional income streams for cocoa farmers. It will also work towards providing farmers with produce that complements cocoa production, thereby reducing the need for activities that cause deforestation.
Community stakeholders from Malema Chiefdom and Gaura Chiefdom were present to discuss the project's inception. This is a critical project to support the conservation of Gola Rainforest LG.
The project manager Mr. Alfonso Box of Jersey Overseas Aid (JOA) Coco's Sweet Spot project explained the purpose of the project, its Aims and Objectives, the duration of the project, and why two chiefdoms in Jojoima town instead of seven, and how beneficiary the project will be to the people of Kailahun and Kenema Districts. In his view, the project is a balloting process that had been introduced as it's foreseen that Cocoa farming might take further disforestation if not more concentrated on the existing Cocoa farm at the moment. He maintained that they are working out a new agroforestry system maybe an old agroforestry system coming back from the past and see if with the introduction of extra trees and other food plant and medicinal plants on the Cocoa farm for the livelihood of the farmers to be improved. "It's experimental because we will first have to test these systems and be working with trees which takes quite a long time to get them productive", he stated.
He continued by explaining how long the project will last and who they will be working with. He said the project would last for four years and it's limited to a small number of farmers to avoid a system that does not result in improvement that will be rolled out to all the Cocoa farmers.
They selected two days instead of a Day for the lunching because they wanted to lunch with the major officials in Kailahun and Kenema Districts that they will be working in Gola to have the upper strings of official people from Ministries, from the organization, and institute knowing that they are going to defeat. On the second day at the field level launch where they wanted to know that all community officials were aware that they were going to do that and also aware that this would not be running over the entire population of the village but for the first four years they would be targeting a small group of farmers for them to help them take it over the rest of the village or the Chiefdoms and the rest of the Gola landscape making sure there is a positive impact and not after two or three years negative effects.
The project Manager, Mr. Alfonso Box told the Aims and Objectives of the project, he said the major Aim of the project is to make the existing Cocoa farms more productive so they have more Cocoa for the farmers and create extra products for the people which can be all marketed or have a positive impact on the village, directory system so people can get certain fruits, or get certain vegetables, or get certain medicinal plants back in the village.
He further explained the reason why they chose to work with two chiefdoms in Jojoima Town, they chose to work with two Chiefdoms in Jojoima which is Malema and Gaura Chiefdoms out of purely logistics reasons, For the next payment of blocks of the project they have limited staff to monitor all the new systems they are implementing if it may go over all the chiefdoms and they will spend driving all over just to get Data back, and for the first four years, they selected the two chiefdoms where the highest amount of Cocoa farmers exit at the moment where they will need volunteers to participate with their Cocoa farms. They chose the two chiefdoms with many farmers so they can get the chances of people who work and are willing to share their Cocoa farms with them. also, the accessibility through the farms to be able to monitor daily what is happening is very important for the result and the result is more important for the entire area. Also, having more cocoa farms means they can select different farms representing the entire Gola area.
Mr. Alfonso Box thanked the stakeholders present at the launch and the beneficiaries with whom they have worked and will work as long as Gola exists.
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