Women's groups get help with vegetable production

Sierra Leone's most vulnerable women, impoverished by 10 years of civil war, are beginning to get help so as to earn incomes by growing vegetables, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported on Thursday.

ICRC, the Sierra Leonean Red Cross and the Ministry of Agriculture are running a vegetable production workshop in Waterloo, some 25 km south of the capital Freetown, for 40 women. They are being provided local and imported seeds, farm tools and training in vegetable cultivation, the ICRC reported. The programme targets various women's groups such as war widows, displaced persons and returning refugees who select two or three family members to attend the course.

"We have taken a train-the-trainers approach. The participants will pass on their skills they have learnt to the other members of their groups," Tejan Jalloh, a local Red Cross agronomist, said.

Many of the women are widows and cannot afford to send all their children to school, one participant told the Red Cross. She said that an improvement in production methods would increase her income and provide her with better quality food.

The ICRC reported that 625 groups, representing 40,000, would be put through the programme, which would also be run for 300 similar groups in Northern Province "in the coming months".