Rural Initiative for Sustainable Empowerment

Our Role in the pluralistic extension and advisory services system in Sierra Leone

We have been engaged in ensuring that women and men work in unison especially in the field of agriculture with shared responsibilities in order to bring about food security and economic empowerment. In the past, we clustered groups and trained the group members skills in agricultural extension by way of having cultivating crops like seed rice and vegetable crops on a very large seasonal swamps, after which harvested yields were equally shared among the groups first for seed banking for their respective groups to replicate cultivation at their communities of origin, particularly for agribusiness promotion. Additionally, we are engaged in beekeeping in a bid to reduce deforestation and encourage farmer groups to realize the importance of reforestation and benefits of forests to the life of mankind. We have encouraged and empowered farmers to cultivate various crops and animal rearing that will bring forth short term, medium term and long term benefits to gender and nutrition interventions considering: Vegetable crops (Okra, Tomato, Green, Crain-Crain, Garden Eggs, Bitter Balls, Lettuce, Carrot, Watermelon, Cucumber, Cabbage, Onions, Pepper and Jakato), Arable crops (Rice (IVS / Upland, Groundnut, Corn, Beni-seed (sesame), Sweet potato, Soya Beans, Congo Beans, Pigeon Pea, Black-eyed Beans, Native Beans, Moringa, Sorghum, Pumpkin and Pawpaw), Biennial Crops (Cassava, Chinese yams, Yam, Cocoyam, Banana, Plantain, Sugar cane, Ginger, Irish Potato and Pineapple), Tree Crop (Oranges, Grapefruit, Lime, Lemon, Tangerine, Mango, Sweet sap, Cashew nut, Oil Palm, Coconut, Guava, Cocoa and Coffee), Animal husbandry (Chicken, Pig, Goat, Sheep, Rabbit, Ducks and Cattle (Cow) and lastly Agro-forestry which is a cultivation of tree crops close the neighborhood of rural communities. In addition to what we do; RISE – SL has been exploring possibilities for the rearing of bush fowls, pigeons, cutting grass and rabbits as well as using some perennial swamps to aquaculture.

Our commitment to providing gender equitable services:

It has been observed that women carry out very many tasks associated with farming, jobs that are not really very labour intensive but time consuming and require care, perseverance and patience. Agronomic practices like weeding, birds scaring, mulching, fertilizer application, compost making, nursery sites management, harvesting, water fetching during processing undertakings are now equitably shared since most of these activities take place after eminent labour intensive tasks like brushing, clearing, burning, ploughing, bed, ridges, mounds constructions that are predominantly done by men.

Our contribution to improving nutrition in Sierra Leone:

RISE – SL has the mandate to improve Nutrition through the cultivation of crops commencing with rice that will ensure the enhancing the epitome of balanced diet causative to nourishment, food availability and sustenance which are very important contributors to good health assurance for human beings from childhood particularly to infants, school going children to teenagers, adolescents, adults and even the aged. In attempts to guarantee that “balanced diet” provision is ensured crops are prudently selected and cultivated in order to avail rural households with protein, carbohydrate, mineral salts, vitamins, fats and oils giving nutrients to mankind. The results are good health better memory, fortified body building and tissues development. Cases of malnutrition and under nutrition are prevalent in Sierra Leone since this country has been considered as one of the poorest countries in the world; our intervention will purely be directed and focused on diminishing such abnormalities. It is worthwhile to mention beekeeping for the production of honey which is often used as additive to selected foods for medicinal purposes and highly required by health practitioners to address severe cases of malnourished infants and children. RISE has collaborative working relationship with DHMT (District Health Medical Team) especially when there call for proposals expected to link agriculture, nutrition and natural resources.