Hunger Project to reduce rural poverty

AN international non-governmental organisation (NGO), The Hunger Project (THP), has set up 20 epicentres in rural communities in five regions in Ghana to reduce rural poverty.
Epicentres involve the mobilisation of community members who have a common aim of instituting income generating ventures with support from the NGO towards improving their living conditions.
Consequently, epicentre buildings that contain among other facilities a kindergarten, food bank, health post, assembly hall and a community bank have been established in those communities.
The THP, which is currently scaling up its projects in the Eastern Region, has so far built 14 epicentre structures in the region, one in Volta, two in Ashanti, one in Greater Accra and two in the Central Region.
Briefing the Daily Graphic on its operations, the Country Director of the THP, Dr Naana Agyemang-Mensah, said her outfit was receiving a matching fund of $5 million from the Robertson Foundation, a private US organisation, over a five-year period specifically to support the establishment of epicentre projects in the Eastern Region.
Some of the communities with epicentres in the Eastern Region are Suprisu, Domi-Achiansa, Kyeremase, Osonson, Dwerebease and Nsuta-Awaregya.
She explained that the THP was focussing essentially on the capacity of the various epicentres to make the needed impact of ensuring that beneficiaries engaged in productive ventures.
According to her, some members who constituted the various epicentres in the communities had been trained as animators to educate the people on the HIV/AIDS menace and engaged in the distribution of condoms.
Dr Agyemang-Mensah noted that the government through the district assemblies had assigned health personnel to the epicentres to cater for the health needs of the people.
She explained that the food banks at the epicentres were to enable the beneficiaries who were mostly farmers to have a place to store their produce during bumper harvest, adding that the inclusion of community banks at the epicentre buildings was also to enable them to cultivate good savings culture for their benefit.
She said the NGO had projected to build eight more epicentres in the Eastern Region by July 2009 with an additional two each in the four other regions.
The country director stressed that the establishment of the epicentres were structured to help in the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.