USAID Trains Student Gardeners in Liberia

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced a new effort to educate student gardeners in Liberia. Student gardeners participating in USAID’s Advancing Youth Project will receive training from agriculture experts to not only help their gardens grow, but to learn about agribusiness as a future career.

USAID’s Food and Enterprise Development Program (FED) will provide 28 agriculture trainers to implement the program in 104 schools across Liberia. Advancing Youth student gardeners will learn the skills and techniques needed to grow and harvest cassava and other vegetables.

According to Advancing Youth’s Chief of Party, Lisa Hartenberger-Toby, the student gardeners participating in the program will also explore agriculture as a future career choice. School gardeners often earn income from their yields, she explains, and agribusiness can be a strong industry for young people to enter, as Liberia tackles issues of poverty and the aftereffects of a decades-long civil war.

In exchange for the training, Advancing Youth will offer adult literacy classes to farmers in five counties who are participating in the USAID’s FED Program.

“This type of partnership illustrates the potential synergy available among diverse projects working towards the same goals,” says Boima Bafaie, Deputy Chief of Party of the FED program. “School gardens provide the keys to making students view farming as a viable business and career option.”

The Advancing Youth Project is partnered with Liberia’s Ministry of Education and community organizations, and offers alternative basic education services and entrepreneurship training for young people across Liberia.

Creative Commons Love: European Commission DG ECHO on Flickr.com

Written by Carla Drumhiller Smith