“After six months of implementing the Agriculture Support Service Project in Hoima, Kikuube and Buliisa districts, and reaching quite a good number of people in the community sofa, it is time for us as Living Earth Uganda staff to reflect on the past but also project next steps as we ready ourselves for the next phase” These were remarks by Swithern Tumwiine, the Living Earth Uganda Executive Director as he officially opened the week-long project review re-treat at Kijungu Hill Hotel, Hoima city.
This resident workshop, kicked off on October 03-08th 2022 was aimed to establish a clear understanding of the project expectations, progress and reviewing of the overall performance over the last half a year.
Moses Nuwaha, the Assistant project manager (APM) at Living Earth Uganda said, “this workshop means time to learn and re-learn, assess the results achieved against the set targets, reflections on implementation approaches we have used and see what we can drop, or adopt to improve in oder to deliver better results”.
Experts from various departments such as Monitoring and Evaluations, as well as health and safety graced the workshop to realign project work but also to emphasize some of the key components that make up the project.
LEU team was reminded to maintain the health and safety protocols to protect both Project-affected persons they work with but also, their own health if this livelihood restoration project is to be considered anything successful.
“Nothing is too urgent to be done unsafe” Justus, a consultant from Glauben Industrial Services Ltd reiterated this call through his interaction on health and safety managent.
Strategically, Living Earth Uganda believes stakeholder engagement is key for the success of a project of such magnitude.
“We aim to reinforce positive working relationship between us and key stakeholders some of whom were invited to attended and share feedback that will help us improve on our mandate” Nuwaha noted
During the workshop, Ms. Phionah Kulabako, the Total Energies livelihood restoration Coordinator challenged Living Earth team to aim at creating a difference people’s lives as they were entrusted to do.
“As Total Energies, we have received good feedback about your [Living Earth Uganda] work sofa, I would like to remind you that we continue to count on you to make the desired difference in the lives of those you are supporting. Through you, we trust that souls will be touched, people will appreciate changes this project has come along with and we hope with your approach, their lives will be uplifted” She said.
As of today, at least 1,531 project affected persons have been supported with training in various agricultural enterprises. Of these, 1,140 have received Agricultural inputs ranging from Cassava cuttings, Maize and beans for planting since the inception of the project six months ago.
Living Earth Uganda (LEU) was contracted by Total Energies EP Uganda B.V, the lead developer of the Tilenga project area, to implement the Provision of Agricultural Support Services project for the period thirty-six (36) month effective March 2022 to support farmers access and utilise good agronomical practices so as to improve their household income levels.
The project is being implemented in Tilenga Project RAPs 2 – 5 covering a total of 56 villages, 8 sub-counties administratively rearranged into 69 villages and 12 sub-counties. A total of 4,901 PAPs (3,990 households) will benefit from the project.