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| by FAO Rural Youth, |
Mar 30, 2004 |
In an effort to help young people in rural El Salvador acquire knowledge, skills and experiences to enable them to begin a small agricultural business, the Extension Service of the National Centre of Agricultural and Forestry Technology (CENTA) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, with financial support from FAO’s TeleFood Fund, worked to form and provide training and support to a group of 15 girls and boys in the villages of Miramar and Buenos Aires in the municipality of Acajutla.
The Project “Production and sale of Poultry”, was set up in order to give a chance to the group of young people to make a financially rewarding activity for themselves and their families in the municipality of Acajutala.
The project, initiated in September 2002 and finalized in June 2003 was part of the TELEFOOD project.
The project consisted in the equipment of materials for the activation of two poultry cages, for 900 chickens each, and managed by a group of 15 young people (9 males and 6 females).
A preparatory workshop was held before starting the project, with the technical support of FAO experts, focusing on increasing the young self esteem, business administration skills, communication team work, commercialization and customer care.
Through out the project the support of the parents has been sought and has resulted essential to keep high the enthusiasm and the spirit of initiative of the participants. Moreover the involvement of the parents helped in overcoming technical problems such as transportation and the alike, giving also the sense to the parents that they were doing concrete actions for their sons and daughters and seeing them becoming more mature, making decisions and responsible.
Two market studies were undertaken in two different moments. The first was done before the approval of the project in order to asses which might have been the potential customers, how big the market could have been, the quality of the product on the market and the presence of unsatisfied customers. The second was to analyse the trends after the beginning of the project.
Leadership skills and self esteem had been highly increased once the first results of the project were available. The youngsters that were once making fun of the participants to the project, were now asking to become part of it. Moreover throughout the process the Students were able to face and resolve problem taking also personal initiatives.
Their personal and family diet had improved exponentially and they showed the community that there were economic opportunities in the country itself, without the need of moving in bigger cities nor outside the country.
This project, being the first of this kind in El Salvador, presented not few problems but definitely signed a starting point for future ones.
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