Tigrai Online
May 03, 2012
The Relief Society of Tigray, REST, recently launched a new Graduation with Resilience to Achieve Sustainable Development (GRAD) approach in four rural weredas of southern Tigray with a total budget of USD 3.79 million (above 67 million Birr) to help the poor society.
Ato Mekonen Abreha, Deputy Director of REST, called on all communities of the weredas to contribute towards the success of the initiative and to achieve GRAD’s aims of food secured families.
The project is intended to benefit 19,000 house holds in chronically food secure and ultra poor families by creating concepts of market orientation, market link, nutrition and so on. Another 2,500 food secure and food sufficient families are recruited to share their experiences and lessons for the targeted food insecure family groups.
The project gives its focus for 50% female headed families and the remaining half to landless youths.
The project’s focal areas of activities mainly consist of fattening value chain (cattle and shoat), honey or bee keeping chain, pulses chain and vegetation value chain in lining with the government’s five year growth and transformation plan.
The project duration is for 5 years (December 5, 2011 to Dec. 4 2016). To meet its goal as stated in the agreement between REST and partners, mainly USAID, the implementation process would have tight relationship with government officials in Zone, Wereda and Tabia level to bring the expected results in the life of the needy society. Accordingly, representatives from all government offices, associations, women’s affairs, gender and other concerned bodies have participated in a work shop of GRAD. The participants are expected to contribute individual as well as organizational role in combating the people’s poverty.
GRAD is the continuation of PSNP program which supports 1.4 million chronically food insecure people of 31 Weredas in Tigray.