Seminar #5

Today, in the community of Abuzi in northwest DR Congo, Emmanuel Dole opened the fifth of our aquaculture seminars for local fish farmers.  Though I don't know the stats on this seminar yet, of course, I expect that, like the previous events, this seminar will be delivered to around 100 farmers.

Dole recently revisited one of the communities where we held a seminar last fall, Karawa.  From interviews with farmers, he found that ALL of the seminar participants have implemented and are benefitting from the practices introduced and/or reinforced by the teaching sessions.  Even more, the seminar participants deliberately passed on the information to other members of their fish farmer associations.  It thus becomes quite difficult to fully measure the impact of this infusion of information and affirmation for the sector.

The geographic area covered by this project is relatively expansive.  Therefore, we wrote into the project design transportation for our Regional Aquaculture Coordinator.  Below is a photo of Pastor Dole with the motorbike that we purchased for his transportation.  It is not uncommon for him to travel several hundred km in order to deliver a seminar or gather information about the impact of those seminars.  ...On a dirt bike.  The 'roads' in the northwest of DRC are basically passable only by dirt bike or four-wheel-drive SUV, typically Toyota Land Cruisers.  Slow going, rough, hot.  But these are the lengths that their leaders will go, in care for people.  Maybe we can take some challenge from this.... 

Pastor Emmanuel Dole with his new motorbike for project transportation, June 2013