Written by Amy Hughes
This is the first ICS/International Service cohort which is working with APIL (Action Pour la Promotion des Initiatives Locales), an NGO which has been working towards achieving food security in Burkina Faso since 1998. As this is the first time ICS and International Service have been involved in the amazing work APIL facilitates there is much excitement as to what can be achieved in the coming months. To start our journey here we spoke with the Coordinator of APIL, Mr Abdoulaye Ouedraogo to find out a bit more about the work he does with APIL and what his expectations of the ICS/International Service volunteers are.
Mr Abdoulaye Ouedraogo is the Coordinator of APIL and is responsible for managing the programs, the team, as well as partnerships and the external commitments of the NGO. He co-founded APIL in 1998 and he became the coordinator of APIL in 2003.
After thanking us for our support of APIL Mr Abdoulaye Ouedraogo shared his advice on how best to work in development and specifically within APIL. He stated that ‘the first piece of advice I would give is to remember that you can learn more from the farmers than you can teach them’. He reminded us to be humble and ‘to not go to them with our degrees as we will leave with an empty bag’. Specifically he spoke of the importance of ‘practice and action over theory’ and ‘not to impose our theories (on the farmers) as they know what they are doing’. He continued, ‘the only thing that they may be lacking is the funds or the organisational skills to reach their full potential. So by identifying their needs we can improve their situation’. Certainly if we take this advice our integration will be much easier and our objectives will be more easily achieved. Development work is a give and take experience, a two way learning experience which is what makes it so difficult but at the same time so rewarding.
Mr Ouedraogo went on to speak of the expectations he had of the current cohort which includes reviewing the communication plan of APIL. He wants to make APIL’s actions on the ground more visible to potential partners, so they can attract more funding. As he stated ‘we are a non-governmental NGO, local NGO, working in 120 villages and we do not have adequate funding, but what we have done is lay the groundwork’. APIL has worked for nearly 20 years laying the foundation for food security initiatives across Burkina Faso, specifically in (the central north and central plateau) , but the biggest challenge they face is the lack of capital. Mr. Adboulaye Ouedraogo is optimistic however that ‘through you, our communication specialists, we can draft proposals that can show the work we do; its impact and the changes we make within communities’ which can attract partners and potential funding. He highlighted that what he expected from the volunteers is to truly help them move forward in the work they do, not just by the quantity of the activities but by the quality of the activities, by looking at how these activities ‘improve the lives of people and positively impact our environment’.
APIL was created by the Coordinator and his colleagues because they ‘believe in local competence, local knowledge and local people's ability to solve their own problems’. And what APIL seeks to do is to use the resources they have available to them ‘to develop training modules to help agriculture at the level of organisational management and commercialisation’ by reinforcing endogenous capacity. This, they believe, is the key to success and certainly we agree. By acting locally APIL is able to address the challenges that local people face to find suitable solutions.
The principal objective of APIL is ‘to increase food security amongst the population’ and has evolved to include ‘making farmers’ organisations actors of development in their environment and also to create endogenous skills that enable the community to self-regulate technically and financially to combat poverty’. The 5 projects which APIL have set up are therefore in line with these objectives and all revolve around sustainable food security as their principle aim. Mr Adboulaye defines sustainable food security as the ‘set of alternatives to be considered and put in place to enable the activities managed by farmers' organisations to be well structured and to generate income to enable families to improve their living standards, so they can produce more to eat, certainly, but also to sell excess at the local markets or even beyond’ and he ascertains that this is their fundamental goal.
The first project that APIL runs is the ‘Innovation and Mobilisation for Food Security Project (IMSA)’ which aims to improve agriculture, livestock and the environment in order to strengthen and increase production to increase household incomes. This program is supported by the Canadian NGO “L’Oeuvre Leger” and the AMC (Affaires Mondiales Canada) and will last for 5 years supporting 1000 beneficiaries, including 400 women and 600 men. The second program is the revitalisation of market gardening areas over a five-year period from 2017 to 2021, which will enable 1880 gardeners to find means and techniques to strengthen their activities and enable training for better management. It will also enable them to transform and conserve their products so that they do not go off whilst awaiting sale. In doing so, he also expects ‘to strengthen collaboration between the local administration and the people’. He hastily reminds us that ‘it is all about politics and we want the authorities to understand the work of the producers to they can take it into account in the municipal development plan’.
As for the third program, it is a project to strengthen the resilience of animal health, specifically for donkeys, ‘as the donkey is the working tool of the producer’, the coordinator reminds us. Donkeys heavily contribute to household incomes as they are ‘important for planting seeds, harvesting and serve as a means of transport’. This project is supported by a British NGO called BROOKE and they are helping APIL to strengthen the position of the donkey in the family, through awareness raising sessions, so that it can effectively contribute to agriculture. The fourth project is an agricultural diversification project with the PAM program which will start at the end of this month. This project will help us to manage the agricultural fields and rice paddies, provide improved seeds and even intervene to initiate village orchards to create local products. The last project APIL has is to improve literacy rates amongst the population and to provide technical training. As the Coordinator reminds us being literate ‘really is the basis for effectively training people in other trades; until they are trained, they will not be able to keep farm accounts or apply the farming techniques which have been taught’ so it’s fundamental to improve literacy rates first and foremost.
These 5 projects make up the backbone of APIL’s work and over these 5 projects happening in 120 villages APIL has 72,000 beneficiaries, an astonishing amount considering the basic resources APIL has access to. This shows that it really is possible to make a change in a local community if you focus all your energy and resources towards an aim. Mr Abdoulaye’s last piece of advice is to ‘continue to have the courage to face the difficulties you encounter as you are here because there are difficulties’.
APIL really is an inspirational NGO which is making an incredible difference to people's’ lives in Burkina Faso and we thank the coordinator, Mr Abdoulaye Ouedraogo, for talking with us today and for hosting us over the next three months!
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