How foundation boosts farming for widows

A non-governmental organization, called Vonhera Widows Foundation, has boosted farming with distribution of farming inputs and other materials to more than 2,000 widows for the 2021 season.

Materials distributed included improved varieties of cassava stems, maize, coconut and palm seedlings, fertilizer, face masks and wrappers, among others.

The event also featured training on the application farms tools, basic farming techniques, nutrition and health.

The founder of the foundation, Mrs Rosemary Asiegbu, said the vision of the foundation was to empower widows and boost their self-confidence with provision of farm inputs and basic education to improve their wellbeing.

She commended the Golden Breweries (GG) Plc, Umuahia, for sponsoring it’s 2021 agriculture programme even as the brewery’s core investor, Chief Okey Nzenwa, who was in attendance, promised to sustain its support for the foundation’s gesture as part of its corporate social responsibilities.

According to her, when in 2019, she observed that the basic items of food, clothing, cash, among others, hitherto given the widows could not sustain them and their families, she changed to empowering them through agriculture.

“Considering that the widows have small parcels of land here and there, the only immediate solution was to provide them with varieties of farm inputs for higher yield,” she said.

She added that it was the foundation’s plan to assist more widows form a cooperative society and engage in other self-help ventures like piggery, snail farming and goat keeping.

A widow, Mrs Chintua Joseph, who said she had five children before her husband died 18 years ago, told The Guardian that the foundation had not only given widows some succour, but had practically been teaching and supporting them to be self-reliant.