The project aims to the training and economic self-sufficiency of 20 Community Guards through the establishment of a small local cooperative, aimed at the production and processing of peanut-based food products. This income-generating activity will be aimed at giving sustainability to the environmental monitoring activities carried out by these in their communities.
The project will be implemented in 10 communities of the District of Mocubela, Province of Zambezia, where the COSV has been working for years to strengthen local planning and territorial management capacities, with a view to reconciling the trade. -off between food security and the preservation of natural resources.
The COSV, together with the beneficiary communities and the district authorities, has set up an environmental monitoring system in the last year, based on the creation of 20 Community Guards, responsible for monitoring the exponential increase in illegal logging and smuggling of wood. These guards, chosen within the same communities among the young local farmers, have the task of patrolling the territory and managing the flow of information relating to the sneaky incidents, coordinating the control interventions together with the authorities.
In order to ensure the sustainability of this device, however, the need has been demonstrated to create income-generating activities to support the family economy of the Community Guards engaged in carrying out their duties at the service of the communities.
The purpose of the proposal is to create income-generating activities capable of ensuring economic coverage for the environmental monitoring activities carried out by 20 Community Guards operating in 10 communities in the district of Mocubela, Province of Zambezia. The cultivation of peanuts represents one of the main productions of the district with a high potential in terms of both local, provincial and national market. Nevertheless, the presence of centres for the processing of food products derived from it is not recorded at the provincial level.
The proposal intends to involve the 20 beneficiary Community Guards in the cultivation of peanuts in the family and in their transformation into highly conservable and commercialized foods such as oil and butter.