Centre for Agro Entrepreneurship and sustainable Livelihoods Trust, (CASL) a non-profit making organisation which is into rural agriculture development and sustainable natural resources management based is improving the livelihoods of women and youth in Mvurwi .
Owami sithole Recently in Mvurwi
In an interview with 263chat, CALS Founder /Coordinator Respect Musiyiwa said the youth community based organisation was formed in 2009, as a community youth initiative and was formally registered as a trust.
“We take a leading role in sustainable agricultural entrepreneurship development and capacity building as well as sustainable environment management mainly targeting youths and women in marginalised areas,” said Musiyiwa.
He went on to add that their thematic areas include Entrepreneurship and Micro-enterprise development, Sustainable agriculture, Environment management and Research and advocacy among others.
“We aim to eradicate poverty and sustain the rural smallholder agriculture sector through community participatory development initiatives with environment protection as a key component in all our programming , ” said Musiyiwa.
The organisation is managed and controlled by its 3 founding trustees who double as the interim management committee.
“ In partnership with Ministry of Youth in Mashonaland Central and Zimbabwe Youth Council Mash Central, we have been implementing smallholder farmer skills training programmes from 2011 to 2014, where we trained over 1100 youths and women in mushroom, apiculture and horticulture skills,
He added that other projects they do are water harvesting, fish farming , solar powered boreholes , bee keeping ,tree nurseries, green houses , traditional poultry and organic agriculture , all these projects are of necessity because of serious current climate change being experienced by the Country and around the globe .
“With the assistance of the Zimbabwe Youth Council head office and the Chamber of small to medium enterprises, we trained 456 youths and women in small business management skills in 2013, In the same year again we facilitated the training of 51 youths by Empretec Trust Zimbabwe in Entrepreneurship development and most of them are running their own businesses and are often receiving refresher courses ,
“We also launched an online community agricultural library where anyone can aces information on how to prepare land for agriculture and best crops to plough according to regions. After projects trainings we offer certificates and packages for them to start their own projects as well provide market linkages for their produces, locally and internationally,” he said.
We aim to eradicate poverty and sustain the rural smallholder agriculture sector through community participatory development initiatives with environment protection as a key component in all our programming
“We take an active role in national and local environmental initiatives evidenced by over 5000 trees that we have planted in Mvurwi and surrounding farms, we did this in collaboration with Mvurwi Town Council, Action 24, Radio Zimbabwe, Friends of the Environment, Farmers, Schools, Churches and the community in general, we also had an environmental advocacy and tree programme at Nzvimbo Growth point where we planted 2000 trees in partnership with local leadership, schools, business community, youths, women and the community in general,” said Musiyiwa.
All these projects were successful through $50 000 grant from Global Environment facility small grants programme -UNDP and land from Mvurwi Council Commission, this year since January we have been doing various projects which sustain livelihoods we have 240 including women and youth, our aim as well to introduce the same livelihoods long term projects in all provinces across the country as the organization is to get another grant beginning of January ,” he said.
Through our environment protection and community development activities, CALS Was selected to be part of the 25 member National Climate Change Youth network initiated by Action24.
They boasted good working relations with organizations like Empretect Trust Zimbabwe., Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust, Chamber of Small to medium enterprises, Zimbabwe Youth Council, several government ministries and departments, local leadership, traditional leadership, schools, youths, women and the community.
