Turubu set on a journey

COVER STORY

THE European Union-funded United Nations Joint Programme for Support to Rural Entrepreneurship, Investment and Trade and in Papua New Guinea (EU-Streit PNG) continues to expand its support to rural areas of the Greater Sepik Region, specifically targeting women and youth in capacity building of agri-food value chain. Here, the programme extended technical assistance to a cooperative society in Turubu LLG of Wewak, East Sepik, with the help of a strong young woman.
Hallilah Nakumai, 24, from Dandan Village in Turubu LLG, Wewak District is one of the vibrant women the EU-Strreit PNG Programme has come across in supporting build capacity and providing technical assistance to their established rural business activities.
She graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor in Sustainable Tropical Agriculture at the Papua New Guinea University of Natural Resources (UNRE). Hallilah found herself back in the village in Dandan with a very slim chance of securing a formal job in an urban area.
“My view on rural setting is that people are toiling the land to make ends meet with vanilla, cocoa and fish, but they lack the idea to take their commodities to another stage where they can generate more income from what they already have,” says Hallilah, treasurer and coordinator of locally established cooperative society in the area.
In January 2021, Hallilah, with the help of her father, relatives and friends, embarked on an agricultural journey that would transform their lives from small rural farmers to a cooperative business group named Sisida after the three villages of Sir, Sikan and Dandan it covers.

“My people are simple farmers; they earn money from informal sales of their products with customers from the highlands of PNG. It was not easy convincing them to create a cooperative society and establish our integrated farming project. But we managed to do so by building a model of an integrated farm for them to see and believe so we can work together to create another one on a bigger scale, and that’s how we ended up building over 50 fish ponds. The cooperatives also introduced poultry as well as vanilla and cocoa cultivation to the dwellers of the three villages,” says Denny Kumena, Hallilah’s father and a senior member in Sisida Cooperative society.
As their integrated farm grew, Hallilah felt they needed outside support and that was when she made contact with the EU-funded UN Joint StreitPNG Programme that is being implemented under leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

She had been visiting the programme office in Wewak, the capital of East Sepik in 2021, consulting with the value chain officers and arranging for support delivery to her fellow farmers under the Sisida Cooperative Society.
Consequently, after careful planning and organising with the EU-Streit PNG Programme, Hallilah and the Sisida Cooperative Society received the assistance they needed the most at this time.
The programme in close collaboration with its national and local partners, DAL, Cocoa Board of PNG, MiBank and Hawain Technical High School provided them with two capacity building trainings:
Cocoa bud graft training, conducted in late 2021 followed by distribution of shade cloth, poly bags and 180 cocoa pod borer pest-tolerant clone seedlings to Sisida Cooperative Society for bud wood garden establishment, as a source to provide the farmers with better-yielding cocoa seedlings.

Tilapia fish training, held recently from Jan 10 to 21, 2022, on how to look after and manage cooperative established fish ponds (including feed and feed calculations, hatchery management and stock management) and how to construct more efficient fishponds, and do marketing for their fish products.
In addition, MiBank, a leading microfinance service provider in the country, through the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) as an implementing partner of the EU-Streit PNG Programme in their quest to introduce and connect rural farmers to modern banking platforms and cashless system have created bank accounts, issued bankcards and registered mobile phone banking for over 100 farmers within the Sisida Cooperative Society.
In addition, through this partnership in delivery under the EU programme, a new banking agent was launched in the cooperative, relieving the farmers from travelling long distances to the town to make deposits and withdrawals or top-ups for their mobile phone; all crucial support facilitating the farmers’ engagement at the marketing stage.
Envisioning taking additional steps, including receiving further supports from the EU-StreitPNG Programme to proceed forward with her fellow farmers, Halillah emphasized.
“We’ve built and created this integrated farm on our own expense with my knowledge of tropical agriculture but I realised we needed more technical training for the rehabilitation of our CPB-infested cocoa blocks and inland fish farming. The cocoa and fish training had helped us tremendously, and we look forward to working closely with the EU-Streit PNG Programme to see our farm grows into an industrial business.”
The EU-StreitPNG, being implemented as a UN Joint Programme (FAO as leading agency/administrative agent, and ILO, ITU, UNCDF and UNDP as implementing partners), is the largest grant-funded programme of the European Union in the country and the Pacific region.
It focuses on increasing sustainable and inclusive economic development of rural areas through increasing the economic returns and opportunities from cocoa, vanilla and fishery value chains and strengthening and improving the efficiency of value chain enablers including the business environment and supporting sustainable, climate-resilient transport and energy infrastructure development.

• Story and picture by the EU-Streti PNG Programme.