The journey has not been easy, but hope kept us strong and persevering! We have every hope in our projects and pray they make the right impact.
Just like any start-up in Ghana or any part of the world, we also had our own share of the everyday challenge that startups have to go through. Most moments brought along the very best of life’s experiences and we are so grateful to God for it all.
Reach Out to Future Leaders Movement is a dream come through. I am very grateful to God for the lives of all who have to tolerate our inexperience and mistakes and also provided the shoulders on which we stand.
It all started with a desire to create a positive and global relevance change using young people as vehicles to drive such change. I was just eighteen (18) years then. I just finished my High School and with this strong desire burning in the inside of me.
![DSC03414[1]](https://alfredadjabengblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dsc034141.jpg)
The memories of starting, failing and rising again are still fresh! They get me going. Even when life’s greatest challenges look me in the face, the very one thing that gets hope alive is what God has graciously given me the ability to create, ROFLM!
My pastor, Rev. Terry Adjah, Mr. Levinus Acquah-Jackson, Mr. Mawuli Dake, Ms. Esi Yankah, Mr. Fiffi Enchi, have been very supportive through these years of God’s faithfulness. My greatest motivation is, if I’m going to make an impact of global relevance, then ROFLM must be the vehicle!
We have an amazing team of Directors, Staff and Volunteers at ROFLM tirelessly working and defying all odds to achieve our vision! I would forever remain indebted to them!
Initiatives of ROFM
Ghana School Farms Project : Promoting the Achievement of Education, Employment and Food Security Goals. Our project is achieving these goals through the promotion of access and availability of food in Senior High Schools in Ghana through the adoption of School Farms.
Volunteer Savelugu Senior High School students dehusking with joy
AfricaLearns+ Project: Seeks to improve learning outcomes and equitable and inclusive education in Ghana with a focus on early grade understanding of Science and Mathematics through local language based video lessons prepared based on the Ghana Education Service Curriculum.
ROFLM in 2014 was awarded SETAfrica Fellowship by Makerere University Business School in Uganda. We are very grateful to God for His mercies, for they are new everyday. Great is His faithfulness!
The future is bright! Thanks for reading! God bless.
Filed under: Anniversary, Educative, My Project, News, Social Good Tagged: Africa, Alfred Godwin Adjabeng, Anniversary, ARISE GHANA YOUTH, Social Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship Ghana, Social Good, Social Impact
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The project is a stakeholder Project between the school, the local Ministry of Food and Agriculture, local government representative and the local traditional head.
The schools hosted the project, the ministry of food and agriculture provided free consultation and technical know-how as part of the ministry’s extension service and the school provided the land and minor labor, where the schools do not have lands, the communities provided and also with hard labor.
Lassia-Tuolu Senior High School is located in the Upper West Region of Ghana. It was part of the schools that have to close down because there was no food to feed the students. Sorghum was the crop cultivated in this school.
Savelugu Senior High School is located in the Savelugu Municipality of the Northern Region of Ghana. The School operates a Boarding system with a population of about 500 students. The school is one of the affected schools who had to close down because of the delay in the release of feeding grants from government. Maize was the crop cultivated in this school.
Two acres of land were cultivated and these produce would be used to feed the students. 20% of the produce would be sold to an identified market and the money generated will go into an agreeable fund to be used to cultivate the next year. 10% will be used to pay for the schools utility services.
The Project will also partner a local dietician service or local University to provide a food curriculum that helps provide highly nutritious meal with what they grow.
The students involved for minor labor will gain some entrepreneurial or employable skills for life. The project will engage the agricultural curriculum of the schools to help make it a success with all its stakeholders.
Our intervention, Ghana School Farms Project is expected to have impact in these two main areas:
- The schools we visited were in dept due to the fact that they had to order for food stuffs across regions and neighboring countries. Our intervention is expected to help lessen this burden of cost in supplies.
- The schools we visited were about to close down due to unavailability of food and the delay in government releasing feeding grant the following academic year. This project is expected to bring some support and relief.
Filed under: Adventure, My Project, News Tagged: Africa, Agriculture, Alfred Godwin Adjabeng, Ghana, Ghana School Farms Project
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It was the break of dawn and as happens in Ghana’s countryside, the sound of the cockerel wakes all to a new day. The rising sun pierced through a thick cloud on an August morning. Its getting hot already at a time when village folks have been expecting rains.
Welcome to Goviefe, a small village in Ghana’s hilly and green Volta Region. Farmers, mostly women gather with small blackish polythene rubbers at a small cocoa seedling farm as a group of boys run past, chasing each other along narrow alleyways between mud-brick huts.
Once upon a time, this part of the country was a major nerve hub of cocoa production- Ghana’s economic backbone.
Goviafe used to be one of the major cocoa producing towns of the Volta Region. Pictured here are two farmers drying new cocoa beans harvested now in the town
“There was life here. We had business booming because we could farm and sell many bags of cocoa back then and we had many businesses opening up here back then,” says Fidelia Adechie, a 45-year old mother of 5 who spent her girlhood life following her family to large cocoa plantations that are no more in Goviefe.
Amedzofe, one of the towns on the Weto ranges is Ghana’s highest human habitation point
A metal cross erected at the summit of Mount Gemi by the German Missionaries in 1880 still under preservation by locals in the Weto ranges
Between 1980 and 83, a harsh drought and wild bushfires followed by reckless tree felling here in the ensuing years brought a once vibrant economic activity on its knees and poor villagers are paying the hard price now.
“We are really suffering now. There are no rains because most of trees were brought down. Our staple crops don’t do well and we are surving at the mercy of a harsh weather,” Adjo.
Today, there is a ray of hope for farmers like Adjo to relive the cocoa glory of the 80s once again.
The Satoyama Initiative
Satoyama is a Japanese word which means mountain area management. Japan is sponsoring the project implemented in Ghana by the UNDP’s Global Environment Fund UNDP-GEF.
The project targets the Weto landscape, a belt of ridges and hills beginning west of Accra and extending northeast into Togo and Benin.
Mount Gemi has a one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Ghana. This one of the natural resources the Satoyama Initiative seeks to conserve
“There are over 500,000 residents in this basin, mainly dependent on farming but there are very harmful practices that affect the ecology and in effects their livelihood. There is fire every year, illegal chain saw operations, farming deep along the slopes and hunting that has eroded the productive vegetation,” says George Ortsin, National Coordinator of the UNDP-GEF.
Over the last two years, farmers like Fidelia and farmers others from 33 communities here have been brought have been put through a training to Restore forests and rehabilitate up to 5000 hectares of degraded land.
Goerge Ortsin says the project adds livelihood empowering activities to support the farmers knowing biodiversity conservation itself is not self-sustaining in the short term.
“We are hoping these cocoa we are nursing would grow in time to support our lives. But that’s not all we do under Satoyama. Some of my friends keep bees, others rear high-end livestock like grasscutter, rabbits and pigs” says Adjo.
Societies in harmony with nature
Now, more than ever, the communities on the Weto range are more empowered to make the change they so desire in their ecosystem.
Farmers in the catchment area of the Satoyama Initiative hope reviving the growth of economic crops like cocoa could boost livelihood standards
Today, agro-forestry technologies to support sustainable agriculture has been introduced to 500 lead farmers, 100 Community Trainers and 120 Farmer Trust Groups.
Sustainable land management techniques for soil fertility improvement, soil conservation, dry season gardening, organic farming and wildfire management have also been conveyed.
Alternative income opportunities and rural enterprises have been established in communities like Goviafe including palm oil processing, moringa, honey, and mushrooms, and packaging of cassava into gari – moving forward, they seek to commercialize these initiatives.
The rainbow rises in Nyangbo-Emli, one of the many beauties of nature in the Weto rang
In Emli Nyamgbo, just a few kilometers up the hills from Goviefe in the Weto range, the story is that of young men and women who are being motivated to stay in the village and work on new farms because of the productivity.
“Most of my friends who left this town to do meager jobs in Accra are coming back to start a career on the farms. Satoyama has shown the way and sustaianable agriculture that is productive and we are going to make it work,” says Elorm Nutsuga who returned from a street hawking job in Accra to begin a cocoa farm under the Satoyama initiative.
The pilot project of this project has ended but these village folks build hopes funds would still be available for more support.
“With all the strides we’ve made, we can drastically cut poverty whiles restoring our degraded vegetation if this project is sustained. That is our hope and prayer,” he says.
A full documentary on the Weto range and how farmers are learning to restore the biodiversity of the area to boost the growth of economic trees like cocoa shows on JoyNews Exclusive at 7 PM, Monday, 15th September, 2014 on the JoyNews Channel on Multi TV.
Source: Justice Baidoo | [email protected]
Date: 18-09-2014 Time: 08:09:32:pm
Filed under: News Tagged: Africa, Agriculture, Alfred Godwin Adjabeng, Avatime, Climate Change, Cocoa, Vane
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Winnifred Selby and Alfred Godwin Adjabeng
Mr. Alfred Godwin Adjabeng, Founder and Executive Director of Reach Out to Future Leaders Movement (ROFLM) and Ms. Win Selby, Co-founder of Ghana Bamboo Bikes represented Ghana at SETAfrica Fellowship and Innovation Award.
They are among 23 young social entrepreneurs who have been picked from 15 Anglophone African countries to undergo leadership training in running social ventures. They received Innovation award and financial support to scale up their projects for their contribution to social entrepreneurship in Africa.
Social Entrepreneurs Transforming Africa (SET Africa) was launched in November 2013 to provide young social innovators across Anglophone Africa with the organizational leadership skills, mentoring, networks, and funding opportunities needed to strengthen and scale up their social ventures.
SET Africa is being implemented by Makerere University Business School (MUBS) in collaboration with the International Youth Foundation (IYF), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and The MasterCard Foundation.
Alfred Godwin Adjabeng founded Reach Out to Future Leaders Movement (ROFLM), a registered youth-led organization in Ghana that focuses on youth in civic engagement and community development.
ROFLM provides a platform for young people to be educated for local development action. ROFLM adopts a community-based grassroots approach to partner young people as change agents in their respective communities. ROFLM-GHANA operates a curriculum based on the three themes: Educate, Empower and Engage.
They provide Education on critical-thinking, skills acquisition in basic technological tools for communication. ROFLM is undertaking Nationwide Projects namely Ghana School Farm Project, Smile village Project, and Ghana Mobile Library Project.
Winifred Selby is the Co-founder of Ghana Bamboo Bikes, a socio ecological green initiative that addresses the quadruple problems of climate change, poverty, rural-urban migration and high unemployment amongst the youth in rural Ghana by creating employment opportunities and sustainable livelihood job skills for the youth through the building of high quality handcrafted second generation bamboo bikes for the international export markets.
They also manufacture multipurpose second generation bamboo bikes that are suitable for the high terrain and rough roads and purposeful for the local needs using native bamboo. They believe that business opportunities exists in all the areas of Ghana and are committed to improving the standard of living of young Ghanaians through the creation of sustainable social enterprises.
They are committed to promoting fair trade, treating people fairly, profit sharing with builders, creating environmentally responsible products that contribute in reducing climate change commitment to protect the environment and promoting environmental awareness.
Twenty-five young leaders annually will be selected to participate in SET Africa’s yearlong Fellowship experience. The program is open to young social entrepreneurs, ages 18 to 29, who have founded or co-founded a venture that addresses a social challenge in their communities.
These fellows will also join IYF’s global YouthActionNet® community of nearly 900 young social innovators being supported by 16 national and regional institutes that includes SET Africa.
The SET Africa program is managed through a collaborative effort by the Entrepreneurship Centre, Leadership Centre, and ICT Centre at MUBS, and is based in Kampala, Uganda.
Filed under: Award, My Project, News
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