THE Director of the Solomon Islands Association of Vocational Rural Training Centre (SIAVRTC) Billy Mae has urged the Dunde Ama Women Floral group in Western Province to continue with their great initiative in floral business.
Currently the women have a nursery shed where all species of flowers are being collected are nurtured and later sold or used to do floral decoration for the community.
Mr Mae told the Solomon Star that he was impressed by the initiative to set up a floral group for the local women in Munda.
The Ama women’s gardening floral group applied to the Bambford Scheme last year to establish a flower gardening farm to do floral work.
“The group was supported and now I am impressed on the good outcome,” Mr Mae said.
He said that one of the strategies of the Solomon Islands Association of Vocation Rural Training Centres (SIAVRTC) is to empower RTC graduates and the communities have skills to sustain their livelihood and develop their respective communities.
“Since 2009 to date SIAVRTC has been assisting RTC graduates in the communities that has been trained and have decided to return back to their respective communities and access small seed money to run income activities to sustain and assist with the development of their communities.”
Mr Mae said that this contributes also in a small way to reduce urban drift that is now becoming a big challenge for the country.
The support to empower the graduates has been made possible under the RTC graduate scheme coordinated by SIAVRTC.
SIAVRTC has accessed the support from an individual donor partner from the Adelaide in Australia that has been working closely with SIAVRTC, the Bambford foundation will be supporting the Solomons and Vanuatu. Its one of SIAVRTC individual partner’s.
SIAVRTC as a hub representing its 56 members, the rural training centre’s and vocational rural training centres in the country have been working with the government, existing donor partners and individual donor partner’s to support RTC development and raise the level of RTC’s in the country as RTC’s are seen as another alternative access for the community.
“The support we have for our graduates is a small support and since we have introduce the small scheme back in 2009 it has benefited over 50 projects fairly spread all over the country targeting RTC graduate and women’s group to raise the level of the communities through the small support and as a result of the good outcome we have our partners are pleased to continue with the support and this year lam pleased that we will support another 6 projects whose submissions are with us to be assisted.
“But I am happy and would like to acknowledge the Adelaide Bambford foundation for the support rendered to empower RTC graduates since the establishment of the support back in 2009 to date.”
Mr Mae explained that each year the scheme supports 6 projects with small seed money from SBD $5000 to $10,000.00 for income activities such as vegetable farming, wood work furniture production, sewing, tools and equipment for construction and recently have supported a women’s group in Munda with gardening floral.
The Ama women’s gardening floral group applied to the Bambford scheme last year to establish a flower gardening farm to do flower floral and Mr Mae on his visit to the Ama group at Dunde village at Munda has been very impressive on the good outcome of the project.
The women’s group has been growing varieties of flowers and selling them to the communities providing floral decoration to wedding, funeral and other important occasion and this have assisted the women to generate an income to sustain their living and Mr Mae would like to thank them for the good work done since his office has release the support early last year.
He said, the group with its existence has an opportunity since Western province has access to the tourism industry and one of their plans is to look forward with such opportunities when developments relating to the tourism industry are in place in Munda that they can be able to capture good market for such activity.
This is the first flower floral farming SIAVRTC has assisted and they are grateful to empower women venture into such activities with the skills they have.
Mr Mae is grateful to see the good progress of the activity and encourage the women to continue so that they may then be possible in the future access to any future support to raise the activity to bigger scale as a result of the good opportunity the group has since its establishment early last year.
Flower floral is one of the activities women have access to make some income and this is evidence all over the country even in Honiara and other urban centre’s and its time partners and the government needs to look into such incentive’s driven by women to be supported as this contributes to both the rural and urban economy.
By LESLEY SANGA
