Two vital committees on agriculture and marketing under the auspices of the National Federation of Gambian Women recently converged at the Women's Bureau office in
The meeting brought together producers and marketers to discuss and map out strategies of improving income for the women and enhancing sustainability, thus reducing poverty at household level.
Speaking at the meeting, the executive director of the Women's Bureau, Ida Faye Hydara, said the meeting was held to discuss and explore some of the opportunities and chances available, to improve income for women horticultural producers and to come up with strategies to determine some of the prices for the locally produce dgoods to improve the livelihood of the Gambian women.
If the lives of Gambian women are improving, both economically and socially, then the country's socio-economic development will improve, she says.
Madam Hydara noted that the meeting served as an avenue for women to outline their challenges and shortcomings and to come up with new strategies to address them based on priorities.
"This is all gears towards reducing poverty through community-based approaches," she added. To her the women federation is doing everything it could to ensure that Gambian women are empowered and their lives are improved to end poverty as enshrined in the MDGs and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper 11 by 2015.
This will minimise the heavy dependency on foreign importation of some of the goods that could be produced in the country, she says, adding that the federation seeks to bring all Gambian women under one umbrella with the objectives of supporting them to improve their livelihood.
The federation will be supporting the two committees both financially and technically to ensure effective implementation of the strategies.
