Annual General Meeting of the Women’s Agro-Processors Development Network in Guyana.
Georgetown, October 6, 2016. Almost five years ago, six agro-processing community Groups were facilitated by VSO and IICA to form a Network which had as its main objectives advocacy, and income generation. The Women Agro-processors’ Development Network is comprised of eleven community based groups from Regions 1,2,4,5 and 9. These Groups of mostly women producers and processors process a wide cross section of products including jams, jellies, marmalade, cereals, wines, lotions, facial cleansers, essential oils, farine, seasonings, hot pepper, achar/anchar, cassreep, relishes, cassava bread/biscuits, eddo flour, honey etc.
Five years later, the Network’s membership has grown to eleven with assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture’s concluded READ (Rural Enterprise and Agriculture Diversification project). Apart from VSO (now CUSO’s) support, the WADN is supported by the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programme of Sterling Products Limited, a company seeking to extend its support to the Network over the coming year. The individual groups can boast increase earnings since their launch in 2011 which can be attributed to a moderate increase in market shares and skill development.
Beginning Monday September 19, 2016, the network member representatives from each of the 11 groups) met in Georgetown in the IICA Conference Room to be engaged in capacity building exercises during which product development, entrepreneurship made simple and basic marketing were addressed by Facilitators from the Guyana School of Agriculture, Epic Stationery Company and Georgetown Chamber of Commerce respectively, in a very practical way so as to effect positive changes and growth in the businesses of the Network Membership.
The Network Members also held their Annual General and Network Meetings during which they elected their executive for the period September 2016 – September 2017 and they discussed the challenges being faced, proposed solutions and identified four priority activities which the Network will execute during 2017.
The Executive Committee who recently hired a Network Administrator, Mrs. Jennifer Spencer, felt confident about their future. Although they are confident that the Network is a best practice in the field, they are cautions about increasing the network’s membership in the near future.
They were loud in praise for IICA and CUSO, major sponsors of their week of activity. They are also looking forward to benefiting from Sterling’s re-organized CSR progamme. Sterling will be working with the Member Group of WADN to build business portfolios which will be used to determine the road map for their individual success and would provide baseline data for assessing their growth as a business. The Small Business Bureau also pledged to support one of the initiatives of the WADN in the coming year.
Looking ahead to 2017, the participants agreed to concentrate on the following areas:
- Capacity Building (HACCP Pre-requisite programmes, HACCP and Product Development)
- Increase in local markets by 20%
- Formalize overseas markets and co-host three (3) mini exhibitions using the Guyana Embassies in the United Kingdom, USA and Canada.
- Business registration and FDD Certification of the remaining four (4) agro-processing facility
- Preparation of a grant application to access funds for training of Members and purchase of affordable, low cost, relevant equipment
Despite the challenges of fluctuating price and availability of raw materials; relatively high cost of packaging materials, energy and labels and transportation to market, the Members of the WADN continue to develop themselves and businesses and look forward to a more prosperous 2017 and beyond as they work towards reducing their cost of production by seeking more efficient sources of renewable energy for their processing facilities among other things.
For more information: maxine.aaron-parris@iica.int
