Respect Rungano Musiyiwa, 30, is an award-winning social-agricultural entrepreneur, passionate about sustainable smallholder agriculture development. He aims to contribute to the total eradication of poverty through coming up with participatory community initiatives towards climate smart agriculture and sustainable utilisation of our natural resources.
Respect is the founder and Coordinator of Centre for Agro-Entrepreneurship Sustainable Livelihoods Trust (CASL): a youth community-based organization in Mvurwi, northwest of Zimbabwe.
CASL focuses on sustainable smallholder climate-smart agriculture development and natural resources management. The organization aims to close the skills, information, market, and resources gaps in rural agriculture.
Sustainable Agriculture Resource Centre Project is CASL trust flagship project in the farming township of Mvurwi in Mazowe Rural District in Zimbabwe. This is a climate-smart agriculture and natural resources management resource centre meant to build our community resilience to climate change shocks, natural disasters and risks, toward a food secure, poverty-free, and prosperous society that efficiently utilize its natural resources.
This agripreneurship venture is on a 14 hectare piece of land and upon completion will consist of:
- training and conference facilities that can accommodate up to 300 delegates
- agricultural library with internet facility
- sustainable agriculture demonstration kits
- 20 greenhouses measuring 30 m x 14 m
- 26 fish ponds, piggery, poultry, apiary, tree and vegetable nursery, vermiculture, liquid manure tanks, organic agriculture, biodigester, mushroom growing houses, farm fresh produce kiosk, drip irrigation, three solar power boreholes among other facilities.
On the availability of funds, he will launch a nine-month practical training course on Sustainable Agricultural Entrepreneurship and natural resources management.
This is targeting to produce fully capacitated 30 young agricultural entrepreneurs annually. The course will cover topics like; personal entrepreneurship competencies, farming as a business, climate change and agriculture, natural resources management, mushroom cultivation, apiculture, aquaculture, agroforestry, water management, sustainable energy and carbon management among other topics.
By the end of the training each graduate will have registered a company, opened a corporate bank account and obtained a tax clearance certificate. They will receive a loan based on their production during the training period to start various agri-businesses. They will choose to implement their project on our site or at their home.
The motive behind the project is that when he dropped out of university he took it as an opportunity to go back to my rural area and work towards the sustainable development of our smallholder agriculture based livelihoods.
With the assistance of my colleagues he started a community youth group and we engaged in various voluntary work to get support from the community, local leadership, and developmental partners to set up the sustainable agriculture information and resource.
The project will involve setting up various facilities. Every nine months will recruit 30 aspiring young agripreneurs who will undergo our sustainable agricultural entrepreneurship and natural resources management practical course.
The trainee agripreneurs will be learning whilst doing actual and serious production. The sales proceeds from the production will go towards, Project administration costs, their subsistence allowances and the bulk will go towards a graduation loan package.
With a land grant from our local leaders Mvurwi Council Commission and a USD 50,000 seed grant from the Global Environment Facility, Small Grants Programme/UNDP the project have managed to set up the following facilities: one solar-powered borehole, one greenhouse, cleared eight hectares of land, 600 m long water canal, traditional poultry housing, three mushroom houses, tree and vegetable nursery, claimed 3 disused sand poaching pits into fish points, one fish hatchery, and one hectare agro-forestry.
The project indicators we use to monitor and evaluate the project implementation are number of youths trained, number of agri-businesses established, increase in disposable income and number of project initiatives replicated in the community.
Since we have managed to set up some of the facilities we will use the USD 5,000 grant to kick-start our practical training course on sustainable agricultural entrepreneurship and natural resources management with 15 young agripreneurs.
The budget is as follows:
Training Costs (USD)
- Consultancy fees 600
- Training equipment and materials 1,100
Beekeeping set up costs
- Bee hives (50) 650
- Installation costs 50
Mushroom set up costs
- Spores (100 kg) 400
- Tubing (50 kg) 150
Traditional chickens
- Hens (100) 600
- Feed and vaccines 250
Aquaculture costs
- Fingerlings (10,000) 650
Marketing costs 300
Contingency expenses (5%) 250
Total 5,000
Blogpost and picture submitted by Respect Rungano Musiyiwa (Zimbabwe): respectmusiyiwa[at]gmail.com
The content, structure and grammar are at the discretion of the author only.
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Inspiring
thanx lets join hands for the development of our community
thanks together will end poverty
Great work. Way to go
Lets stand together for practical entrepreneurship
Great work
Thanks lets do it together for our community
thanks its all about dream big and executing bigger for the empowerment of our communities
it motivates
lets turn the inspiration into action together
This is awesome to know that a fellow youth is contributing towards the enterprenuarship so that we can boost our economy…..
to boost our agrarian economy we need to invest in sustainable agriculture so as youths lets take the lead
Great initiative
thanks we stop at nothing to have it fully operational with your support
for we the youths are the leaders of today, and tomorow. if dont take it upon ourselves to develop our community nobody does.
Such a good idea. Congrats respect in your bid to eradicate poverty. We need to borrow alot from you.
together we can conquer. lets take it from inspiration to action
That’s really inspiring man. Keep up the good work. We need more young agripreneurs to learn the ropes for an improvement in livelihoods
As organised and capacitated young agripreneurs we can get far
This is great young man.
For without we could not have achieved all this. thanks for the support
Keep up the good work.
thanks for the inspiration and encouragement
wonderful initiative
Thanks its our initiative for our empowerment
M
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Mr Respect this is a great sounding and looking project. It’s a great way to remove poverty and empower the youth👏👏.
Well done.
With sustainable agriculture will totally eradicate poverty and feed the world
great and inspiring m behind yu.
its from inspiration to action thanks for the motivation
Well supported.
thanks man your support is our strength and inspiration
Keep your head up… Worth investing in this idea
thanks will stop at nothing to build resilient communities and feed ourselves
Worth investing in this commendable project. All the best
for none but us can feed ourselves. so we have no option but to take it upon ourselves to promote sustainable agriculture
this project seems amazing, how do i become part of it
Thanks for the interests to join hands in sustaining our community and agriculture get in touch on +263776350173
great
Thanks lets do it together for our community
He deserves the grant for such innovation
We need to invest in human capital development for us to end hunger
Well done Respect that a brilliant initiative. how did you started the initiative
thanks for the support. we started in 2009 and embarked on various community voluntary services to get support from local leadership, government and developmental partners. we managed to get 14 hectares of land and seed funding from UNDP
What an initiative.! A great one indeed. We need more people with a eagle focus like you respect
together will make for the poor and for food security
its an inspiring piece of information…my question what are you doing for sustainable development in this case….when was this project incepted..how many pple have been enrolled into this program in a way of creating employment…What are the plans in terma of cascading it to other areas….what motivated the founder to kick start the project…what have been your challenges and how did u overcome them….is this done in line with 2030 sustainable dev goals…..have you enrolled any expertise in differnt aspects or its a one man thing….any pieces of legislation that are being adhered to…from the desktop research or needs assessment what did you learn frm your community
the project was incepted in 2014 after five years of planning and profile building.
in terms of sustainability we run this as a trust. we have a board of trustees and a secretariat
it was not easy to have the initiative run since we come from a highly polarised and political society
from our baseline survey we noted that they are four gaps that must be closed to sustain our smallholder agriculture that is the skills, information, market and capital gaps
its an inspiring piece of information…my question what are you doing for sustainable development in this case….when was this project incepted..how many pple have been enrolled into this program in a way of creating employment…What are the plans in terma of cascading it to other areas….what motivated the founder to kick start the project…what have been your challenges and how did u overcome them….is this done in line with 2030 sustainable dev goals…..have you enrolled any expertise in differnt aspects or its a one man thing….any pieces of legislation that are being adhered to…from the desktop research or needs assessment what did you learn frm your community
thanks for the support. together will go far
Great job Respect. I wish you well.
thanx for the inspiration . together will make it
for initiative replication we have a newsletter , we also have a facebook page to communicate project results
everything we do is in line with our national and UN development plans
everthing we do is in line with our national and UN development agenda
You always have been an inspiration to us. That’s wonderful. I’m impressed.
thanks lancelot lets continue fight hunger. for the battle is ours
Your track record shows you are more than able to deliver, all the best!
thanks for the vote of confidence, wil strive to deliver for our community
This is great
the greastness can not to be without your support. thanks.
great initiative starting at grassroots community level.
we believe in community centred development plans. for without active community participation nothing can be achieved
what a great initiative! we hope to replicate it in our community. how long did it took to bring everything together and how was the journey
we started working on the initiative in 2009. the road was not easy and involved a lot of sacrifice and voluntarism
are you planning to expand and how?
we are planning to set up such a facilitily in each and every rural district of Zimbabwe
How did you financial support from UNDP and local leadership support?
we embarked on various voluntary services to get support from our local leaders and development partners
Due to political issues in Zimbabwe how are you managing to run such an initiative in a polarised
we have a board of trustees that work as the face of the project to the community and vice versa. we also operate along apolitical lines
how can other interested people international get involved?
they can come as mentors, funders or ambassadors
What development model are you using? What is your commercilisation strategy?
we use the strength based approach than the needs approach. there are a lot of income generating activities
in terms of climate change what is your major emphasis between mitigation and adaptation
This is the kind of project we need to end hunger and aid vulnerable communities
Nice one brother, Africa needs people like you
keep it up