If in 2013, the objective achieved by Dahari was to strengthen the management team and the general capacities of the NGO, in 2014, the objective this time is to strengthen the field team:
– by the professional developments of the agricultural technicians who have been with us for several years: Siti is now in charge of Monitoring-Evaluation, Inzou and Soula have become Senior Technicians
– by the hiring of four new agricultural technicians: Faredil, Kais, and Tamrini who are respectively in charge of the villages of Adda, Outsa and Ouzini, as well as the hiring of our Intern Hachim who accompanies our volunteer Sandrine in agricultural integration -breeding
– and finally by the hiring of ten extension workers in the intervention villages

The place that Dahari has made for itself in the various rural communities, having enabled the results recently presented, is largely due to the presence of agricultural technicians in the villages four days a week. These technicians have many roles: that of representing the NGO in the community and ensuring the proper communication of various information, that of organizing and leading training (CEP: Champs Ecole Paysan), that of supporting the setting up demonstration plots and finally carrying out personalized follow-ups with each beneficiary to ensure the correct methods are used and provide essential advice. However, these different plots can, for some, be more than two hours' walk away.

In order to support its agricultural technicians, Dahari recently hired part-time extension workers in the different villages. These extension workers were chosen from among our most involved and innovative beneficiary farmers. Having been part of the project for a long time, we were pleased to welcome them to the Dahari team. Ten in number, one or two per village accompany the agricultural technician in his missions, give advice to their peers, and convince farmers who are still too timid of the interest of Dahari.

This evolution of the NGO has several virtues:

– The NGO finds itself strengthened on the ground and in local communities, which is essential for its good development
– The NGO values ​​and empowers its best beneficiaries, who become examples and the best ambassadors of our actions and concrete results
– The NGO is growing and, above all, stabilizing its actions on the ground, trying to capitalize more on its presence in the village and slowly preparing the withdrawal of its technicians within a few years. The extension workers who will remain in the villages will subsequently ensure the continuity of activities
– The Dahari intervention model becomes more efficient – ​​the “cost” generated by each additional producer decreases, and thus allows us to expand our intervention areas in the medium term.
It is for these reasons that Dahari places a lot of emphasis on the development of these extension workers, whom we hope to gradually establish in new villages in the Comoros.

 These extension workers are part of the various innovative actions implemented by Dahari in 2014, concerning the empowerment of local communities, which include for example:
– six farmers chosen and trained to run and manage village agricultural input shops
– better involvement of civil society through the “Terroir Approach” project which develops community management of the territory

We welcome them to the Dahari team and hope that they will flourish by developing the action of the NGO, by continually training and by sharing their agricultural knowledge with other farmers. We are confident of good results to come.