While in 2013 the goal achieved by Dahari was the strengthening of its management team and the NGO’s overall capacity, the objective for 2014 is to strengthen the field team:
– through the professional development of the agricultural technicians who have been working with us for the past few years: Siti is now a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, while Inzou and Soula have advanced to the role of Senior Technicians.
– through 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 is assisting our volunteer, Sandrine, with the integration of agriculture and livestock farming.
– and finally, by hiring ten extension workers in the target villages

The position that Dahari has established within various rural communities—which has enabled the results recently presented—is largely due to the presence of agricultural technicians in the villages four days a week. These technicians fulfill multiple roles: representing the NGO within the community and ensuring the effective communication of information; organizing and facilitating training sessions (such as Farmer Field Schools); supporting the establishment of demonstration plots; and providing personalized follow-up with each beneficiary to ensure that proper methods are being used and to offer essential guidance. However, some of these plots can be located more than a two-hour walk away.

To support its agricultural technicians, Dahari has recently hired part-time extension workers in various villages. These individuals were selected from among our most engaged and innovative beneficiary farmers. Having been part of the project for a long time, they were welcomed into the Dahari team with great pleasure. There are ten of them in total—one or two per village—tasked with assisting the agricultural technician in their duties, providing advice to their peers, and encouraging more hesitant farmers to see the value of Dahari’s work.

This evolution of the NGO has several merits:

– The NGO finds itself strengthened on the ground and within local communities, which is essential for its successful development.
– The NGO values ​​and empowers its most successful beneficiaries, who become role models and the best ambassadors for our initiatives and their tangible results.
– The NGO is growing and, first and foremost, stabilizing its field operations; it is seeking to better leverage its presence within the village while gradually preparing for the withdrawal of its technicians in a few years’ time. The extension workers who remain in the villages will subsequently ensure the continuity of the activities.
– Dahari’s intervention model is becoming more efficient—the “cost” incurred for each additional producer is decreasing, which in turn allows us to expand our areas of operation in the medium term.
It is for these reasons that Dahari places great emphasis on developing these extension workers, whom we hope to gradually introduce into new villages across the Comoros.

 These extension agents are part of various innovative initiatives implemented by Dahari in 2014, aimed at empowering local communities—initiatives that include, for example:
– six farmers selected and trained to run and manage village-level shops for agricultural inputs
– greater involvement of civil society through the “Territory-based Approach” project, which develops community-based management of the territory

We welcome them to the Dahari team and hope that they will thrive as they expand the NGO’s work, pursue continuous training, and share their agricultural knowledge with other farmers. We are confident that positive results lie ahead.