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Groups of resource poor men and women enter the DRC poultry keeping project in West Darfur – and exits with the power to fend for their families once again.
The Danish Refugee Council, DRC has operated in West Darfur since August 2004. Among the current programs is a Livelihood Diversity and Enterprise Development Project funded by EC, targeting non-camp conflict affected rural communities in West Darfur. One of the livelihood projects is the Poultry keeping project, a DRC in-kind small livestock grant worth 300 layer chicks, housing and feeders.
Ibrahim Hamed Arbab is the oldest beneficiary of the DRC Poultry keeping project. He has one child and two wives who are equally aged. Before Ibrahim joined the Treje Poultry Keeping group late last year, his livelihood depended on his two wives who would fend for him. Due to old age, he lacked energy to till the land or hire labour for cultivation.
When joining the group of 14 resource poor men and women in his village that opted to undertake poultry keeping for income, he got the opportunity to turn his life around. Ibrahim Hamed says he has found solace in the poultry project because he has become a ‘man’ again as he is now able to fend for his family.
Like many of the other group members he has invested his share of the profit from the group sale of eggs very wisely. He has bought food and hired labour to cultivate sweet potatoes, ground nuts, sorghum and millet during the last rainy season. The harvest of this production has made it possible for him to invest some of the money into a butchery business – but not all of it, as he explains: ’We need food and that is the stock we have to keep us going.”
Apart from the income he gets from the sale of eggs, he further gets three eggs on a daily basis for consumption, just like the rest of the members of the poultry keeping group, and this has boosted his physical strength.
Kaltuma Mohamed Omar is another member of the group. The 45 year old divorcee is the mother of six. The poultry project has enabled her to pay tuition for two of her children, buy food and clothes for all of them and invest part of the proceeds in sorghum and ground nut production.
"Thanks to DRC for this wonderful project, I now have a lifeline. For, as long as this project exists, I will cater for my children," says Kaltuma Mohamed Omar, who only had what she could earn as a casual worker before entering the project.
Other members of the Poltry group has spend their income on buying rolls of clothing materials to start tailoring business, invest in a shoe business, onion production, buying lifestock and medical care for family members
Poultry keeping is one of the many DRC Darfur Livelihood Diversity and Enterprise Development projects funded by EC. The current program of DRC in Darfur is targeting 42,000 IDPs and 34,000 rural households in the Wadi Sali, Zalingei, Azoum and Jebel Mara regions of Darfur.
