Three UPCD projects tackle CIDA's priorities for effective development

CIDA announced last year that it would re-focus Canada's international aid efforts with new priority themes: increasing food security, helping children and youth living in poverty, and fostering sustainable economic growth in developing countries.

University Partnerships in Cooperation and Development projects have significantly addressed these issues, and continue to meet CIDA's international development goals through innovative and successful strategies.

Leadership in food security

A project in Ethiopia, jointly run by the Hawassa College of Agriculture of Debub University and the University of Saskatchewan, is making inroads in addressing CIDA's development goal of increasing food security. The project will help farmers cope with longstanding seasonal food shortages made more severe by climate change. Canadian graduate accompanied by Hawassa University graduate students and staff members did the survey of the farmers to determine the challenges they face, including shrinking farm size, lack of adequate crop-storage facilities and the effects of global warming. "The number of food-insecure months has increased," says Canadian project director Mike Grevers.

Through the partnership, Hawassa University is able to train its own students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels to conduct interviews and surveys, lead training sessions and work with farmers at finding solutions: better food handling and preservation, nutritional education and new crop systems, or example, to help communities survive longer periods of drought.

"The female university students really had an impact on female farmers," says Dr. Grevers. Even though they all had to overcome differences in language dialects and the inevitable gulf in understanding between urban and rural, "I think [the female farmers] found it easier to talk to the female researchers and to tell them directly what their needs were than they did some of the men in their own communities."

Sheleme Beyene Jiru, the project's director, says the project is a valuable asset in Ethiopia's push towards a more sustainable agricultural economy. It is helping establish new farming methods, improving Hawassa College's capacity to conduct research projects, and train a local workforce who will have a real opportunity to remain in their home country and contribute to its successful development.

More info: uniworld_mar2010.pdf