Goat Rearing (Pass on strategy)

As, United Nations - World Food Program funded, Sustainable Livelihood Intervention, in the Phalombe District, is coming to an end, it is now time to look at what has been achieved and learned. One of the successfully implemented interventions was the Goat Rearing - Pass on strategy.

ADRA employed a pass-on strategy in order to improve goat production, and increase household income, from goat sales by providing targeted vulnerable households with hybrid goats. A total of 300 households beneficiaries were reached under this activity, upon producing offspring the parent stock would be passed on to next beneficiary after a period of 4 months reaching another 300 households.

To date a total of 22 goats have been passed on to 10 additional villages. As the project is winding up, there are 168 pregnant goats and 114 new kids have been produced by 105 goats (refer to appendix 1: tables showing goat reproduction and beneficiary list)

20 groups comprising of 15 beneficiary households were formed and trained in the initial stages of the project to manage the pass on project. The idea behind the pass-on strategy was that in each circle, several members would be given initial inputs and as they start generating returns, they would pass these on to other circle members so that after a period, the whole group will have benefited. Once all original circle members have benefited they would be encouraged to pass-on to other HIV/AIDS targeted villages to generate new circles. The circle members would discuss the criteria to be used in identifying initial members to benefit from the initial inputs.

At GVH level, a project committee was put in place to manage the project activities with the support from government extension workers, CBOs and VDCs.
The Ministry of Agriculture extension workers and the District Social Welfare Office in collaboration with ADRA Malawi trained the targeted households in leadership, business management and group management skills.

The first group of beneficiaries is keeping the goats together with the off springs (kids) waiting for them to reach a stage when they can survive independently. The second group of beneficiaries is preparing the kraals for the goats to be passed on to them.

Based on final report prepared by: Hastings Lacha - Project Manager.