ODEAH – Togo

ODEAH as its name suggests is an Organization for Development and Humanitarian Actions, its mission is to promote the integral and sustainable development of the most disadvantaged populations. The organization is active in many sectors:
– Support for the preservation of the environment.
– Agroecology.
– Water and sanitation in rural and community areas.
– Public and community health.
– Sexual and reproductive health.
– Disease prevention at public and community level.
– The creation of income generating activity.
– The training of women.
It works in all these fields through international solidarity projects.

The project is located in the village of Edouwossikopé in the Plateaux Region of Togo. In fact, the Plateaux Region in Togo is a very favorable region for agricultural activities. The majority of this community practices agriculture.

But nowadays, this population still faces many challenges related to climate change, putting all farmers in difficulty. Indeed, the change of seasons, the rarity and the abundance of rains at unexpected times are factors that harm this population by causing them food shortages sometimes from the beginning of the year. This is very problematic and plunges the inhabitants of this region into absolute precariousness as they are located in extremely remote places, far from the shops. Indeed, it is a locality where to go to the market or a health center, the population has to travel more than 18 kilometers.

Moreover, in this community, women and children are the most vulnerable because of the lack of drinking water. They travel many kilometers to fetch water before engaging in farming activities.

Faced with the problems of children walking more than 4 kilometers, on foot, before going to school, we initiated a primary school in the community. The latter works well but has always remained rudimentary because of lack of financial means for the construction of school buildings. Some students from this school still sit on tree trunks and planks on bricks.

These numerous difficulties of the population entail:
– Food insecurity.
– School dropout of children.
– The confiscation of the family economy by men.
– The frequency of diseases related to the lack of drinking water and sanitation facilities.
– loss of life due to lack of financial means and also distance to access a health center

Read more information below..

To help this population out of these difficulties, we have set up a support program through the promotion of agroecology.
This program consists in supporting the population through the training and promotion of agricultural techniques that can enable them to adapt to the phenomenon of climate change.
To do this, it is planned to set up an agroecology school production center that can serve as a study and experiment for the local population. Thus population training and awareness are necessary for the success of this project. In addition, the different activities of this project will focus on training activities on the practical techniques of agroecology and market gardening.

As with all our projects, the first step of the project will be the formation of a multidisciplinary team of excellent and highly motivated students. The students will work on the project in Belgium over the academic year and spend around 6 weeks for the last phase of their project.