By SEBASTIAN CHIPAKO  –

IT is a project that takes a holistic approach to eradicating poverty, it looks at empowering a “whole village” in its entirety at the same time individual families benefit gradually.
The project integrates and encourages villagers’ participation in ensuring the project’s success, it is a Project called PaViDiA.
The acronym PaViDiA stands for Participatory Village Development in Isolated Areas and it began in the country in 2002 and is a Japanese government supported project in collaboration with the Zambian Government that promotes sustainable agriculture through the active participation of locals.
The PaViDiA project is well-dotted around various Villages in Shiwang’andu District of Muchinga Province, with projects ranging from livestock to mushroom growing.
One notable success story is at a village called Mushishi which lies along the Great-North Road where the villagers keep goats and they have done relatively well.
One of the residents of the village Ludya Chanda, explains that when the project began, villagers organising planks for the shelter and built it before the goats were brought in.
She says the whole village was involved in organising construction of the structure for their livestock and is still participating in feeding and keeping the goats.
Mrs Chanda reveals that the project started in June, 2013 with just seven goats in a village with a population of 120 people.
She explains that at the moment, the village has more than 13 goats which they plan to distribute gradually to households to enable them also start keeping goats too for their own benefit.
Mrs Chanda highlights that in Mushishi there are a lot of vulnerable people including orphans and the elderly people, hence the project is hugely beneficial to them.
She adds that the project will help various families in her village to pay school fees for their children and generally be empowered.
“It will help in paying school fees and take care of the orphans we have in the village, but the Government should help us more because we are willing to work”, Mrs Chanda explains.
Another village where PaviDiA is avidly famous is Lukaleshi Village. In this village, farmers boast of having had such projects as groundnut growing, Chicken rearing, fish farming and are now in goat keeping.
The village began with groundnuts growing, however, they deemed it not viable at the time and decided to diversify into other projects such as Fish farming and goat keeping.
Village Headman Mr Chileshe Chali explains that PaViDiA was introduced in his area in 2012 and the village has diversified into goat keeping, fish ponds and chicken runs are under construction.
He says the gist of the goat project is that when goats multiply, male ones are sold then female ones are shared among households with the hope that they would multiply ultimately empowering these households.
“We have fish ponds, we are now rearing goats, we now have 10 goats and we are hoping to start giving to the households soon,” Mr Chali explains.
Mr Chali says that a long time ago, people in Lukaleshi Village relied on cassava and coffee growing alone but now they have diversified to livestock.
He passionately reveals that after PaviDiA people do not struggle anymore to buy essentials such as coffins for their deceased relatives and paying school fees for their children.
He is thankful that Government and the Japanese government brought the project to the area, saying that it has helped empower households and continues to develop the entire village.
With such commitment from the participating villages and will power from the managers of the project, a number of villages would benefit tremendously and more people would be uplifted.
The concept of PaViDiA is that when all households benefit from the Project in one village, some goats for instance, are given to a nearby village for the project to continue.
In one of the past articles which appeared in one of the local papers on PaViDiA, Chief advisor in Village Development of PaViDiA Takahimo Miyoshi cited the dependence syndrome as one of the counter development factors that affected most people in Zambia.
He said people’s attitudes needed to be changed by the project in various villages and what was happening in these areas at the time was more miles to riding of the dependence syndrome.
However, it must be acknowledged that people in various PaViDiA villages in Shiwang’andu District have taken ownership of these various projects in their areas, the sheer passion they have would convince one that empowerment for these people is right on their door steps.
Mr Miyoshi underscored the fact that the project was meant to encourage villagers to exercise ownership of their development initiatives with relative reasonable funds as start-up capital and this is what is evident on the ground, households in these selected villages are taking these projects into their own hands.
Shiwang’andu District senior agricultural officer (SAO) Frank Sindazi said the project has gained momentum since the district was de-linked from Chinsali District.
“Initially when Shiwang’andu was part of Chinsali District, the area only had four PaViDiA villages which had goat and chicken rearing projects but now the district can boast of 41 villages actively undertaking PaViDia projects,” Mr Sindazi explained.
The SAO reveals that the district has been growing gradually with PaViDiA villages rising each year. Mr Sindazi says that in 2011 the villages were four, in 2012 they increased to 14 and the number has grown this year to 40 functional villages.
He explained, however, that his office has been facing a number of challenges in administering these villages. Some of these problems are inherent as his office took over 14 villages that were under Chinsali District.
Other challenges have been cases of mismanagement of these projects by leaders in these communities who tend to personalise the property realised by the project.
“We have had cases where leaders in these villages share the property bought using PaViDiA money especially the old villages that we took over when Shiwang’andu was declared a district,” Mr Sindazi reveals.
He is optimistic that his office will work tirelessly to train and rectify discrepancies in these villages where most of them have shown tremendous improvements.
Mr Sindazi added that his office has taken a very strong stance to warn communities not to personalise but share these project benefits and also strengthen the monitoring process of the projects.
Mr Sindazi reveals that the Department of Agriculture has a very clear vision for these villages where projects are envisaged to be well-managed and reach the next stage of selling so that profits are realised and passed on to the rest of the households within a village.
He said the office has intensified monitoring of these villages and plans to groom the newly created villages properly so that cases of mismanagement are reduced.
With such commitment by the implementing office coupled with the major community involvement, the project will remove a good number of villagers from the doldrums of absolute poverty.
In a nutshell, it would tremendously contribute to getting rid of the dependency syndrome from people involved in these projects.
It also gives them not only a sense of ownership but also freedom for self liberation from poverty.