my mission in Ghana -IGA-

What have I done so far?

To improve Income Generation Activity in forest fringe community is my main purpose as a community officer in Forestry Office. It is a promotion of alternative livelihood for people who live with forest, both to reduce too much dependence on the forest, and to benefit from the forest in a right way.


I visited communities regularly and inspected each IGA and talked to the community people.
I could never do those without who helped me voluntarily. Some helped me to enter the community, some worked on community members to organize the meeting, and some contacted me to work with. These relationships will definitely continue further development in the rest of my year.

The highlight of my one year was soap making activity. I observed some groups making the soap.

One group succeeded in regular making. I gave them one note to be aware of figures. We calculated the number of soaps we made and we sold, to compare cost and profit. Now I do one by one, then try to make clear the impact of how they earn by their own.

Another group did experiment to find new economical method and succeeded in making soap with used palm oil and few chemicals. My colleague volunteer gave me technical advice about chemical agent of ingredient then we found that palm oil, which is familiar and reasonable local oil, is one of the most quality kinds of oil for making soap. And we also noted that we need only oil and soda ash for making PURE SOAP, I mean, additives free. Now I research variety of local soap and it is quite interesting process because I myself was suffered skin trouble when I lived in Japan.