Press Release
St. Thomas Beekeepers Graduate from USAID Funded Program
USAID grant helps beekeepers expand their bee farming businesses
Kingston, Jamaica |
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Thirty beekeepers from Top Hill, St. Thomas received a boost to their bee farming enterprises as a result of a USAID partnership with the All Island Bee Farming Association (AIBFA). A USAID grant of $J2.1 million to the AIBFA provided training, starter hives and hive management equipment for the Top Hill bee farmers to use in their apiaries.
The program was a joint initiative of the AIBFA, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and the USAID Protected Areas and Rural Enterprises project. Under the theme, “Nurturing the Environment for Profitable Beekeeping,” these graduates were the first cohort of trainees under the program. This bee farming intervention was designed to expand honey production and increase the participants’ technical knowledge of bee keeping through model apiaries. To secure food for the bees, the project participants also received over 2,000 high nectar-producing forest and fruit trees for planting across St. Thomas communities through a partnership with the Forestry Department.
The graduates were equipped with three ten-colony apiaries and bee rearing expertise from the Ministry’s Apiculture Unit, along with essential skills in bee hive management. To support beekeeping as a business, the AIBFA also partnered with the St. Thomas Cooperative Credit Union, which provided business management and information and communication training.
Project Manager and president of the AIBFA St. Thomas Chapter Mr. Delroy McNish, in expressing his thanks to the project partners, said that “this is the first time that the St. Thomas bee farmers are managing a project.” McNish affirmed the work on the site was intense, but that “the experience has been valuable not only to the trainees but also to the project management team.” Secretary of the St. Thomas Chapter Rosetta Gayle said she, personally [had] never run a project before and this [was] an experience [she] couldn't pay for. “It was stressful,” she said, “but worth more than gold, not only to me but the trainees.”
The USAID PARE project is implemented by the US Forest Service International Program Office. The project’s primary objective is to improve effective natural resource management practices, while expanding environmentally friendly livelihood opportunities in and around conservation sites.