A group of young Naitasiri boys are learning important life skills such as commercial farming during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Led by Maciu Ragesa, the group, made up mostly of school dropouts, has set a planting target of 4000 to 5000 cassava cuttings and dalo tops.
Mr Ragesa, who has three children, said he decided to mentor the youths because it would provide an opportunity for them to earn a living and provide for their families.
“I am teaching them how to plant easily traded or high-demand crops like dalo, cassava, vudi and yaqona,” he said.
“And these crops have markets, so I wanted to show them there is a way to make money through utilising land.
“Most of these boys are school dropouts and they are new to farming so I have to teach them the very basics like how to prepare the soil well and how to use the farm implements to do this.”
Mr Ragesa said they only planted 20 cassava stems in each of the boys’ farms per day because the initial phase of the project was more about them learning good agriculture skills.
“I want them to learn how to do things the right way, so 100 a day means 500 dalo or cassava a week.”
He said the group would leave their homes at 7am and return at 5pm.
