In addition to the support programme for fish farmers funded by Belgian Development Cooperation (DGD), APEFE in the DRC also provides support to children in difficult circumstances, commonly known as "street children or "shegues".
This support to children in difficult circumstances is the fruit of the partnership between APEFE, Dynamo-International and CATSR Boma (support centre for street social work).
CATSR Boma supports many children, including 100 girls and boys who applied for support with fish farming and pig breeding.
Given the physical demands of fish farming, CATSR decided to select 40 older children and 29 supervisors who are members of the association, to monitor and indeed also benefit from our support. These 29 supervisors have been trained for business continuity beyond and after the APEFE and Dynamo International programmes.
Following a number of visits and the selection of the beneficiaries, APEFE, via its technical adviser, organised "Ir Fils Mvutu", the first training on "the construction of earthen fish ponds". The training lasted two days, with the first being devoted to theory and the second to practice in the field. Three ponds were built covering a total area of 540m² (150m² + 150m² + 240m²) for use as demonstration ponds.
A pigsty is now also under construction to combine a fish farming with pig breeding.
The programme's aim is to help young people back into normal life and equip them to stand on their own two feet with their own income. Training them how to farm fish combined pig breeding is one way for us to teach them how to develop income-generating activities.
As fish farming is not an easy field to master, the APEFE programme has opted to split the training into several modules, each of which has its own syllabus provided to the beneficiaries. They range from the construction of fish ponds to harvesting. The principle is take things gradually: from theory to practice and from the construction of a pond to commercialisation. All of this is done in each training group's demonstration ponds.
