The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion says more than half of the ten ‘Ex­tra­or­di­nary Projects Im­pact­ing Com­mu­ni­ties’ (EPIC) grants award­ed this year went to com­mu­ni­ty agri­cul­ture projects.

In a state­ment the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion said this year’s EPIC ap­pli­ca­tions sug­gest that NGOs and com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try are con­cerned about na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty and are find­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive ways to boost the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try.

It said the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion in part­ner­ship with Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go in­vest­ed one mil­lion dol­lars in­to the 2023 EPIC pro­gramme.

“Ten grants of $100,000 each have been award­ed to sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty projects across three cat­e­gories: agri­cul­ture, the en­vi­ron­ment and re­new­able en­er­gy. In the agri­cul­ture cat­e­go­ry, there were six grant win­ners: The Brazil Farm­ers’ Vil­lage Group; The Del­tones In­sti­tute of Mu­sic and Steel Drums; The Barataria Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil; One Seed for Change; Canaan Bon Ac­cord Sports Club; and CAR­DI.”

Brazil Farm­ers’ Vil­lage Group Pres­i­dent Ran­dall Pat­ter­son shared, “This is an ex­cit­ing time for all the farm­ers and res­i­dents of Brazil. This project will gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment and will pow­er the en­gine room of agri­cul­ture in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion said all of the or­gan­i­sa­tions will im­ple­ment a sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture project in their com­mu­ni­ties with­in the next three months.

The projects ad­dress a range of crit­i­cal needs in small-scale farm­ing, from cre­at­ing sus­tain­able an­i­mal-rear­ing sys­tems and in­stalling hy­dro­pon­ics to pi­lot­ing new green tech­nol­o­gy to pro­tect farm­ers’ crops from pests.

In ad­di­tion to grant fund­ing, each of these com­mu­ni­ty groups re­ceived train­ing and sup­port from Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go on how to de­vel­op mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion frame­works.

This will help the groups to set key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors and eval­u­ate their out­put along the way.

“This year’s mon­u­men­tal mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment in the EPIC pro­gramme un­der­scores the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion's un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to part­ner­ships that cre­ate sus­tain­able change and fos­ter in­no­va­tion with­in the com­mu­ni­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Found­ed in 2016, The Foun­da­tion’s EPIC pro­gramme has thus far sup­port­ed 140 com­mu­ni­ty projects through a to­tal in­vest­ment TT$6.2 mil­lion.