By: Tassia Dickenson
The North Rupununi village of Massara has identified four priority projects in which it would invest its $18 million carbon credit grant for the benefit of the community.
These are the establishment of a clay brick factory; expansion of the community’s farine bakery, expansion of the women-owned poultry farm within the village, and expansion of the hot meal kitchen to better accommodate the increased number of school children.
During a telephone interview with this publication on Thursday, Massara Toshao Lenny Moses shared that these investments would also provide jobs for persons within the community.
“Our priority is [to establish a] burn brick factory. There’s a demand for this brick, and we looked at creating employment for residents. I want to believe that would create employment for at least 20 persons,” Moses said.
The Toshao explained that, at the poultry farm, the women are currently rearing broilers, and the aim is to expand their farm to rear layers as well.
“We have a poultry farm that is owned by the women’s group; we’re going to expand the project. Right now, they’re dealing with broilers, and we’re going to expand and they’re going to go into layers. So, again we looked at creating employment for more women who didn’t have jobs before. It’s a good project; so far, they’re doing well, and that is why we chose to give some money toward that project for expansion,” Moses said.
According to Moses, some of the plans to expand the farine bakery include introducing the grilling of meat, catering for special events, and operating on a daily basis to sell food and snacks to interested persons.
“We’re going to expand on the project. They would also do farine stuff, [like] farine pizza, farine cake, farine bread and more. We want to expand by doing some grills on elected days, where they would grill chicken, grill beef, fish, etc. We [also want to] look at bread production and to do food as well, that would operate on a daily basis,” Moses explained.
He clarified that though the expansion of the hot meal kitchen is not an economical project, it is of great need to the community.
“I know it’s not an economical project, but then there’s a great need. Then enrollment of the school, they’re expanding as well, and the one we did before it’s overcrowded. We going to do some extension on the existing building to accommodate more children.
We already collected the first tranche of the money. As of Monday, we’re going to start implementing the burn brick factory and the poultry expansion,” Moses told this publication.
The Village Council will oversee all of the projects, as well as the Finance Committee, which was elected.
Moses added that Massara is exploring tourism from a more competitive standpoint, as he shared that the village has tried to implement an obstacle course at the bottom of a mountain, but the project was futile.
“We looked at going into tourism, but this time around we’re focusing on sports/ adventure tourism. We created a track on the mountain that was for motorcycles, and then we created an obstacle course at the bottom of the mountain, but it never came through. So, we’re looking at this sport tourism in a different way. All our events are going to be competitive ones, so that is how we’re looking at going into tourism,” Moses shared.
He noted that, unfortunately, the village might most likely not host the Rupununi Regatta, due to weather conditions. Massara has a population of approximately 543 people, occupying 143 households.
$4.7B distribution
In February of this year, a total of 241 Amerindian communities across the country each received grants ranging from $10M to $35 million. This initiative followed the historic agreement signed with Hess Corporation for Guyana’s carbon credits in 2022, which will see the country earning US$750 million for its forest. A total of $4.7 billion (US$22.5 million), which represents 15 percent of Hess’s payment for Guyana’s carbon credits, was disbursed in the various communities.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has explained that a strict mechanism would be followed to ensure accountability and transparency regarding how the funds would be expended. Each community is required to create a separate bank account so the spending of the funds could be properly monitored. Moreover, the community cannot utilise the funds until a Finance Committee is named and the Village Development Plan is completed and endorsed by the village.
Jagdeo had expressed that the plans should be focused on either empowerment projects in the social sector, job creation, and/or on food security efforts.
