120 women in South Sudan’s Maridi State have benefitted from trainings on local food value processing.

The training was conducted by Environmental Rehabilitation Program (ERP) with support from the Canadian government.

Speaking during the training in Maridi town on Friday, ERP’s program manager, Wilson Maridamba said the project aimed at empowering the vulnerable women, especially single mothers and widows in the state.  

He said women were trained for two days on how to process and package food. “As an organization, we help communities that cannot afford to go to Kampala and Juba to buy food items from there. We are here to save members of our vulnerable communities,” Maridamba said.

Monica Momboto, the head of the parliamentary committee for gender, appreciated the local organization’s initiative to empower the vulnerable women.

On his part, Daniel Alphonse, the director general in the state gender ministry urged women to protect food from contamination.

“When these food items are processed, you should not overprice them so that the vulnerable people can also be able to afford food,” he stressed.