Dasavio Concepts

 New Yam (Ikeji) Festival in Afikpo| Ebonyi Face The yam festival marks the end of an abundant food-producing harvest and also marks the beginning of the traditional New Calendar Year. African people have always had festivals at the time of the harvest. In Afikpo the Yam Festival (Ikeji or Iriji) lasts three days. The festival begins with a cleansing ceremony to honor family members who have died. Farmers give thanks to the gods that brought about the good harvest. This festival is held once a year, usually in August or September, just as the rainy season is coming to an end, and crops are ripe and ready to harvest. There is plenty of maize (corn) as well as other vegetables, such as okra, beans, cassava, and yams. Yams are usually the first fruits of the harvest, the staple food of many peoples of western Africa. The yam is a large tuberous root related to the sweet potato, but not exactly the same. American sweet potatoes are usually orange, but African yams can be white, yellow, or

  Catholic Relief Services (CRS)  is an international non-governmental organization that is hiring a Project Officer for Household Economic Strengthening (HES) in Taraba State, Nigeria. The HES Officer will work under the direct supervision of the ICHSSA 4 Household Economic Strengthening Technical Advisor to provide technical assistance and accompaniment to the CRS-ICHSSA 4 Project. The HES Officer will have the following responsibilities: Support the CSO partners to provide HES interventions that are aligned with household economic vulnerability status, designed to improve household resilience to shocks, reduce food insecurity (access and availability), and facilitate household graduation from the ICHSSA program. Provide capacity building and mentorship to CSO partners with a focus on implementation and management of community-based savings groups, OVC-optimized financial education, market assessment and opportunity identification, value addition along identified value-chains based,