Eco-Food plates by the Awak Farmers Association

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Category: News
Published: Thursday, 18 October 2018 12:44
Written by Bill Jaynes
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eco food plates

Pohnpei, FSM- The Awak Farmers Association has a great project just starting. They will be producing the betelnut palm eco-plates as a substitute product for styrofoam or plastic plates currently imported to Pohnpei. Betelnut palm is abundant and a natural resource in the community and currently just often discarded. The betelnut eco-plates are hypo-allergenic, food and human safe, and easily decomposes after use. The project not only aims to solve an environmental issue, but also provides an alternate income source for the villagers. With such a promising project, the Awak Farmers Association is a recent grant recipient of the Direct Aid Program through the Australian Embassy in Pohnpei. The grant funds will go towards securing four press machines for production of the betelnut palm eco-plates.
The Awak Farmers Association is a registered community based non-government organization in Pohnpei, FSM, founded to spearhead important sustainable livelihoods options for the community of Awak. The Association got started by promoting dry-litter piggery projects within the community. A revolving fund was established where members of the Association were able to receive funds to convert their piggeries into the dry-litter system with 100% farmers agreeing to pay back the amounts loaned out by the organization. This enabled a sustainable revolving fund to maintain operations of ongoing projects and allowed more farmers to borrow funds for additional environment, social, and health related projects. Income generated from the new eco-plates project will also go into the revolving fund.
The community sends its many thanks to the GEF Small Grants Program and the Australia Direct Aid Program for funding support and COM-FSM for providing technical assistance. For more information on the Awak Farmers Association, do contact them via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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