Njola Village is situated at the crossroads of two major bush tracks serving many communities in the East of Monze District. While centrally located in the rural area, the village is constrained by a 26km distance to the nearest town - stifling access to secondary education for the large young population. Euroza’s economic empowerment program has highlighted the significant potential of the village’s cross-roads location as a niche opportunity for our Youth Social Enterprise.
Currently, the village acts as a localized maize store for many of the surrounding agricultural settlements - with raw maize harvest purchased at low wholesale prices by distant commercial millers.
Our Pilot Program aims to establish a youth-owned and run maize hammermill facility, that will enable the local milling of maize into a ready-for-use mealie meal (for nshima - the most important food source in Zambia). The community vision is to empower both the youths and surrounding agricultural settlements with the means to produce their own finished product and food resource, enabling value-added processes (milling) to be retained within the community, for the community's benefit.
A further need has arisen in our community discussions for the installation of a bore-hole water source, which will be delivered as a community impact project alongside the extension and expansion of our Njola Youth Sports Programmes. Njola is currently home to the training and test plots for the production of natural organic fertilizer (Zambian Bokashi) by our project participants in collaboration with excellent trainers provided by Welsh NGO - Friends of Monze.
