World Food Day

Today is World Food Day and Ashley has officially started her first project. One need that has been identified is nutrition education. But beyond the education, which many people have, is the need for a basic knowledge of is the application in their daily life. Here is where Ashley’s first project starts, collaborating with her counterparts, they trained farmers on nutrition and a community garden project. We chose the week leading up to World Food Day, its focus “feeding the world, caring for the earth”.

Project Overview:

The main goal was to reach rural small-scale farmers in the communities by providing them  with information and knowledge on nutrition as well as demonstrating and providing initial seedlings for kitchen gardens for household consumption. The hope is that these training sessions will help disseminate knowledge about nutrition as well as help provide a well balanced diet to families where foods high in vitamins are not readily available or being utilized.

We started by identifying farmers groups already receiving training. These groups were chosen due to their high involvement with previous training and their willingness to adapt and utilize new skills and knowledge. Ultimately, we decided on three groups for this planting season.

Long term we hope to be able to expand nutrition outreach to farmers to include all active farmers groups in the communities  as well as pregnant mothers and mothers to those less than five years old receiving care at the health center and those receiving counseling for HIV and Aids as well as primary school children in the communities.

To be sustainable we are training the farmers on value addition and income generating activities from excess crops in their gardens, they will be able to purchase new seeds for continual years.

Outcome of Project: 

We successfully trained all three groups on nutrition and all nursery beds are complete with seedlings planted. In total, this project reached 51 households with an average of 7 people per household, a total of approximately 357 people will benefit from this project, with more than half being under the age of 15.

We plan to conduct follow-up training sessions, the first focusing more in depth on nutrition and how to prepare meals using the new crops and another focusing on the sustainability of the project.

The nursery bed for the family gardens in one of the communities. 

Preparing beds for seeds.

After making wells we spread the seeds.

After seeds are spread, you then cover the wells.

They spread ash to deter insects.

Spreading straw to cover the fresh nursery beds.

Watering the new beds.

Finished