Food gardens

Our food gardens programme, funded by Oxfam Australia, aims to help people to grow their own food as much as possible. While there are areas of good soil in the community, rainfall is not always consistent and there are constant battles with plant diseases and pests.

The food garden facilitator works with school clubs of vulnerable children, support groups for people living with HIV and also with individual families. We have a nursery where we start seedlings and then hand them out to the people we work with. But it is our plan to train people how to grow their own seedlings from seed to reduce their dependency on us.

Crops that grow well in the area and are accepted by the local diet include cabbage, spinach, onions, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, beans, and beetroot. These mostly grow best in the winter months when the weather is cooler, there are less pests but also less water. In the summer months pumpkins and maize are the main crops.

We aim to teach people sustainable ways of gardening; using organic gardening techniques rather than relying on costly fertilizers and pesticides. Mulching is important to retain the water that is available. In areas with roofs, such as schools, rainwater tanks collect valuable water and we have provided many schools with these. Very few places have access to tap water in the district.

When groups are really successful, they are able to sell their excess crops to make some money for themselves. Our aim is to have more groups reaching this stage. We would like to then develop a food processing plant so that fresh vegetables can be converted to processed foods with a longer shelf life and a higher profit.