We help traditional local people who depend on growing their food and some crops to market. We include our 19 Steps Out of Poverty for Subsistence Farmers, teaching how to grow a cost-efficient balanced diet. Since tourism has come to a stop, work allowances and working hours are halved. Covid-19 demands that our crew become business people. Even producing little, they can become sales people which will help to change their mindset. Their extended families include up to 7 children and others.
We cannot continue without income from visitors. Community members (Crew) need to grow crops that provide a balanced diet and also some to sell. The '19 Steps out of Poverty for the Subsistence Farmer' program fights climate change, specially the increasingly unreliable rainfall. It encourages people to change their mind-sets and to accept changes. With our lodge and restaurant closed and allowances halved, they cannot even afford seed necessary for the essential crops, or create water-points.
Encourage people to follow the '19 Steps' program which promotes permaculture to sustain both people and environment. By growing their own food and selling even small amounts they will become successful small scale business people. Access to water is a major obstacle. Many wells need deepening and many households have no well. We want to install hand drilled boreholes with rope pumps which supply ten neighbours and costing only 10 % of a machine drilled borehole.
Despite Covid-19, we are striving to maintain social services for 56 villages and compounds around Katete, including HIV&AIDS counselling by our 37 home-based care givers. If members of our crew get water points and extra seed, they will be able to produce surplus crops to sell and will be better off than most people in the rural area, where even before Covid-19 the unofficial unemployment rate was 80%. They will be teaching by example and we offer classes to everyone who is interested to learn.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).