By Fatuma Adan | Executive Director
Darmi is a young mother aged only 23 year old and a mother of three children who was identified as being vulnerable in her village. In her life she has done small odd jobs to be able to feed her family and the rest of the time depend on relief food. She has never thought in her wildest dreams that she will one day have a product to self and feed her family. Every day she bought water at 1USD for 20 liters and used this for cooking, cleaning and other household chores. But this was never sufficient and she will beg from the neighbours for more water. The family could not afford the luxury of 3 meals in a day and they will do a simple breakfast and lunch with no supper. Again each day she needed money to buy vegetables which some days she could not afford. Life was tough until when she joined hands with HODI and decided to turn things around for herself.
She had several unused relief sacks in the house and brought 3 of them for the training on kitchen gardening and how to reuse waste water. Today she is a champion and is an envy of her villagers who still wonder how she did it all alone. Today she has earned the respect of her husband by contributing to the family budget and each day she counts how much she has earned from her sack garden. As a champion of the initiative she trained more women on how to do the simple Shamba HODI and turn around the lives of many more women. So far 7 households have taken up the initiative in her own village. HODI provided her with a 5000liters water tank for rain water harvesting. Now she does not have to spend the entire day looking for water instead she saves the water and uses it during the drought period. Her children now eat well and are able to go to school which she could not afford before and she is thankful for all the support. Each day bring joy to Darmi and her family. You too can help RESTORE HOPE.
