Community Garden

This week we were lucky to have our Executive Director, Maria and our Education Intern, Meagan make a deep connection with another maternal health facility operating in a rural settling in Uganda. To learn more about their garden program and to exchange best preacties our team traveled to the Suubi Medical Centre, a Ugandan NGO located in the Iganga District. Started by the Mukisa family as a part of the Budondo Intercultural Center (BIC) in 2014, Suubi Medical Centre is a great new connection in Uganda and we're thrilled to have "planted the seed" for future collaboration with them. 

Through a connection with Mama Hope, our team was able to visit Suubi and explore all things nutrition, farming, and maternal health. While Suubi operates in a different context and part of Uganda, we were delighted to exchange ideas given the overlap in many areas of both center's sustainable, community driven missions. They are currently expanding their facility and working to best utilize their farm space. After touring their health center, our team also got to see their six-acre garden. It was great to learn about the demo farm that is used to teach community members best practices to increase their crops yield, make the most of their farm space, and support better over all family nutrition. They also offer a nursery for local farmers to use, creating a safe and affordable seed option and building community trust. Suubi is also working to build their own nutrition program, and it was good to exchange ideas around challenges both centers face in reaching the most vulnerable members of our communities. Most of all it was exciting and inspiring to learn from and alongside one another. It's refreshing to find others working towards similar goals as we work to empower members of the Shanti community. It's important to share in the abundance of resources and knowledge if we truly want to build a world where all women have access to a midwife and have suffiecent nutrition throughout pregnancy.

In other updates, our Gardener and Groundskeeper Kato will be leading a Community Garden Workshop on the last Thursday in May. We expect 20-30 community members to come to Shanti to learn and grow with us. Further updates to follow!

Links:

• More Information on Mama Hope
• More in on the Suubi Medical Centre

Malnutrition is an ongoing concern in Uganda, particularly for child-bearing women and young children. It is estimated that 20% of children 6-59 months old and 19% of women of childbearing age are vitamin A deficient; additionally, almost three quarters (73%) of children 6-59 months are anaemic, while 49% of women of child-bearing age are reported to be anaemic. This comes primarily from a lack of quantity and diversity of food in diets, as well as certain food-related taboos that deprive women and families of nutrient-rich foods.

Our community garden program aims to provide nutrient-rich food for mothers, children, teens, and the wider community, as well as to provide nutrition and farming based educational programs in order to empower individuals and families to grow and cook healthy food, learn, and thrive.

2017 saw several steps towards reaching our goals and widening our impact through the community. Throughout the year, we completed monthly workshops to educate local women, men, and children about sustainable gardening practices, nutrient-rich diets, and cooking methods. These workshops were led by our Head Gardener, Kato, and Garden and Nutrition Workshop Facilitator, Ritah, who gained valuable knowledge regarding agriculture, nutrition, and sustainable farming themselves as they attended workshops and courses regularly. They also further developed important leadership skills and practice, and through this continued to integrate themselves as influential members of the community.

We developed baseline surveys for workshop participants to complete in order to constantly work towards bettering our workshops and the impact they have on individuals in the community. Through 12 workshops, we educated the community in topics such as proper home hygiene and sanitation, healthy eating habits during pregnancy, environmentally-friendly cooking techniques, and sustainable farming practices that lead to more fruitful yields. Between our community garden and teen health empowerment programs to date, over 5,000 community members have been educated and will have better understandings in these areas; the Luwero District population as a whole will greatly benefit from their knowledge.

With the help of donors such as yourselves and a LUSH Cosmetics North America grant, Shanti completed the construction of a borehole on our property, which has been a huge help in both sanitation and convenience for our midwives, staff, and mothers at the Birth House; it has also provided clean drinking water to the Birth House and larger community. Construction of our Round Hut was completed, providing further space for Shanti workshops and community meetings to take place on our property. Additionally, we finished the construction of a security fence surrounding our new plot of land and began planting crops on the new community garden property, adjacent to our original Birth House property.

We are equally excited for what 2018 will bring as we work towards increasing our impact in the community, always with a focus on pregnant women, mothers, and infants. Kato and Ritah will continue offering monthly workshops to the community, as well as assessing which educational topics could be new possibilities for workshops. While we have planted some crops on our new land, we are currently in the intensive planning stages for significant growth and are working with community members and experts in the field to execute our plans.

We want to take this opportunity to thank you sincerely for your continued support of our community garden program, and we look forward to updating you again soon!