Empower 175 students for food security in Kenya

Happy New Year, we have started the year 2021 will and it’s our prayers that the year will be more fruitful to all us.  As earlier reported, all institutions were closed down after covid 19 hit our country in March.  Since then, all students have been at home and the year 2020 has wasted their learning period.  Schools and other institutions have started opening and learning is taking place in schools.  Our polytechnics are also opening with many opening this week and others will resume next week.   Parents, teachers and students are positive that the year will be successful and students will recover what they lost during the long closure.  Since the students were at home most of the months last year, our agribusiness activities were negatively affected and the club members have no choice but restart their activities a fresh.  Most of them lost their farm produce since they could not access their schools for maintenance.  We have to support them in various ways and encourage them to keep the fire burning and to avoid giving up.  They are frustrated and being young people they develop negative attitudes towards agriculture.  We hope they will get the support required for them to continue with their project activities.  We will be visiting some of them in the course of the month to understand their situations and supporting them where we can.  With some support they will get motivated and have a starting point.  We intend to support them with planting materials and seeds in readiness for planting in the next planning period.  In Kenya between now and March, it is dry season and farmers will be preparing their farms for planting during long rain season expected from mid-March. The club members will be preparing their gardens and repairing the broken fences as they await for the rains.  We appreciate every support accord to our youths and on their behalf, I thank all who have contributed to this project and supporting our youths.  We pray for a blessed New Year and we wish you joy, peace and good health throughout the year.

The Corona virus pandemic has been a night mare to us since the first case was reported in Kenya in March 2020.  When schools and institutions were closed, we all knew that it will be just for a short period.  It is now 7 months since then and all institutions have been closed since then.  Our agribusiness club members have not been together as they used to be in different schools and working on their school gardens for food production and other agribusiness club activities.  It has been very difficult for them to follow up their agribusiness activities while at home and not working together.  As previously reported, they feared of losing many opportunities and their clubs’ activities being affected and now this has been the case.  They don’t have access to their institutions thus making it difficult to know what exactly is on the ground.  Few that we have contacted have already started some of these activities in their home gardens.  Although some of them don’t own any family garden, they practice urban farming techniques where they improvise locally available materials and turn them to simple gardens.  All students remain optimistic that soon schools will be opened and they are ready to restart again and revive their gardens.  This year the weather has been very conducive despite the pandemic and rain has been plenty and we hope and pray that by the time our students resume to schools, the rains will still favour them to give them a starting point. Thank you for the continued support as we encourage you to continue the journey with us to support our young men and women.  Once they report back to schools, they will definitely require our support to help them revive their projects.  We count on you to support them and help them get started.  Thank you all and stay safe.

The year 2020 started very well and we all had a lot of hopes that the year would be much better than last year. Like previously reported, our youth polytechnics reported back to school after long December holiday and they started the school term well little did we know that the learning will be affected by the “monster” covid 19 pandemic which has affected the whole world. Although they had started their usual school activities they had to stop most of them and stay at home for their safety. We are happy that to this far we have not had any of our communities that we are working with tested positive with the corona virus and we hope for the best. Most of our agribusiness clubs that we have been supporting had already started their garden activities with most of them with ready vegetables which they were selling to their schools for their meals and selling surplus to their neighbors. It has been very difficult for them to work on their school gardens or even sell the vegetables as they used to since they cannot be allowed in the schools compound and they can only get updates from the few school workers who have access to the schools. Although the club patrons in some schools are coordinating sales of vegetables, the club members feel that it is not enough as they had a lot of activities they had planned for their gardens and most of them were preparing products to show case during annual agricultural show in Nakuru which is held in July every year unfortunately this year things are different. There are losses of farm produce for some of the gardens as it has been raining heavily and they feel they could have taken advantage of the heavy rains and especially on water harvesting and planting new crops. They fear that they will lose a lot and they will have to start all over again but since they don’t have an alternative they have to bear with the situation and we really feel sorry for these young youths who had high hopes that their agribusiness will be more productive this year considering the favourable weather. We hope this monster will come to an end soon and things will get back to normal. Thank you to our friends and well-wishers who have been thinking about us and our communities and also for their kind contributions. We really appreciate your support and concern during this difficult moments

We are excited for the gift of another year and we hope that you have all started the year well in good health and more energy. We take this opportunity to wish you a prosperous new year 2020. Our youth polytechnics students have been on long December holiday and they are now back to school for a new semester. Most of the students graduated from the training centers and they are waiting for their results as the institutions are busy enrolling new students. We have been encouraging youths to join these vocational training centers so that they can gain technical skills that will help them self-reliant by creating their own jobs and being employers. Good examples are our agribusiness club members who have graduated and they are busy in utilizing skill gained on agribusiness. Most of them are already into the business even as they wait for the results. The weather has been very favourable thus enabling them to implement various agribusiness activities and especially modern farming techniques where they have been growing crops and selling them at good prices especially during festive seasons when the demand for most products was very high. Since it is still raining in most parts of the country, they are producing more products so that they can sell to various schools, institutions and local retailers as it is usually very dry in January. They are taking advantage of the rains and demand is still very high. We are encouraging them to continue with the same spirit and focus on expanding their farms for more produce and profits. Some of them are also offering trainings to the communities and institutions at a fee again increasing their income. Our discussion on previous report was on water harvesting structures and we hope the parents will participate in making this initiative realizable as they promised last year. The semester is very new and the schools management will guide us and the parents on the way forward on this issue. We are planning to engage graduated students in facilitating trainings on agribusiness to the new students who are joining various institution and are ready to join the club. This will be planned in due course with the teachers, new students and facilitators who will be the already graduated club members and of course the other club members who have now gained a lot of skills. We thank you all those who have made this project successful as we welcome them and others to continue supporting our young youths.

The progress in our polytechnics has been good and agribusiness club members are happy since they have been busy in their school garden activities. They have been enjoying a balanced diet in their meals with fresh vegetables from their own school gardens. They have also been earning some income through sales of surplus products from their gardens and they have been saving the money earned to cater for their club’s needs. They have been learning basic accounting and simple records keeping where they have been tracking agribusiness financial activities measuring achievements, losses and areas of improvement. Although the year started with many challenges as a result of delayed rains, the situation improved and in many parts there have been rains since April. They have been planting and harvesting various short term crops and vegetables thus making their agribusiness activities progressive. This has really changed mind-set of many youths who had negative attitudes towards agribusiness and agriculture in general. They have realized that they can be self-employed through agribusiness and actually be employers as they have discovered that agribusiness is a well-paying job through the experienced they have gained and the high demand of fresh organic farm products. We have been encouraging them to work even harder and explore more agribusiness opportunities available for them. Some of the club members are graduating from the institutions towards the end of this year and they are happy since they have already identified what they will do once they are out of the training centers. In our previous reports we had plans to improve the rain water harvesting structures and some head teachers promised to involve the parents on this matter in order to raise fund to install simple water harvesting structures in the schools. After discussion with the parents they bought the ideas and considered the issue as important but they requested more time to enable them source funds for the projects. They explained that the year started with many challenges where they had limited resources since most of them depends on farming as their main source of income. Due to loss of crops as a result of prolonged drought their financial status was negatively affected and they did not even manage to pay school fees for their children in good times. They suggested that the project be pushed to next year to allow them time to organize their financial status. The schools management did not have alternatives and they respected the parents’ requests and decisions. The schools with already installed water harvesting structures have worked hard to improve and repair the structures and they have some water now. We would wish to work with the schools and parents to realize this intervention but we can only accomplish that through the support of well-wishers. We therefore take this opportunity to request for your support as we also sincerely thank you all of you for your generous contribution. Thank you very much.