Promote Food Security Among 10,000 Homes in Uganda

Hi, Thanks for your continued support towards this life changing project that is tremendously affecting households economically and socially, this is a harvesting season for the farmers in the region and most of them received the post harvesting training and storage techniques, we are most likely to report successful sale of the crop which include maize, beans and bananas, fortunaely bananas do not need much storage like the rest of the crop.

Farmers have been helped to find market for their produce in the local markets as well as urban markets for bananas and vegetables.

Our project normally posts field updates to its officla Facebook page which I would like to encourage you to like here,https://www.facebook.com/MOHchildrensministries/?ref=bookmarks

Hi,

Thanks for your support to Mountains of Hope projects, your continued donations enabled us to empower 20 farmer groups with skills of doing modern farming, modern vegetable farming methods have been disseminated to them.

These farmers have also been facilitated with non interest loans to enable them boost their farms, one farmer group has been enabled to market their bananas in Ugandas capital Kampala and are now earning profits, bananas are now scarse as they were attacked by banana disease, this is one of the farms that survived the attack because of the mechanism they were taught.

When programs like these affect positively the lives of poor families, transformation is realized hence development.

Next quarter, this program will train these farmer groups to make their own manure and herbicide using localy available materials like animal and human urine, cow dung among others.

Ms.Josephine lives in Kafumu village, a village in central Uganda with beautiful, serene, undulating hills and valleys and is one of 9 villages in which Mountains of Hope  intervened in Nutrition and Food Security Initiative. Like many other villages in the region, people in

Kafumu lacked skills in nutritious food preparations, establishment and management of vegetable gardens and small-scale agro-processing. Post-harvest losses were high and nutrient-rich foods of both plant and animal origin were lacking. Village members’ knowledge about different forms of food preparations to help boost consumption of the celebrated nutritious foodstuffs was limited. Sweet potatoes, for example, were only eaten boiled and no other cooking method was used.

This inadequate knowledge about food contributes to the high levels of malnutrition in the region and country at large, especially among children under five and women of reproductive age. Vitamin A deficiency, Iron deficiency anemia and iodine deficiency disorders are some of the most prevalent micronutrient problems in Uganda. Josephine and all the other beneficiaries of Mountains of Hope interventions received information through community trainings on how to focus production on the micronutrient-rich orange-fleshed sweet potato growing alongside backyard vegetable gardening .

Although the community trainings resulted in Josephine producing a high volume of green vegetables, her consumption did not increase with this increase in production.

To expose Josephine to small scale household-based agro-processing methods, Mountains of Hope organized a farmer’s field visit to one of the successful farmers in the District. Josephine was one of the 22people who participated in the field visit. She acquired hands-on skills in processing orange-fleshed sweet potatoes into nutritious and immune-boosting products like juice, bagiya, crisps, doughnuts, wine, flour, chapatti, as well as soap and body lotion and received hands on training on how to process vegetables from orange-fleshed sweet potato vines and how to mix orange-fleshed sweet potato juice with aloe vera to make an immune-boosting drink for people who were living with HIV/AIDS.

Mountains of Hope has assisted Josephine to make an action plan for training and passing on the skills she learned to the rest of the community members

“I nolonger visit the Hospital frequently, my children and my self nolonger frequent the Hospital, we look healthy, I can take care of my family, other organizations pay for my services when I go to train for them, my husband is proud of me, thank you Mountains of Hope” Josephine

“Mountains of Hope trained our own Josephine who also trained all of us. Had it not been

for the balanced diet we were trained to maintain, we would not eat orange-fleshed sweet potatoes as staple, use its vines as sauce and consume its rich-colored juice” Sandra-Community beneficiary.

 “Our children love the vegetable products and products made from orange-fleshed sweet potatoes because of the attractive and appetizing color. Juice is very marketable when we prepare it at home and adults like it too”. Zaitun-community beneficiary

“We are training and encouraging schoolsin Mpigi District  that have school gardens to grow yellow potatoes, we will help them to process it into flour to enable pupils take nutritious yellow porridge for lunch at school” James-Executive Director,Mountains of Hope

In 2000, Uganda recorded that 28 percent of children below five years and 52 percent of the women in reproductive age were vitamin A deficient. Increased consumption of vitamin A –rich and home-made products is a big stride in the right direction. The beauty of this approach is that communities are empowered to autonomously conduct such practical

sessions. Josephine possesses the knowledge to train her fellow community members even without Mountains of Hope, making the chances for continued improvements in nutrition likely.

There are many success stories of this kind that have resulted from your donations to our projects through Globalgiving, next year, Mountains of Hope has planned more sustainable community interventions that will enable even more families to be self sustained, do you want to change another life in these communities?  Will you donate again?

Hi, thanks for your help to the poor community of Mpigi,Uganda.

The project is strengthening appropriate food technologies and skills among households by training households, youths and farmer groups in improved farming techniques including supporting them with improved crop varieties, in puts and livestock breeds and will partner with sub county extension officers to offer extension services to households and farmer groups. To enhance cohesion, the project will facilitate formation and functionality of a farmers’ association, promote demonstration gardens and school gardens in contribute to lunch for children in school and teachers.

We have also promoted appropriate feeding practices for children 0-59 months by training mothers in recommended nutritional practices and food preparations, conduct training of VHTs in nutrition of children 0-59 months to be able to reach to more people, facilitate training of mothers / caretakers on importance of kitchen gardens and support the trained mothers / care takers with improved seeds to establish kitchen gardens.405 mothers have been trainied on best feeding mechanisms and establishment of vegetable gardens

With your continued support, this project will support farmer groups and households to promote appropriate post harvest handling and storage technologies by conducting stakeholders’ forum on best practices and storage technologies, facilitate training of farmer groups, youths and households on best practices and storage technologies, support farmer groups with wheel barrows and tar planes for post harvesting and storage, facilitate farmers' competition among farmer groups, facilitate farmer groups to carry out study tours/ field days and facilitate farmers exhibition during commemoration of world food day.

Hi

Your support to this project is highly appreciated, this summer, this project enabled 500 mothers to grow vegetables to enable them have food at home as well as save for some for sale. When women are taught modern agricultural practices, they will put in practice every skill they have learnt compared to their male counter parts who will want to use short cuts.

Jane a mother of five now owns a good yielding maize garden as well as vegetable garden, this will feed her family for over six months yet she will hae some left to generate money which will enable her pay her childrens school requirements and change diet for her family.We hope by 2020 this community will be hunger free.

More of these achievements are recorded in our short documtary attached in this report, you can consider sharing it with your friends and family, to show them how a project you are supporting is making a difference in Ugandan communities.

Links:

• Project impact