Seeds and Skills for Women to Grow Vegetables

When we discuss SPI programs, we talk a lot about livelihoods. So, what is a livelihood? A livelihood encompasses the capabilities, assets, and strategies that people use to make a living. And a productive livelihood is an important part of our social, emotional, and economic well-being.

At their core, SPI programs provide access to resources so people can grow food and establish a productive livelihood. We join with women's gardening efforts in the most impoverished countries worldwide by providing top-quality vegetable seeds and locally-driven support through programs that provide them with a path to empowerment, income, and nutrition.

One such partnership is our new women’s empowerment initiative in Chajul, Guatemala. Tucked away in the highlands of western Guatemala, the small but vibrant Ixil community of Chajul was devastated by a 36-year civil war. Many indigenous Guatemalan women who survived the horrific violence are living with the trauma of losing family members, friends, and neighbors — just one legacy of the country’s civil war.

SPI’s gardening program in Chajul provides resources and training for women to create and maintain backyard gardens. Gardening provides opportunities for these women to participate in the restoration and strengthening of their local economy, and simultaneously provides fresh, nutritious vegetables for their families. Gardening also provides an ideal space for psychosocial recovery from the long-term trauma of war. In other words, this partnership program offers all the right components for a successful and productive livelihood.

“The biggest benefit from the garden is that families get to eat fresh vegetables at home that are full of nutrients.” — Rouse, Chajul Area Program Coordinator

Limited access to resources is not the only barrier to livelihoods. Illiteracy is a significant hurdle for most participants. It prevents them from advocating for themselves or gaining access to key resources, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty. Many of the women are the main source of livelihood for their families, but limited access to information and key resources hinders their efforts to fortify their livelihoods.

With the help of our in-country Program Coordinator, Rouse Ramirez, women in the Chajul area are organizing themselves to support each other and overcome these common barriers. Rouse visits with women in their homes to ensure they don’t fall behind or miss out on group activities due to family obligations. When a group member isn’t able to access a community resource, Rouse brings the access to her! This community is a compelling model of women empowering women, and themselves.

While women in this community don’t have easy access to literacy and other education, they are beginning to partner with other women’s groups to exchange for access to education and vocational training. Mothers in the group share the dream that their children will have the educational opportunities they did not, and together they are realizing that dream. This program is just starting, so we’ll share more as it develops.

Thank you for your continued support of these empowering programs!

Esther is a farmer from Makongo village and a member of the Makongo Farmers Network in south-central Kenya, where she owns ½ acre of land. She was forced to relocate from Eldoret in western Kenya due to political instability during 2007-2008. A single mother, she supports eight children, five of whom are in school.

Following common practice, Esther believed that her only option for securing her family’s livelihood as a farmer was to grow maize. In the 2015-2016 growing season, she invested in purchasing maize seed and fertilizers. She planted the seeds, tended the plants, cared for the field and crop, and harvested her maize. She brought the crop to market, and after she added everything up, found that growing maize cost her more than she could sell it for at market. She was losing money, having already invested in the type of farming she had hoped would support her family.

In February 2016, Esther met with a trainer from Seed Savers Network Kenya (SSNK), SPI’s local partner headquartered southeast of Nakuru in Gilgil. He was in the area to train farmers about seed saving and growing vegetables. Esther participated in the training, and through this SPI partner program, received vegetable seed donated by SPI. Using new knowledge and seed, Esther began planting vegetable crops in place of the maize.

“I used to spend KSh 5,000 on maize seeds. I couldn’t make enough money to cover my costs and I went broke. This is now my second term planting vegetable crops, and the only challenge I have is lack of water to irrigate my crops.” — Esther

After the first season of planting vegetables, Esther not only recovered her earlier seed investment, but brought in twice as much income on top of that. With training support from SSNK and the cooperative support of the Makongo Farmers Network, she changed how she worked and not only provided income for her family, but also fed her family with the vegetables grown from the new crops. Further, Esther has supported other farmers of the Makongo Farmers Network in transitioning to vegetable crops. What an inspiration!

Esther is one example of the many farmers who are using seeds provided by SPI to adopt vegetable farming and take steps toward securing their family’s income and nutrition. And all of this is possible because of your support.

Thank you!

In September, I visited several women’s groups in northern Kenya that are supported locally by Seed Program International partners HODI and SSNK. I want to tell you about the Khairi Women’s Self Help Group in Marsabit, who is using a popular Kenyan form of self-financing called a Chama to supplement the agricultural resources SPI provides.

Chamas are self-managed and member-invested groups of 15-25 women who meet regularly to support one another and decide which member-led business initiatives the Chama will finance. Its systems are kept simple and transparent to ensure that all women participate in decision-making and benefit from the collective investments.

Groups are usually formed with trusted friends and family, so meetings often feel like family gatherings or a tea party with friends. Besides business planning, meetings also provide the group with opportunities to participate in educational programs with HODI and SSNK where they learn about the benefits of setting goals, planning ahead, and saving. Women at the Khairi Women’s group in Marsabit participate in a monthly business management and savings training, and also receive individual mentoring.

Qarsi, the Khairi Group’s chair woman shared her gratitude for HODI’s Economic Empowerment Program:

“I have learnt to look for creative ways to save and earn money, and to look for solutions that will help me provide for my family. The saving scheme helped us learn how to save while giving us a platform to help each other.”

For many of the women in the group, this opportunity for self and financial empowerment begins the transformative process of self-awareness, something we sometimes take for granted. This approach to empowerment cultivates our ability to make choices for ourselves that also improves improve whole community’s well-being. By creating a means to economically empower themselves, they have made a tangible investment in both themselves and their entire community.

During my visit, the women were developing a plan to purchase water holding tanks for their community greenhouse. Water is a precious resource in Kenya and these tanks will not only enable the community to grow nourishing vegetables, but will save the time and labor that would normally be spent transporting water from wells that are sometimes hours away. Purchasing these tanks is only possible because of the women’s investment in the Chama, which subsequently improves their children’s education, health, and the livelihood of the entire family.

Thank you for supporting these women, and for supporting our work across the world!

Naima Dido

Program Director
Seed Programs International

Last month, SPI partner DBCO-Africa kicked off their pilot program to establish community vegetable gardens in Billa village and Soyama town located in Ethiopia’s Burji region. In 2014, a local conflict forced over 2,000 Ethiopian families of children, women, and elderly to flee their homelands in Mega, leaving everything behind. Although they were welcomed into Burji, they now need support to meet their basic needs and establish new livelihoods.

Education is a key component of SPI’s partnership programs with DBCO-Africa. In collaboration with Seed Programs International and local government and community leaders, DBCO is developing sustainable gardens so that less fortunate families can, through the power of their own efforts and knowledge, overcome systemic poverty.

The First Garden: Billa Village Health Post

Growing vegetables from seeds is a new venture for most of these rural women. To support their work, the District Administrator assigned a trained gardener to train and support the group in soil preparation, seed planting, and seedling cultivation. After preparing the land, the women planted carrots, kale, onions, and peppers using seeds donated with your support.

Expansion: Soyama Ladies Association

“Water and soil are two key factors to grow good vegetable garden. Both of these factors are challenging, at best, in Soyama. We have willing and able families that are highly motivated to make this project work.” — DBCO

Your donation has since helped launch a much larger vegetable garden pilot program in Soyama, the largest town in Burji, in partnership with Soyama Ladies Association. The Association serves three groups of 30 women from various villages. Each household has an average of three relatives, so their garden serves about 270 people.

The women and families displaced from Mega are hard-working farmers, so the garden program in Soyama is an excellent opportunity for them to feed their families and begin making a living. A reliable source of water and arable land are rare commodities in Somoya, but the women hope to expand this garden even more soon.

Thank you for making this project possible!

Communities often know what they need. The people actually on the ground growing vegetables for themselves and their communities know what projects should do and whether the project is working.

But to help us even better understand whether our projects are meeting a community’s needs, we may engage a bilingual local liaison to share program ideas, struggles, and results back to us.  

In Madagascar, we partner with Caring Response Madagascar Foundation (CRMF) on a program that combines women’s literacy training with gardening. Charlotte, a former Peace Corps volunteer, serves as such a liaison for the CRMF program. She recently shared a story about her site visit with us. She begins with a quote from a participating family:

Stories from the garden

“I really enjoy gardening. Since we just had our first baby girl, it has been so nice to be able to produce fresh vegetables for our family. Sometimes we eat the vegetables and if there are too many we sell it to others in the neighborhood. This allows us to save a little money to purchase other items that we need. Last yield, we harvested so many different variety types: cauliflower, zucchini, cabbage, and eggplant. You know what my favorite part of having a garden has been? Well, it is truly seeing that you are produce something from seed to vegetable. How beautiful it is to see the plant grow and turn into something that is edible. It makes me happy to be able to provide for my family. “

-Mme

Madagascar site visit report by Charlotte

We visited:

1. A couple of family compounds with gardens

2. Literacy promoters

3.Local seed sellers

4. Examined the various diseases that have been damaging plants in this region

I will be coming back out here to visit the literacy homes and gardens in the next coming months. Right now is low season, there were no crops in the garden, all had been harvested.

The format and structure of the literacy centers has shifted, as explained by Program Manager, Vero:

“This year we have changed our this to concentrate all our centers (except two of them) in five districts out of 138 in the city of Toamasina. 

Last month we did  a house to house survey in these 5 districts. Survey results told us that1200 people don't know how to read and write, but there are about 150 volunteers ready to teach them and hundreds of families coming forward to give the space in their houses for running literacy centers!

Two weeks ago,all these volunteers were given a special training on how to teach literacy to adults. we got ready all the books, slates, black boards for 109 literacy centers in these 5 districts.  All these centers have started teaching. Our more experienced literacy teachers will be promoters or type of supervisors visiting all these literacy centers every day and helping out the volunteers.

We would like to bring 100% literacy to these 5 districts. We have just started, and we have a long way to go.

Regarding the garden project we would like to propose that the literacy supervisors will be taught first hand how to use these and they in turn will take teach special classes in the literacy centers when they make periodical visits to the 109 literacy centers and the other two previous ones.”

SPI Madagascar Fact Find by Peace Corps Volunteer Charlotte

SEEDS:

We sat down together and here is a list of 10 types of vegetable seed they are interested in. 

1.    Cabbage

2.    Collard

3.    Cucumber

4.    Eggplant

5.    Kale

6.    Lettuce

7.    Mustard Greens

8.    Onion

9.    Squash

10. Tomato

LITERACY CAMPAIGN:

Languages Spoken: (Malagasy, French)

1.     Literacy Promoters are hired staff by the Brothers of St. Gabriel program. They have been trained and given documents to teach the local volunteer teachers how to disseminate information and properly teach.

2.            Volunteer teachers are spread out, they are local Malagasy men and women who have chosen to help out their community members. They are trained by the Literacy Promoter and given teaching materials and classroom materials (chalk, small blackboard, books, pens, etc.…) They open their home to students to receive a positive learning experience.