Mombasa island, Kenya's second largest city with over 1 million people outsources all its food including water to meet the needs of its ever growing population. By working closely with women groups in Mombasa's peri urban and slum areas, we started a community garden project to help equip them with skills and ideas on how they can produce organic food from home. The project will help over 20 low income households to cut costs and increase access to food and a cleaner environment.
Mombasa island city is faced with a number of challenges ranging from bulging inappropriate waste management that accelerates the rate of marine pollution and environmental degradation due to the ever growing population. With over 90% of its food and water being outsourced from inland cities and counties, the lives of low income slum and peri urban dwellers of the city have become unbearable with women led households being the worst hit. Through the project, we want to empower women!
The Utange community garden project will demonstrate to the women groups from the peri urban Mombasa on how they can venture into urban agriculture including the vertical garden concept. This will not only enable them realize food security but also allow them to seize opportunities in waste management and make their own manure form the waste generated locally within the city.
We look forward to netting down over 50 metric tonnes of domestic waste from Mombasa per year by converting it into manure that will be utilized to produce safe, nutritious and organic foods for over 5000 families in Peri urban Mombasa. We will also have grown our capacity to work with over 50 different women groups in five years within the same period to address food security and waste management issues.
