Dear Friends,
Pervasive
poverty, HIV/AIDS and food insecurity are the biggest threats to the survival
and development of children in Sub-Saharan Africa, Zimbabwe in particular. The
high prevalence rate of HIV has resulted in increased death toll which in turn
has eroded and in some cases depleted the safety nets of families and
communities. The epidemic has a wide-range impact on the country, one of which
is the rapidly increasing number of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC).
In late February 2017, Nhaka
Foundation with friends from 2 Seconds Or Less embarked on the
establishment of a nutrition garden in Munyawiri village Domboshava. The
project is being implemented at Munyawiri Primary School, with the aim of
providing sustainability to the school feeding programme. The project is complementing
the Government’s Home Grown School Feeding
Program (HGSFP)[1] where
the
Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is implementing a sustainable
homegrown feeding solution whereby the government provides the grain for starch
and the communities supply a protein or relish. This is one of the easiest ways of ensuring access to healthy diet
that contains adequate macro- and micro-nutrients by producing different kinds
of vegetables in the nutrition garden. They are especially important in small
children’s diets to ensure normal growth and intellectual development. Munyawiri
Primary School is one of the schools were Nhaka Foundation is implementing its
programmes, after a needs assessment and feasibility analysis Munyawiri Primary
School was chosen as a candidate for the pilot project. It is against this backdrop that Munyawiri School was
supplied with garden tools and seedlings to kick-start the Project.
The garden project is expected to supply the school and surrounding community with diverse range and year-round harvest of vegetables while generating income for the school from the garden produce. The revenue will be used to buy food supplies for the school feeding program allowing the school to provide a diverse diet and other nutritive foods for the learners. The income generation component of the project will contribute to sustaining the nutrition garden as the school will be able to buy more seedlings for themselves and eventually feeding learners on their own making the school feeding program sustainable. This will contribute to sustaining the nutrition garden as the school will be able to procure more garden inputs for themselves and feed their learners making the school feeding program self-sustaining.
Nhaka Foundation is committed to supporting programs that are locally sustainable and value local level community engagement.
As we celebrate our 10th year Anniversary of “leaving a lasting legacy” we take a quotation from Grace Lee Boggs;
“We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting
gardens or looking out for our neighbours. That is how change takes place in
living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions
occurring simultaneously….”
Until next time,
Wilbert
Field Officer
[1] The
Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is spearheading the programme aimed
at providing at least one balanced meal for pupils at primary level. "The
benefits of investing in school feeding also linked to Sustainable
Developmental Goal four, are that it provides a powerful institutional market
and can produce impacts in the local supply chain and benefit communities”
