Reducing Malnutrition with Green Leafy Vegetables
By Patricia Driciru. Patricia’s mother, Joice Munguci, is a key farmer in the Nutrition and Income Generation Intervention project.
TEREGO DISTRICT, UGANDA — I want to thank East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation (EWS-KT) for the changes they have brought to our family. After my mother was selected to be a key farmer, we no longer had to buy vegetables for home consumption from the market; we just go to the garden and harvest. This has enabled us to save money.
In my community, women are expected primarily to take care of family and household, so it’s not common to see women in paid jobs outside the home. Even my mother—who shoulders these traditional expectations—has a job and earns income now: when she’s not in the garden, she’s in the market to sell the produce, and she comes home with money. Before, she used to wait for my father to sell his tobacco crop, which would take a long time to grow, about 6 to 7 months, and would only bring in income once a year.
Now we don’t lack food, or money to buy other household needs, and we pay school fees on time. This is because we get money on a daily basis. Each week, we have been making 40,000–60,000 Ugandan shillings (approximately US$11–$17).
And we hope to continue getting money because we have just started harvesting another crop.
My mother used part of the money she made from the demonstration farm to buy seeds for other leafy vegetables, which have helped malnutrition issues in our family and the community at large.
She has also now become a teacher in the community. At least once a week, she teaches neighbouring farmers the best agronomic practices she has learnt from EWS-KT.
Thank you very much once again, EWS-KT!
Nutrition and Income Generation Intervention (NIGI) improves access to and consumption of nutritious crops and increases income for refugees and hosts in refugee settlement areas in the West Nile Region of Uganda. This project is co-funded by Netherlands Embassy Uganda and is managed by EWS-KT in collaboration with Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation.