Participants in our new Strong & Healthy Young Women program recently learned how to build kitchen sack gardens as part of a workshop promoting better nutrition.
Following the nutrition workshop, the twenty-six young women and Priscah got hands-on experience by filling and planting vegetable sack gardens on a small strip of empty land behind the Care Centre. Soon, participants will be harvesting their own sack garden produce at home, and the low-cost planters pictured in this post will be producing food for Care Centre children while serving as an inspiration to visitors and passerby.
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Nathan had to leave high school after his sophomore year for lack of fees and was out of school for a year before joining our program. In his first year in the program, he grew maize for both food and sale and reinvested his profits in the purchase of a young calf.
Nathan eagerly applied his lessons in planning, marketing, and cost-effective, mostly organic soil fertility management. He worked hard to make compost for his farm and has demonstrated great foresight by rotating his crops and expanding his business. For example, his cow, now a year old, produces manure that fertilizes his horticulture crops and increases his yields even more. It is likely that his cow could bring more income every month than many of his neighbors can squeeze from their maize farms in an entire year.
We commend Nathan for his hard work, sacrifices, and dedication to a farm endeavor that has great potential but requires a lot of hard, dirty, and exhausting work. While some of his similarly situated peers reject farm work and search for unavailable white-collar jobs, Nathan is hard at work each day improving the future for himself and his family. We are thrilled to announce that we have recently launched Strong & Healthy Young Women, our fourth small farm business program for out-of-school youth.
The program offers 25 young women training in small business planning and income-oriented farm production or trading, while also providing them with micro-grants to help start their independent ventures. Similar to our other agricultural/small business programs, Strong & Healthy Young Women adds important new components. The participants, most of whom are young mothers, will also get training in child & maternal nutrition; participate in workshops on life skills, such as financial literacy; and attend a retreat which will cover sexual and reproductive health.
Building on our success with similar programs, we are excited to be able to keep expanding our efforts to help deserving but vulnerable young people build strong, independent, and healthy lives for themselves and their families.
We are grateful to the Avison Charitable Fund for funding this program. Our small farm business programs manager Alfred Kitayi often sends us photos from his mobile phone that illustrate the positive impact our programs have on the community's youth.
As we move from our third to fourth small "agribusiness" training program, we share in his happiness with the results. Participating youth are now growing more food for their families, earning meaningful cash incomes from their harvests, and reinvesting their profits in farm animals (pictured) and other business activities. Everyone involved is very excited about the outcomes so far! |
Friends of Kakamega's News & UpdatesThis page offers occasional highlights, news, and updates about our work in Kakamega. Archives
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