1,000 Women's Gardens for Health and Nutrition

This short progress report let’s you know how the 1,000 Women’s Gardens and ASRH Gatherings for Young Mother Gardeners continue to work together promoting holistic solutions to poverty and gender inequality.

It also presents some new results from our Impact Study of 1,000 Women’s Gardens, which is soon to be completed and released.

Phase 9 - Trainings on Biochar, Composting and Organic Pest Management

Phase 9 of the gardening program has focused training on amending tired soils to allow for continual gardening, practices for soil and water conservation, and combatting pest and disease with pest scouting and botanical pesticides. A special training was held for the Young Mother Volunteers in biochar and composting with local materials to enhance soil fertility, knowledge that they transfer to the 500 young mothers they serve. The training enables year-round gardening for food and income, breaking the cycle of food insecurity, poverty and dependence on men for basic needs (see photos).

New Results on Garden Successes and Women’s Empowerment

For the impact study, we developed a garden typology using 5 variables that are key indicators of a thriving vegetable garden. The variables are garden diversity (no. of crops), number of garden challenges experienced, number of months harvesting, number of months selling vegetables, and change in vegetable consumption before and after establishing the garden. Garden diversity is important both for home nutrition and resilience to climate/pest problems, and market price volatility.

“We no longer worry about what our families will eat; we at least eat meat or fish twice a week especially on every market day” (community gardener/young mother)

The mean score for the 100 target households is 9.4 out of a maximum of 13, with a SD of 2.11. All variables have medium to high scores (see typology diagram), with the exception of months selling vegetables, where the lowest quartile do not produce enough surplus to sell at all. One explanation is garden size. We found a statistically significant relationship between garden typology score and garden size in sq meters. This explains the interest of many gardeners to expand their gardens and protect them with fences.

 “Before I started doing vegetable gardening, my whole mind and body was always troubled because of immunity related issues and feeding, which is not the case as of now. I feel so much relaxed because I can now harvest my own vegetables and feed my kids and family. These days, if I find that my children have prepared food without the greens, I don’t feel okay.” (target hh)

The study asked a number of questions exploring gardening impacts on women’s socialization, self-confidence and other indicators of empowerment. All respondents highlighted that vegetable gardening has increased their opportunities to socialize with other women. Additionally, 85% of women said that it was easier to keep their children enrolled in school, due to the income generated from gardens helping to pay school fees. More than half of respondents are motivated to themselves return to school, particularly the young mothers, or pursue additional skills training.

“We have achieved a lot as women, we have not benefited alone but also our families. I thank God because my children have been able to go back to school.”

In response to questions on how gardening has impacted their relationships with their husband and/or family members, most gardeners expressed less stress and more agreement in their households due to more food and money. Nearly 80% said that they are now more respected in their households due to their ability to support their family with food and income. Many emphasized that their income generating capacity both improved their relationships with their husbands and their sense of self-reliance.

"We used to depend on our husbands for everything needed in the house unlike now. We are financially independent, very few men provide for their families."

“I am no longer on the level of begging for everything from my husband, so I am able to save something from my sales at home to cater for some of my family’s expenditures. Especially medicine for my young kids."

The complete report and shorter versions will be available for distribution, and to all of you, in the next few months. Stay tuned!

Transforming Discriminatory Gender Norms

In an earlier progress report, we wrote about the 25 Mixed Gender Dialogues organized by the ASRH Gatherings program. These successful dialogues reached all 500 young mothers and more than 200 adolescent boys. The Dialogues, facilitated by the Young Mother Volunteers, had two major themes: Cultural/Gender Norms and Healthy Relationships. The mixed groups discussed existing norms, those they find discriminatory and need changing, and how to go about achieving change toward greater gender equality. Girls and boys sometimes disagreed and it was helpful to be open about these differences and discuss them. Some ideas that emerged for challenging/changing norms were:

• Harmful norms can be challenged by raising awareness about these norms through sensitization and outreaches like what RCRA has been organising. 
• Adolescents should talk openly to their parents when they see any form of discrimination in a home, advocacy should start within a home. 
• Actively engaging girls/women in decision making since most of the policies affect the lives of women. 
• Building a support network to build strong collaborations with the people that can challenge the norms. 
• Educating girls/women about harmful norms since most of these norms are practiced by women, especially older women.
• Emphasizing and promoting human rights equality and women’s empowerment.
• Gender studies should be included on the school curriculum. 
• Sensitization of older people, religious and cultural leaders on the norms that are harmful to people. 

The suggestions to involve parents and community leaders (religious, cultural, political) to discuss harmful norms and raise awareness were repeated again and again by the adolescents. As a result, the ASRH Gatherings program organized two other Dialogues with Community Leaders and Parents of Young Mothers. Next report we will discuss the results of these important events.

All of our partners are greatly appreciated and needed  – readers, donors, advisors. Our cost-effective work is lifting up thousands of women and children, and contributing positively to the environment by building soils, conserving water, and using local materials with no packaging. Please continue to support this work through GlobalGiving. Thank you!

Warm regards,

Doreen, Naki, Robin and Jostas with Rebecca Gerny (Cal alum)

First of all, we want to show our appreciation for all of you who participated in the Giving Tuesday campaign last month.  We successfully raised funds to support Phase 9 of 1,000 Women’s Gardens – supporting another 75 women-led organic vegetable gardens, 2 community gardens, and our 23 Model Gardener Volunteers.  Meanwhile, we are completing the analysis of our Impact Study – building the evidence that we expect with spur other funding opportunities.

Short Videos from Doreen and Nakisita

If you have not had a chance yet, please take a couple of minutes to join Doreen in the short video (see links below - you may need to open in your browser) explaining the impact of  1,000 Women's Gardens, and, likewise with Naki bringing to you the ASRH Young Mothers program in her short video. We’re sure you will feel closer to this work after seeing Doreen and Naki in action!

Impact Study on 1,000 Women’s Gardens – new results

While Doreen, Benjamin, Wycliff and the MGVs have been busy in the field expanding the 1,000 Women’s Gardens integrated program to more communities in Kasese District, the research team in Uganda and UC Berkeley are progressing with the analysis of the Impact Study data.  Below are new results to share.

Garden Crop Diversity

Crop diversity is an important criterion for successful organic vegetable gardens to manage climate and market risks, and, even more so, for a healthy mix of vegetables for home consumption.  Of the 100 target households, the average is six crops per garden, with min and max of 3 and 9, respectively (Table 1).  Interestingly, the adopter gardeners (who are not officially part of the program but have learned from their neighbors, e.g. are indirect beneficiaries), on average are growing 4 to 5 crops during the season.   The impact of 1,000 Women’s Gardens is multiplied by the large number of ‘adopter’ gardeners throughout the 52 villages in Kasese District where 1,000 Women’s Gardens operates.

The most commonly grown vegetables (by over 70% of target gardeners) are eggplant, dodo (spinach), African eggplant, cabbages, tomatoes and sukumawiki (kale), a good mix of vitamin-rich green leafy vegetables and marketable/local cuisine crops (see Garden Crops Grown figure).  Gardeners are learning to save seeds for most of their garden vegetables to allow growing from season to season with minimal expense for new seeds.  Over 70% of target gardeners produce a surplus and sell vegetables a few months of the year.

Home Vegetable Consumption

Another striking research finding is the increase in vegetable consumption by the family before and after beginning to garden (Table 2). Whereas 86% of families ate vegetables only every two weeks or less ‘before’, now the majority eat vegetables twice daily, with significant positive impacts on nutritional status and overall health, especially for young children. For the adopter the gardeners, the results are also encouraging.

Early Evidence of Transformative Change among Young Mothers

The ASRH Gatherings for Young Mother Gardeners program is advancing on multiple fronts to help 500 adolescent mothers cope with stress and stigma and advance their personal and livelihood goals. Our holistic approach is providing evidence that cost-effective but sustained individual attention and socialization – facilitated by Young Mother Volunteers (YMVs), can turn around desperate situations fairly quickly.

Monitoring data from the YMVs show a few examples:

The YMs meet weekly to save and have a sharing on their home life, family planning and other SRH topics. Through this, young mothers have restored the hope they had lost. They can now feel free to talk about pregnancy related topics and how best to prevent the pregnancy including the best family planning method to use.

YMs prepared their gardens as they wait for the season to start. They cleared the gardens, applied mulches, raised beds while monitoring the nursery beds. They were guided by the 1000 Women's gardens team. The young mothers prepared their community garden as well.

Young mothers plan to start joint projects like poultry keeping, piggery and goat rearing.  Young mothers were advised
o start saving groups to help them save some money to reach their dreams as well as reducing on the levels of depending on their partners and relatives for basic needs.

Naki summarizes….

Through educational sessions with different topics conducted in the year, young mothers have learnt a lot. There is a great improvement in preventing unplanned pregnancies, gardening skills have been improved, the health status of the young mothers and their children has improved, sanitation and personal hygiene as well. Most importantly, the financial status of young mothers has improved. Young mothers now feel the impact of being hard working and owning money independently. They feel transactional sex can be done away with.

We invite our friends and supporters to send feedback on how we might improve our program via the GlobalGiving email: projecthelp@globalgiving.org, and mention 1,000 Women’s Gardens for Health and Nutrition. We would so appreciate your advice, feedback and encouragement!

Many thanks again to all our partners – readers, donors, supporters, advisors. This excellent and important work depends on all of you.

Warm regards,

Doreen, Naki, Robin and Jostas with Rebecca Gerny

Links:

• 1,000 Women's Gardens short video
• Young Mothers short video (skip ad!)