In terms of activities i'm working on here in the community with food security
I'm working with beekeeping I have a wonderful
counterpart, Ba Gerald, who went to a feed the future workshop
with me in Shuma last May. We had
gotten all of our manuals from Feed the
future to learn about the benefits of beekeeping,
and how it can become an income generating activity to do beekeeping.
And through various volunteers that are in
the life program that I'm in they were able to find villagers that were
constructing hives out of natural resources that
were not just these manufactured hives but rather with
materials like sunflower stalks. So Ba Gerald
after looking at some templates and talking to some other
local Zambians that were creating these hives, decided to take on his own
projects and has started making several hives
and he plans to have an apiary that will enclose
five hives. All this money that they're able to make from
this beekeeping production can go into paying for school fees for children. And
Ba Gerald has two sweet little boys and one little
girl on the way and he wants all of his kids to go
through to grade 12 and even on to university.
I know that if he's able to continue with this beekeeping production
he'll succeed in making sure his kids attend school.
I would say the fish pond is firmly planted in the food security sector
it's rooted in malnutrition and Sita Thapa my counterpart she recognizes that in
her students. That a lot of her students aren't receiving adequate nutrition to
like properly develop and especially to make it through a really
long school day and so her main focus was getting these kids
the proper nutrition and also increasing nutrition source in
the community. The idea behind the fish pond is that
half of the fish will be sold in the market and the other half
of the fish will be turned into snacks for the young kids and the
profits of the fish that we sell will go back to
buying fish the next year and for food for the fish and also for
buying hand soap for the kids.
A creative solution to food insecurity
that I've seen here from working with our home health
educator Alicia is taking advantage of a native plant
that just grows everywhere. People refer to it as
bladel which actually kind of directly
translates to worthless. People tend to think of it
more as a as a weed or an herb but it's actually a really
really nutritious plant that most people have around their house. And so one thing
that we've done working with families who have children
who suffer from acute malnutrition and just doing porridge recipes
with amaranth leaves and milk if they have it
and that actually gives you most of the nutrients that you need
throughout the day. That's a creative solution taking advantage of a strength
that the communities already have which is just their native plants
and so that's been a cool solution to yeah just chronic issues of food insecurity.
you